Colourful Galway Shopfronts

Let's face it - by now, if you read this 'ere blog, you probably realise I like Galway - and for good reason. Good restaurants and pubs, nice walkable city centre, and a certain atmosphere that is unique to itself. Perhaps some of its charm is down to the colourful shopfronts that advertise the shops and cafés along the streets.

I hope these photographs do them some justice!



A very colourful (if not entirely open) shop on Shop St.



McCambridges shop - maybe emporium is the better word. This photo was taken on a Sunday morning when the shop was closed, but when it's open, you'll get the best of food, wine and beer in here. There's a lovely coffee counter in the centre for your caffeine hit (and a yummy coffee here too), and a fantastic deli counter for a delicious. They have a wonderful selection of drinks to wash it down with too, and it's the only place in Ireland I've seen marzipan from Niederegger in Lubeck (Germany).



The Dew Drop - I didn't drop in here, but loved this Guinness signage. There's a lot of the Irish language around Galway, it being so close to the Gaeltacht, which is great!



Wooden Heart is a lovely toyshop, selling all sorts of traditional style toys.



Tigh Neachtain - a strikingly painted pub and landmark in the heart of the city.

More photographs from Salthill, Galway

As promised, I've uploaded a few more photos from the walk along the prom in Salthill, Galway, last weekend (like a month ago now!) Hope you like em as much as I liked being there, and being able to take them.


It really is a refreshing place for a walk and the weather was just right - a little cold maybe, but some sunshine and no rain, but enough cloud for drama!



These small waves still made a big splash off the breakwater - I think this is a swimming pool or something, maybe someone can correct me?

This next shot is of an interesting sign - I've never seen another like it in my time!



Always good advice - it is situated on the diving board at the far end of the promenade.

No ice-cream today.



And the bucket shop was unfortunately closed, but has a fantastic window display!



I wonder how it goes in Black and White....



Great walk, thoroughly enjoyable. After Salthill we went back into town. Galway, and that long street running from Eyre Square down towards Spanish Arch in particular has some of the most beautiful shopfronts in the country. I took some snaps of those and will get cracking on them over the next few days.

Nice of you to visit, see you again!

January skies

There is a stretch in the evening... Heading towards 5pm this evening, I caught these beautiful colours as I left the office. Both Venus and Jupiter were visible, very bright objects in the early evening sky. I'm not sure they are visible in the pic above though.

X marks the spot - the bright spot just below and to the left of the intersecting contrails is Venus. The contrails were moving across the sky (as they are wont to do, being clouds) and I was hoping the centre might pass over Venus - unfortunately I couldn't get that angle!
Maybe next time.

Back to Black and White

I had a bit of time with the photos this morning, and I picked one from the holiday in California last year to see how effective it would look in black and white. This was taken down a country road well off the highway (we were looking for horse-stables) and the United States Postal Service obviously don't go too far off the beaten track because all these mailboxes (post boxes?) were together at a junction!

I'm happy with it, think it worked quite well. I have it on my etsy shop for sale, wondering if it will attract much interest? 

In other news, we went for a bite to eat in Kildare this evening, and the Silken Thomas is now serving Crean's lager - a very enjoyable (and Irish-brewed) and reasonably priced alternative to Big Lager. I highly recommend it! 

DIT Graduate Photography Show 2011

http://www.ditgraduatephotography.com/

Just in from the official opening of this exhibition in the National Photography Archive and the Gallery of Photography in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin. It's the annual final year/graduate showcase of the photography students at DIT, and I happen to know one of the photographers in this years class.

So, vested interest mentioned, I just had to give these guys a wee plug - if you are in the city, and have a passing interest in photography, it's worth a view. The photos are amazing, if you're like me you mightn't like them all but they are all high quality and evidence of a huge amount of work. Some are documentary, some are constructed images, some projects use double exposures, others use slides - the variety and imagination alone are impressive!

To reiterate, it's well worth a view - it's on in Temple Bar till June 26th. More details here, on their facebook page, and on their twitter feed, @ditphoto2011.  Enjoy! And best of luck to the 23 exhibitors.

Some generally random photos I also took recently.

Trying to eke out the honeymoon pics a little bit, still have San Diego, Las Vegas to do and possibly some other transit pics - for another time!

This evening I was playing with some photos I took on a walk with friends in Monaghan - a Coillte property I think. We were on the Dartrey estate, and there seems to be plenty of scope for a return visit! The weather wasn't great so we just did an out and back walk, but I got a couple of interesting shots. Lovely bluebells too, but not as nice as in my local woods in Monasterevin of course!!

Kind of a grey day...


I loved this detail from a tree by the lake.


And the Rhododendrons were in bloom also, quite a few of them.






So that's a short post to round out the bank holiday weekend - a pretty busy one, with bloom on Saturday, entertaining family Sunday and doing some hardcore lazing today (though we did tidy up a little, honest) with the help of a Hitchcock movie as well as the movie Touching the Void.

This weekend has been finished off with some very tasty Dungarvan Black Rock Stout, very well put together. Tasting notes on the side (vanilla, aniseed) very helpful and seemed accurate to me. That'll go on the perennial list then too!

Oh, and busy Tuesday too - the talented students of the DIT photography school are opening their final year exhibition in Temple Bar, at the Gallery of Photography and the National Photography Archive - looking forward to seeing these! It's on now, and open for a couple of weeks - drop in and see and enjoy.

More info here! http://www.ditgraduatephotography.com/

Bloom in the Park 2011

Today we took the train (early, 07:45!) to see Bloom in the Phoenix Park. Bloom's an annual festival/event organised by Bord Bia, to showcase (from what I saw today) the best of Irish food, drink, plants, wildlife and garden design. As well as the usual retail sales areas that you find at (and that probably pay for) these events everywhere, there's a garden show area with about 8-10 gardens competing for prizes; an Irish food area; an Irish micro/independent brewer/distillers area (yum); information on wildlife organisations and activities for kids - a well-rounded family day out I suppose, even if there's only yourself and herself.... :P

There was lots of relaxing things to do....



I took a few photos, needless to say. I should preface them by saying that either I was confused or the camera was, as many of these pics weren't exposed great....so what you see is a result of a harsher than usual cull.



My personal favourite was a garden on the theme of "Alice in Wonderland," which was built/formed/made from synthetic grass and some plants. Lovely and bright and colourful, perhaps I should have taken more photos here!



My next favourite was the Chinese Garden, which had dancing and music. We arrived just after the dancing though, and didn't hang around till the next one. Mostly because it didn't occur to us to.





And another very enjoyable area....



The Bloom Inn was great - half-pint glasses at €2.50 being very reasonable, and excellent beers from craft breweries around the country. I particularly enjoyed my first taste of Galway Hooker and also of Trouble Brewing's Ór (up Kildare!), both very very tasty beverages indeed. I must also beseech the guys in Dungarvan to brew more of their coffee and oatmeal stout for bottling! My first taste too of Metalman's beer (I had the Windjammer), White Gypsy's and of 8 Degrees, all very enjoyable.

May they all bottle and distribute widely. Or to Kildare at any rate.

There is of course plenty of food to peruse and purchase for soakage. Sorry, I mean, of course, enjoyment. Lots of nice meat providers (can think of 2 sausage stands, and one beef stand in particular), bakeries, jams, preserves, you name it, and many providing a sample or 2 to tempt you!



Not to mention you never know who you'll bump into (or see other people bumping into)



If you go, I hope you enjoy it and that the weather suits you. If you don't have time and remain curious, get thee to pix.ie and have a look at either my few pics, or the pictures of other photographers that have submitted their work!

More photowalk pictures from Boro valley farm in Wexford

Well, now I have some connections from a couple of the other photographers at the photowalk last weekend, and I have to point you in their direction before I return to posting more of my Californian photos.

Firstly, and in no particular order, have a look at the Queen of Pots website, where you can see a selection of great shots, (in particular the food/cake slideshow, well worth going through twice and realising you didn't get to eat any of them....).

And on the other hand, there's the allseeingeye's fantastic shot of Lorcan - I just saw this one today and it blew me away!

I must say, being on this photowalk in the company of other photographers and seeing their perspective on exactly the same subject, same day, same weather, same conditions is a real eye-opener, and reminds me that I still have so much to learn about this picturising.

Thanks again all!

Boro Valley Strawberry farm photowalk, Wexford.

Yesterday, I attended my first photowalk! It's an organised photographic expedition, or something like that. This event was held at the Boro Valley Strawberry farm near Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford. Murt welcomed us with open arms, and a cup of coffee, and a hope that they might get to use some of the images from the day on their new website.



Murt brought us up to the glasshouses - these are where the "Elsanta" berries grow, on suspended shelves at about waist height.



The temperature and humidity in the greenhouse are computer controlled, and it opens vents and water pipes as required. Pollination, though is a little more old-school. A hive is placed at about 5 or 6 locations throughout the greenhouse, and each hive's bees has it's own patch of about 10 000 plants to look after - this was something I hadn't thought about!



The berries are all picked and packaged by hand - in any event it's hard to imagine any machine being gentle enough to pick the fruit without damaging the beautiful skin and texture of the berries. These were some of the sweetest and most succulent strawberries I've ever had.



Just look at the colour!





After visiting another polytunnel with another variety of strawberries that were a couple of weeks from harvest (though some were ready to eat and were almost (almost, mind) nicer than the Elsanta), we took a couple of shots of the farmgate stand. Here, as well as punnets of strawberries, the Murphys sell a selection of potatoes, tomatoes and juices direct to the lucky punter that stops (and it'd be well worth it!)  by on the Enniscorthy-New Ross road.



The other walkers will have better photos than I of this next portion of the morning, I am inexperienced (and ill-equipped!) at the use of flash but I was reasonably happy with the pics I got. The Murphys spent the morning baking and preparing some amazing gateaux and cakes with their strawberries - recipes will be on their website I'm assured! Others had brought lamps and a white background helped to isolate the samples.







After photographing them, it was a shame to have to destroy these beautiful cakes by eating. (er no, not really!)

So thanks to all at Boro Valley for having us down there, and I wish them all the best with their new website and hope it helps to bring business. The product is certainly right!



And thanks to the photowalk.ie gang, this was my first and hopefully not my last. It's great to have an impetus as well as an unusual subject or location.



More pics, as ever, at http://pix.ie/brianp/album/411480

Thanks for reading!

San Francisco, Parte the Seconde.

I has returned, as you can see. I brung with me some more photos that you may or may not be interested in seeing. That said, if you've got this far, well done and I hope you enjoy them!



So the Golden Gate bridge we saw, well, we had to - I wanted to. It's brilliant, elegant in form and orange in colour. Well, International Orange, to be precise. We walked about halfway out, and then came back, had some nice views of SF and the bay too!




And it's worth noting that while the Golden Gate has it's own police, the California Highway Patrol (or CHiPs as I like to call them) still drop in from time to time. I love the gold and blue helmets! They're on BMW R-1200 (I think) bikes now, not the classic Kawasakis, but it's still great to see em.



I mentioned in my earlier post that the cables for the cable car system are all run from the same location. Credit to my disorganisation and poor blog post planning, I kept that photo for today! You can see the main power and gear units in the foreground, and the cables run over the big pulleys. In the background you might see the tension pulleys which move further away as the cable stretches, these keep the cables nice and tight for the grips on the cars.



That brings me to the end of today's few photos - there are more at the album on pix.ie if you're interested!

Next might be the transit to Yosemite....

Loving being back.....

Not.

We're back (that's wife and I, now) from our holiday (read honeymoon). We were in California, which was lovely, and Nevada, which was also lovely, and Arizona (but just for a minute) as well as New Jersey (well, the airport....). So we're still tired and jetlagged!

I have downloaded my photos. Some culling needs to be done prior to presentation (probably in batches).

In brief - San Francisco, Yosemite National Park, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas. Highlights included Yosemite's natural (and snowy) beauty, the performing animals at Seaworld, the USS Midway aircraft carrier and Las Vegas' car hire desk. Who had a convertible Ford Mustang for rent for a brilliant day at Hoover Dam and Red Rock Canyon.

So I might have whetted your appetite for details and photos? Stay tuned for I hope to say more soon!

(As an aside, I am, having not taken photos since Thursday, considering deciding to stop my photo a day project. All I've learned from it is that I should have my camera with me as much as possible - there was some real rubbish being taken just for the sake of it. A theme is needed for a project like that.)

Some Monasterevin Photographs

Last weekend (feels like it's a week ago!) I had a bit of time on Sunday afternoon. It was a nice day, so I took some photographs on the (round-about) way to the shops for bread and milk and stuff. These are the results - many were deleted, and this is kinda bridge heavy, but as I've said before, there are photographs everywhere, you just have to get out and about and go to them!

This road leads to Monasterevin - I love these old signs, lots of character and texture still in them. That's a mile there, by the way, not a kilometre....!


My travels took me to the train station. The bridge linking the platforms is (naturally) defended by fencing, so I couldn't take the photo I thought I wanted, so this would have to do...


Off I went to recursive infinity after that...


Then down by the Barrow I got a few photos of the Pass bridge, the viaduct and the aqueduct. In the picture below you'll see the rail viaduct and the aquaduct (Grand canal over the river Barrow). For more pictures, follow the link in the title, and enjoy!


Oh, by the way, does anyone know if blogger is broken on chrome?

Fionn, Bran, agus Sceolan.

We really are blessed with the art, including public art, produced in this country. You only have to drive the motorways to see some beautiful work, including the ball at Naas, horse and rider at Sligo, some (recently stolen, shame) works on the M7 outside Monasterevin, and many many others the length and breadth of the country. A small percentage of public money from some projects is put aside to provide this art (I believe this was paid for as part of the proceeds from parking revenue in Newbridge), and it's a great thing - I hope art doesn't get too much more of a whittling in the near future.



Anyway, the most recent work I've seen is the work just off the Curragh (Ballymany) interchange south of Newbridge on the M7. By Lynn Kirkham, it's title is "Fionn Mac Cumhaill and his hounds" - more info here. It's a hugely impressive trio of steel, well, sculptures is the wrong word, but figures doesn't capture their majesty, and domination of the roundabout.

I love the styling on the figures, it's got a great martial feel to it, capturing the great legendary warrior and his transmuted nephews (Bran and Sceolan were once human nephews of Fionn) very well.



I hope the rest of my photos speak for themselves!