Kylemore...

Finally it's here. The Kylemore Abbey! I didn't go to this place 5 years ago when I was here so I'm finally there. The road length is probably same as that one to Cong. Well, let's not talk about the expenses.
Before hopping into the car I prepared my gear, and specifically, kept my camera with the old 18-55mm lens around my neck, while the rest of the gear in the backseat. I knew already that I will encounter some nice scenery on this long way - and it was no disappointment.

One of the hills of Connemara taken from the cab.

of course shots taken from the cab aren't as good as stable shots on ground, but I would lose more time if I ask the cab driver to stop now and then. And despite my hate for the old 18-55mm, but it is the perfect lens so far that I have for this mission; shooting on the move. On the way to Kylemore Abbey, we passed through different towns and villages, and one of those was Recess (yeah, it is called "Recess"). This town has a statue of Conn of the Sea (or Conn son of the Sea), namely in Irish that would be Conn na Mara, and hence the region's name is Connemara. I'm not sure what's the legend behind Conn, but I should check it out some time later.

Conn na Mara
raised on 1999.

Now, on location. First I took simple shots for a statue of Jesus, but then headed to the big bite: the abbey. There and in front of the door, I went on working on a complete spherical panorama. Despite the sunny weather, I'm expecting lot of problems with this panorama already because of the moving shadows and the moving people - wish if there is a way to control people just like that! Anyway, we will see to that later on when I reach home hopefully. After finishing the panorama, I did a little "experiment" with my infrared gel filter and 15mm fisheye lens, which yielded and exposure of 9 minutes.

Kylemore Abbey

Unfortunately, I didn't head inside the abbey because of the "population" jam apparently. I wouldn't be able to walk around easily among people and taking photos with a backpack and carrying other stuff with me while the camera is hanging around my neck as well. So, I had to call it off and I shot some details from the outside of the abbey.

Statue decorating the top of the gate of the abbey.

For such details I had to use my Sigma 70-300mm and with a teleconverter at some point. Anyway, I continued my walk on the trail after the abbey and reached a simple decorative waterfall and did some tiny long exposure there (in fact holding the the shutter button with my finger instead of using the remote cable here). I didn't process this image yet but anyway because of the stack of ND filters, it became reddish and some WB fixes needed. I'll keep that for home as well. At the end of the way, another panorama was conducted in front of the Gothic Church, and some shots for some details there as well. The trail was going on further but at this point, I had to return (specially with my bladder getting full!).

Now I'm not sure what's the plan for tomorrow, but after tomorrow is supposedly the day for Cong. It is a long road as well. Probably I'll just have a long walk to the downtown again, to use the ATM machine! Anyway, time to post this and have some rest. My legs still aching after the long walks!

Gotchya Buddy!

It was a foggy morning. So foggy that you can literally see the fog as a mass hovering over the ground wherever you go. But it is also a morning when I finally got the culprit and my #1 nemesis! The Magpie! YES!
Of course the images were taken with high ISO and hence, got lot of noise in them but I kept on shooting in a mood of a triumphant that I didn't want to stop whatsoever!

Two of the many shots I took for this big bird.

This bird's size is around that of a hen in fact, but of course it is slim and more elegant. It is closely related to the raven or the crow and the beak is almost the same in both going up with the shape of the head, but its colors are significant. The raven is also beautiful when the sunlight gives it a bit of dark blue streak on the side.

However, after the breakfast I went on roaming the garden and taking some simple pictures of some weird stuff (mainly spider webs!), then my host thankfully dropped me by the place that I always wanted to see myself, in close. The ruins that I kept looking at from afar from the graveyard at the back of the castle at Cashel Rock. 

The ruins on the far left.

It turned out that the name of these ruins is Hore Abbey. I don't know much about its history but I think I would be able to find it easily by googling anyway. My host drove me down to the abbey entrance and it lied in the middle of some field. Just like that, forgotten. The weather was foggy as I said in the morning, but eventually, everything became OK and the sun started to shine through and the sky turned blue again just when I started to take my panoramas.

Hore Abbey amid the fog.

The place is almost completely forgotten, and the good point is tourists do not know much about the place I would say. I didn't see any there and could work for almost 2 hours with my panoramas with no distractions. The place is connected to the path I've encountered yesterday, where the sign said "Tipperary Heritage Path." The abbey itself actually was located over the "Bóthar na Marbh", road of the dead. The name refers to the path it was taken to move the dead people for burial, presumably, here, in this spot, in the abbey and around the abbey. I do think that the grounds and this wide field around the abbey is indeed occupied with some unseen friends.

However, I went inside, and on the way to the main yard inside the abbey there were some tourists who were going out themselves, and so I was so HAPPY about it. It was a really busy day with panoramas and for the first time ever, I had to change my memory card from the 16GB CF card to the 8GB one (which I used before for my 350D always). Generally there were 4 panoramas; 3 spherical and one vertical. The vertical panorama here is the first I do with my VR-head, which I believe is better, but also takes a longer time to settle. When I take a vertical panorama, I usually set the camera directly on the tripod without the VR-head because I need the camera, with the fisheye lens, to take a large horizontal field of view. With a vertical stance, the fisheye would take large vertical field of view. Anyway, I was thinking of how to use the VR-head but putting my camera in landscape orientation but seems it is impossible to do, and to compensate for this, I went on taking 3 images from left to right on every elevation. I did a mistake here, I have to confess and I'm worried about the results when I get back home. In this vertical panorama, which was taken from a side walk in the abbey overlooking some graves, I went on elevating the camera up from -30, 0, 30, 60, 90, 60, 30, 0, and -30 to the other side of the scene. Now, my worries is that the sky, do not have much significant features that it might prove insignificant for the view in general. Maybe I should have included the ground I was standing on better. However, this was one vertical panorama, and there is not much harm in it, but my main concern now is the changing conditions of the weather while I was involved and indulged in my work in the panoramas, the major ones. The change from the foggy to sunny day, might prove very problematic in the final composition.

After finishing the major panoramas I wandered about taking pictures here and there from around the abbey, and the view of the castle from there was fantastic as well, just like the view of the abbey itself from the castle!

The castle as viewed from Hore Abbey.

And that was not enough for me as well. After finishing from the inside of the abbey I went around it. It was so hard walking on that wet grass and also some mud and dung were all over the place. However, I did catch some snaps from the sides and the back of the abbey. The structure in general is beautiful and I do really like the inside. I wonder how it was before it became like this. I'm pretty sure the design was amazing. I've captured some coat of arms from the inside and some logos on the walls, while some other features were unknown to me.

 The back of the abbey, with many holes that I presume they were holding 

supprting beams of some kind. Notice the 2nd arch from 

the right. It has been almost closed but not completely. I wonder why?!

I left the place after all, carrying my heavy load of images, which are carried on 2 CF memory cards this time, and started to walk down the bóthar na marbh heading back home. Before I go out I had to settle down my stuff and pack them up, and while doing this, I've lost the back cover of my 18-55mm lens. It is the cap that covers the back of the lens which attaches to the camera. I think it is not a big deal for the time being. I might use an aluminum foil to cover it in the future or might even consider buying a completely new lens. I don't want to bother myself with a cap story right now.

Tomorrow hopefully, I will be heading to the other abbey which lies almost in the center of the town. It was an abbey that I couldn't get into all these days and it lies on the way to the castle. My host tells me that I can find te key some where to the gate to get inside if I like, and she said she will check after it. I really didn't notice any signs of any kind in the previous times. If this proves true, and I can indeed get inside, I need to get prepred for another panorama, or should I say, a set of panoramas maybe!

My clothes are so wet after walking here and there and I'm trying to dry them out with the hair dryer provided for me in the room. Well, it did some job. Few days are left for me here and I need probably to set things straight and prepare the luggage before I head to Cahir. I was planning for a panorama in the main yard of the castle but I think I will leave that to the time when I get there to spend one night before heading to Dublin on the 15th.

What is "Sleep"?

I can't believe it! I'm seriously typing this blog now not because I have to, but just to pass the time and leave work in around one hour from now. Not much was going on except that I've been going around images, old images, and can't find anything new or any idea to start on with with my camera! Besides, I'm having sleeping problems galore. Mostly, as I think, because I can't keep myself awake after getting back to work. It is something that I needed to master in many months of hard work and, of course, coffee drinking. Now? Because of fasting, I can barely walk when I get back home. I tried so hard to keep myself awake by playing games and working on some photos, but the problem is not in being tired at all, as for the thirst or hunger, I've seen worse days in the past when I used to fast in mid-summer with a long period of working hours more than it is now in Ramadhan. The main thing is psychological. Working or playing, I just need something to release my stress with, and that is usually a drink, or some snacks.

On my games list now I have now a queue waiting, as well as on the books that I've downloaded, I can barely read something. I noticed that I do read PDF magazines better, maybe mainly because of the design and the layout (and the many ads!), and mainly, if there is some topic I'm not interested in, I just skip it and that's it. On the games side, I'm currently playing "Delaware St. John, Seacliff tragedy, volume 3". An adventure game, which unfortunately I didn't play it from its beginnings, but apparently it is about someone with some psychic ability and keeps seeing visions. Seems there is a side-line story about his life and history and where did he come from, but all, I guess, would be present in the previous volumes that I didn't play.

Generally, the game looks nice with a spooky theme, but I believe the controls are somewhat weak. Sometimes it is a hard task to find an object in some scene, and hence I've been using the walkthrough a lot. The graphics are moderate I would say, still, it is nice and not too lousy. I'd give 4 out of 5. Other games now on the list are the Dark Fall 2, or which was renamed "Lights out". One of the creations of Jonathan Boakes. Despite the fact it is relatively and old game (made before the amazing Lost Crown), but I didn't get the chance to play it still. I've downloaded it for now, and kept it on the queue to play with it after Delaware St. John, or, I might take a break with some hidden object game, like "The Haunted Hotel - The Lonely Dream".

As for my work with images, specially those taken from Ireland last year of course, I've noticed that now, I'm less dependant on the HDR capabilities in forming my images. I still use it though, but not as frequent as before. This perspective was also pushed forward with strange erratic behavior from photomatix and photoshop, which produced some weird noise over the windows that I could barely see the images displayed or the controls and sliders, but in Photoshop it was there, but less problematic because it all concentrated on the upper side of the window. Now, the problem had gone suddenly without doing a reboot, and I remember I've turned off something from the "processes list". Yet, I can't remember exactly what it was.
However, I'm trying to find those shaky images and, since I've taken triplets most of the time, I try to take the most stable version of those and work on it hard with the RAW converter to make a suitable one. If all fails (or sometimes without it being a failure), I just flip to black and white and enhance the contrast then.
One of the images that I've re-worked and unfortunately, was not accepted for the second time now, is the arched wall of Cong's Abbey, which the chromatic aberrations took the best out of it. On the way of Jonathan Boakes here, I've tried to make a vivid image out of it by converting it to black and white, yet, it was not accepted still in stock sites I know, but some people liked it, and I guess mainly because, as I think, they could see the minimized version only which almost hides those noises.

Cong's Abbey Arch (vertical panorama, originally in HDR)

Other than this image, there had been lot of photos that I've been working with. Some of them I've even discarded without saving the file, and some were only uploaded to my Photobucket. One of the images however, that frankly, I didn't expect stock sites to accept it, is an image I've called "Valhalla". Valhalla in Norse mythology is the court of gods or the place where gods live. Something like mount Olympus for the Greeks. I don't know why I thought of this paganic name (because I do hate to use such terms), but the clouds were so gorgeous here.

Valhalla

The scene was taken afternoons. It was not a storm, nor it was rainy or anything, but simply clouds passing by in various colors over Lough Corrib. I expected this image to be refused for many reasons, but well, I think I was lucky! This image was composed already by HDR, but I tried my best to show the details of the clouds and not make them plain, while in the same time trying to keep a somehow natural look. The tree and the far-side shore made a problem with the noise level in these areas when the RAW file was edited alone which made me think of making it a silhouette scene. Yet, with HDR the problem was almost solved, but with some minimizing to hide the artifacts! HDR itself produced me a problem when some banding in the blue color in the topmost portion of the image persisted. I had to choose that portion and go with gaussian blur as minimum as possible to hide this banding. Isn't it gorgeous? I remember myself literally raising my hands up feeling like I'm touching the clouds with my bare hands. I do miss Ireland already...

Another image, single RAW this time and not HDR, was the mushrooms beside the oak tree in Brigit's gardens. I took a triplet of those, but they were mostly shaky with one being stable somehow. I needed excessive sharpening to get it, somehow, into normal.

Yet, I didn't feel quite satisfied, so I went along and converted it to the typical mysterious black and white version. Gives me an impression of witchcraft on the go...

Both of the images above were submitted to stock sites. I've noticed recently though that I'm just too lazy to add a watermark on my images. I wonder if this is... right? or wrong? I don't know. But it is there on the mushrooms anyway. Some people said to me directly and openly that they are downloading my images after viewing them in Photobucket, but anyway, I don't mind since most of them are watermarked.

Well, time for me to pack things up and leave this place at once. I need a real shower today!!!

Cong, Co. Mayo.

Today, after breakfast, I traveled along within a taxi to another county: Mayo. I headed (with the taxi of course) in a long journey that almost took one hour of driving to a village called Cong, on the north of the Loch Coirib. This long way was supposedly to be shortened (with lesser expenses) by a ferry, but since the ferry stops at the end of the September with the end of tourism season, I had to take the hard way. Not only that, but a ferry would take you into the lake to an island in the Corrib, named Inchagoill, where a grave stone of St. Patrick nephew is supposedly to be there with a church that dates back to the 5th century, and also a 12th century's Romanesque church. However, today I went to Cong, and tomorrow, if the weather was nice I shall be heading to Inchagoill by boat.

There are three main sites to see in Cong, but I saw only two of them since I didn't really care much about the third! They are: 1. Ashford Castle which has been turned into a luxurious hotel, 2. St. Feichin Monastery which dates back to the 6th century, 3. A museum, which was the house where a movie was shot, named "The Quiet Man."

1. In Ashford castle, tourism was much still alive and people were going in and out, either for picnics or to play golf in the wide green fields around the castle. I took many shots around the place and I had a long walk in the forest behind the hotel (the castle). We were thinking that the monastery is somewhere around the castle but we got it wrong. Anyway, I really loved the trees there, and some of them were giants and obviously hundreds if not at least one thousand years old. On the way out of the place, we asked a valet about the monastery, and he guided us to it. It is in the village itself and not near the hotel.

2. We got back to the village and found the monastery. Frankly, I don't know if it is St. Feichin monastery, but it was Cong Abbey, or "Ministreach Chonga." It was a national monument as the signs in the place denoted and from the design and the hard rocks it was obvious that it was a medieval building. The graves were every where and I was trying hard not to stop on them. The dead deserve their respect. The graves were marked by a grave stones sometimes but lot of times they were marked by a Celtic crosses. The abbey had a second floor which was exposed like a roof, and I tried to take a panoramic shot up there. The building was magnificent, and after the castle of Aughnanure, this is the second time I see a real medieval building with religious significance. The castle itself was not completely medieval as it was obvious that it had been renovated to be in shape of the hotel that it is seen today. The abbey was unique with its ruins. Upon my way out, I snapped the gate of the abbey as well;

3. On the way back from Cong, I had a nap in the taxi, as the long drive to Cong actually made my stomach a bit disturbed. On the way though, I couldn't help to stop my camera from snapping but this I had to make fast shots with no HDR intention (3 shots with different exposures and blah blah blah). There were many spectacular views for Connemara hills and the Corrib lake with the road being up and down all the way, but I had few shots that were good enough, specially with the problem with the light source and the speed of the shutter;

Tomorrow, Hopefully, I'll be heading to Inchagoill, and only 4 days left to get back to Dublin, and on the 5th day then, I shall fly away back home!