Pros and Cons

...of a pro camera.

I took these gull photos on the way to work yesterday morning.

Not waving, not drowning either ~ simply bathing

I know I wouldn't have got such good photos with my Canon point-and-shoot bridge camera.  I have more zoom range, yes, but not quite the same sharpness and clarity and it's definitely slower to focus.
However,  I now have a sore shoulder from the weight of the big camera in my bag all day. The body with a kit telephoto lens weighs in at 1.5kg/3 lb, and then another lens is necessary because sometimes (especially in the city) you don't want a telephoto, you want (I want) a wide-angle. And if I've gone for a pro lens rather than the kit ones - well, each lens is almost as heavy as the body. That's a definite con. The lack of video is a minor one - I know that the more modern DSLRs do offer video, but mine is just too old for that.
Another definite pro is the weather-proofing and rugged construction!
The reason I'm toting all that weight around on a daily basis now and not just on outings to the park is that my little Canon picked up some dust while we were on holidays, and is in for a good clean. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised - some of the time it was just slung over my shoulder while I was on the back of the bike.
The Olympus, on the other hand, while it picked up a certain amount of sand on the outside on our visit to Lake Korission, simply required 5 minutes with a blower brush when we got back to the apartment. Because of the weight around my neck, I was actually carrying it looped over my wrist till I realised how much sand I was kicking up as we walked across the dunes.
Cue photo of C in one of his drama moments. I know he's never read Beau Geste, so his concept of Fort Zinderneuf is based on Snoopy as a Foreign Legionnaire leading his troops through the sand traps!! The hunched shoulders and air of dejection are pure drama; like me, he really enjoys this outing.

He still insists that it's shorter to return to the car-park area via the dunes than back through the juniper groves. Shorter it may be - faster I am not so sure, as it's quite hard work trekking over all the sand, and this rocky outcrop was a rarity. I think perhaps he was deterred by the number of spiders' webs spun between the junipers, which at one stage had me thinking of Mirkwood.

For our trip to Corfu town I just brought the Canon, so here are a couple of  short videos of a group of singers. I'm still not sure what they were doing - they certainly weren't busking, as the lady was giving something out (mostly to the shopkeepers as opposed to tourists) from her little basket. The second video shows an onlooker who borrowed the lead singer's hat and danced along with them - after C had joined him for a duet of O Sole Mio. You can't see him, but there was a very good piano accordionist. It should be possible to click on them to view them full screen, and I hope I've set the sharing permissions correctly this time.

Quick Picks

We've had bitterly cold weather this week, some snow, some grey skies and some lovely sunshine - mostly in the mornings.
The snow never actually lay on the ground that long, and on Monday it was so windy that what little there was formed drifts, leaving open green spaces and sudden white patches.

This photo is our neighbour's roof, where it looked like a fine dusting of icing (confectioners) sugar.

A quick snap of one of the robins. I was planting some sweetpea seedlings into pots the other day, and the robins were in heaven because they found a treasure-trove of worms underneath the sack of potting soil!

I'm not sure if this is some type of breeding plumage on the cormorant. I need to look back over older photos. It was the red splash that first caught my eye - and then I saw how much white there was on the head - as if he'd been sprinkled with snow too! The other day, for the first time ever, I saw not just one or two of them but six all perched on the wall across the road from Heuston Station. Digital zoom, so slightly more pixellated than I like.

And a fine black-headed gull.

Google are terminating Reader! How can they do that!! I'll have to find another programme before the clock runs out.

City Heron

Just a few very quick edits from Monday morning. It's hard to believe that the photo with the old shopping trolley and the reflections of the bridge was taken barely fifty metres from the others, which are right in front of Heuston Station.

Reflections

When I left the house this morning it looked set to be a beautiful day - not as cold as yesterday, but a clear sky and some amazing dark mackerel clouds. After I got on the bus, those clouds developed a beautiful red underbelly, which I enjoyed all the way in to town. There was still gorgeous light in town, and with a high tide and the Liffey very still and calm, there were some lovely reflections...

And about an hour later it started raining, and of course my umbrella was at home. I wasn't even coming straight home after work, I was meeting someone from FreeCycle to lend them a book - so when I did get home I was cold and wet. That red sky was a "shepherd's warning" today.

Back to work...

...back to reality.
C was back in work on Wednesday, so by the time my turn came round on Thursday it was not so much of a shock to the system. While Thursday was very mild, it was also very dull and grey so it was hard to tell if it was a heron or just rubbish under the bridge in town. Rubbish, in the end - not that it mattered as it was way too dark to try to take any photos.
Today was still unseasonably mild despite the clear skies that made it a lovely springlike day and a much brighter morning. I even saw some buds and catkins out on the way home - I'll be heading out with a macro lens tomorrow, weather permitting.
When I was walking to the bus in the morning I wasn't sure what sort of day it would be - it was one of those days when you feel there's a lid of cloud, with just a little clear sky on the horizon. No time for a proper photo, because my point-and-shoot seems to struggle with these, and this first photo is the only one that I got that accurately reflects the morning sky; the bus came early and I had to run for it.By the time I got into town, there was much less cloud and some beautiful morning light.

It was still looking like a glorious spring day when I left work, but by the time I got home it was grey and cloudy again, so I'm not sure if the beautiful weather was very localised, or very temporary.

On the Way to Work

We've been having an unexpected mild spell and even a little sunshine this week. But in spite of the change in the hour, the mornings have still been fairly gloomy and overcast.

Most of the leaves I see floating down the river have been there a while and are flat in the surface of the water, but this one was still dry enough to have kept its curl; however the current was taking it so fast that it was hard to get a decent photo of it.

Lights reflected in the water 

I liked this crow perched on a still-lit spotlight on top of a derelict building. I'd first seen him in front of it, and with the lit lamp it almost looked as if he were looking in a mirror. I still like the way this photo came out, though, even if it didn't capture what I first saw.

Another electricity box cover. Anybody know what the actual correct term for those grey boxes is? I need to check back too to see if I've uploaded the bookshelf one from the end of Capel Street. This one is at Christchurch Cathedral, and it was one of the guys in work who put me onto it, since he has this as his avatar and screensaver at the moment.

Cormorant

What a Troll Might Wear...

I was walking in to work yesterday and was intrigued to see a washing-line hanging from the Rory O'More Bridge (or the "blue bridge" as one of the guys in work described it, when I was asking him had he spotted it). It must have been some art installation somebody put up - probably unofficially as it was gone by the time I went home at lunchtime. I have no idea whether the perpretrator knew that this is the bridge with the Troll Below sign stencilled on it, but I did, and it gave rise to some amusing possibilities in my mind.

And from a Saturday morning walk to the shopping centre. The birds all over are busy nesting. When I went to the opticians about ten days ago, I stopped to watch a starling in a tree. He was moving so awkwardly that I wondered if he had a broken wing, but he was just having difficulty manoeuvring in a very bushy tree with a large twig in his beak.(This magpie was in the neighbourhood, and while he wasn't having as much trouble as the starling, he still dropped his twig once while I was watching).

Still have to find a header photo for March. With my PC out of order, that means connecting my back-up so that I can choose a photo from last year; as the old retired computer that has come back into temporary service is so slow, I've been putting it off. I crashed the PC last night trying to edit these photos, and just had to slow down and open only one a time this evening.

Dublin

Today is my sister's birthday. As she was up in Dublin we met for lunch on Friday. It was a beautiful morning - if I hadn't been meeting her (and looking for a present before) I'd certainly have gone to the park.

We had lunch in the Silk Road Café at the Chester Beatty library, so most of the photos are around Dublin Castle.

As I wasn't working we were able to meet early, thus ensuring a table in the atrium, which is a bit quieter without the noise of the coffee machines. This was looking in to one of the inside rooms.

 There was quite an interesting looking exhibition but I'd walked too far and had too much to carry. I might try to get back in before it's over, especially as L told me there were some lovely Chinese robes as well as the photographs. Success in present-buying, I managed to find a book I didn't even know was on her Amazon wishlist, and I bought a lovely new frying-pan which the security guard came over to admire.

Alternative transport for Santa!

C had a half day today, so I walked into town after work and we met for lunch in a little Indian deli which came recommended by a work colleague who is half-Indian and knows what he's talking about. Certainly the food was lovely, and there are more things we'd like to go back and try some time. I will say, though, that C's "Indian Fanta" as opposed to Irish Fanta was a rather lurid orange, although he reckoned it tasted much better.

 Anyway, on the way to meet him I stopped to watch a cormorant flying up the river, and then spotted Santa and an elf in what looks quite like a currach. It's obvious that they're not used to rowing, though,  and they certainly weren't going at any pace. We're used to seeing far more expert rowers racing along further up-river where all the rowing clubs are.

Quick picks

Still working on my French photos - we're not even out of Brittany yet! But the weekend is never a good time, even such a gloomy, wet one as this was.
A reflection of Frank Sherwin bridge in the Liffey one morning last week. The river was so still and the sky was so blue; the bridge itself is a bit burnt out in the photo, but I took several and I think this one best shows how the reflection almost looked like a road in the water - almost a Yellow Brick Road.

As we were away I don't have wide scope for picking favourite cards for September. The apple and pear ones were fun, a different colouring style to normal, and I enjoyed doing the little pony for one of my nieces - they all go riding every week, so I thought a pony stamp could earn its keep. This one reminds me of the Norman Thelwell books my sister used to collect.

We have a robin around, but I don't think it's Mrs Robin, as it initially flies to the feeder and picks seeds from that, and will only come to the back step after it's sure all is clear. I'm hearing a lot of robin territorial noises, though, so there's another robin around somewhere for sure. This evening when I went out to open the back gate for C there was some lovely birdsong, but it was too dark to see who was singing.

A good book - Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet; there seem to be some very negative reviews on Amazon, but they're in the minority. We both enjoyed it, though initially C had thought he wouldn't bother reading it, and his mother is currently reading it and enjoying it a lot. We were just discussing this evening how hard it is to choose books in the library - a lot of the time I'm very happy with what I pick from the shelf near the desk of recommended books, but there has to be a better way of finding what we like.