It’s been a while since I posted. I enjoy writing short blogs but just haven’t put time aside to do so. My last blog was on street photography in March of this year. It’s late December now. It seems most unusual that my first blog is entitled “A Blog to Remind Myself to Write Blogs” but maybe it will kick start the practice of writing again.So where do I start. How about a short retrospective of what I’ve been doing since March and some of my favourite images in that time.
A recurring eye injury compounded by a back injury resulted in April and May (the Spring months!) being unproductive or in another words I didn’t get out with my camera. I did manage a visit to Magheramore Beach nera Brittas and Wicklow Harbour but the images were not worth processing. An afternoon trip to Powerscourt Waterfall produced a portrait orientation image taken with a new lens the Nikkor Z 100mm-400mm. There are so many opportunities here dependent on the light and flow of water and it’s one of my favourite Wicklow locations and not just for the waterfall – it has good woodland opportunities particularly
along the road to the waterfall. My next full day out was in early May – a trip from the Pier Gates at Lough Tay, around the Sally Gap and the magical Clara Woods. Watch the video here A Day Out in Wicklow
I can’t remember why but there’s a big gap in my date indexed folders in Lightroom between early May and June 21st. I did start to make a video about Birds of the Reedbeds in the East Coast Nature Reserve but failed to finish it off. My next trip out was on June 21st where I managed to take a stacked photo (c.120 images) of a dragonfly at dawn. This triggered a restart of the year’s photography and from then until now, there’s a healthy list of 4-5 outings per month represented by Lightroom folders. It was the detail captured in the dragonfly image from wing tip to wing tip that got me excited about stacked macro images. And so the remainder of the summer was spent experimenting with this approach and much of that experimentation was in the garden where I had sown wildflower seeds. New toys arrived – a Novoflex Magicball head, a manual focus rail intended for the Laowa 25mm and a mini tripod, the latter proved to be the most used.
An overnight trip to The Copper Coast in Co Waterford, within easy reach of home in August was unusual in that I set out to photograph the colourful rocks rather than revisit standard locations. This type of “mini project” tends to take one to unexpected places. You can watch the video here: Multi Coloured Rocks of the Copper Coast
A trip to the inland County Offaly for 2 days of macro and infra red photography told me it is worth following instinct where new natural wonders are to be seen and photographed. I have to remind myself that I tend to visit the same areas or locations on rota. So a tip to self for next year is to visit new locations more often. You can watch the video here: Raised Bogs and Infra Red Photography
September outings included a day out to Glendalough searching for fungi of which not many put on a show and a subsequent weekend was spent in the salt marshes of Tacumshane Co Wexford – a regular and favourite haunt of mine. Shooting vlogs on both day trips I was surprised at how well received the videos were on You Tube with over 25k views between the two: 400mm 2.8 Long Enough? and Fungi Photography Tips
Our grand California Road trip to San Francisco, Yosemite, Sequoia, Santa Barbara and Big Sur was unexpectedly cancelled in April due to the eye injury inflicted by a determined bramble – I think it’s still growing strong despite my best efforts to remove it. Nonetheless, we re-booked for October. It was truly a holiday of a lifetime for myself and Lisa- nature at it’s best and I decided to video and photograph along the way with the newly acquired DJI Osmo Pocket 3 making the task very easy. You can watch the California playlist of videos here: California Playlist . Unfortunately there is no such tool when it comes to editing the images and the video – many hours/days of work ensued in the next month and I stumbled into a habit of publishing each video on a Sunday. So I thought – why not keep it up – one video a week. This may enthuse (or enslave!) me to get out and about to take photographs more regularly. It also presses me to edit photographs that I might not bother with – as they are part of the story. I thoroughly enjoy the process of placing a video on a timeline in Final Cut, interspersed with images and accompanied by music to suit the scene, it is a good, productive use of my spare time. So now I’ve set myself an ambitious goal of making a video a week. Soon it dawned on me that this was a monumental and practically impossible task working 5 days a week in IT!
I had previously considered switching to a 3 day working week having worked full time since I left school at 17 – that’s 40 years – where does the time go! And here I am at the end of 2024 with that 3 day arrangement in place which I’m very grateful for. The pressure is now on – how do I optimise the time I am now afforded to follow a dream of spending time in nature and taking photos? Isn’t it a special task when we can choose it ourselves – and if we break or fail, don’t we then take it morte to heart? But, we can always get back up and try again. And a smile should be found in the realisation that our privileged activities are not required to feed or house ourselves or our loved ones.
A landscape trip to Donegal with friends from Greystones Camera Club followed In early November, a day in Tomnafinnoge for the last of the fungi and a day’s woodland photography in Glendalough. The videos for each of these outings can be watched on this page of my website https://jimmymcdonnell.ie/homepage/you-tube/
There are many ideas for making videos and telling stories that come and go from my mind, so I’ve decided to set up a tracking system – usually just a single sentence, an idea in a free version of the JIRA tracking system .
A set of video studio lights has now arrived in time for Christmas – so I’m looking forward to setting these up over the break and myabe I’ll make a video in the loft that I call my studio.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the blog. Have a very Happy and Peaceful Christmas.
Jimmy
