A few years ago my wife and I spent a few weeks in New York and Washington DC. I had a great time there and I took the time to get lots of photos. While I’ve posted many from the trip int he past, I was generally focussing on the more “Travel” kind of photos. Recently I was going back over these images and I realised that I have shots from the trip that would fall into the “Street” genre. 

It’s been a weird few weeks. I’ve been dealing with some health issues since June, and it’s been taking its toll on me, both from a photographic point of view as well as a physical and emotional one...The upshot of this is that I haven’t been able to get out as much as I would like to because of a lack of energy and generally feeling rotten. But the outside has been calling me, as has my camera....Over the weekend my wife and I took a walk through a nearby park. This is a huge park with forested areas and lovely open spaces. There’s even a wild meadow like field in the middle of it. 

Over the last little while I’ve been trying to sort out some of the ever sprawling mess that is my photo library. While sorting through a drive falloff images, I found a lot that I had either forgotten about or wasn’t happy with the way that I had originally processed them. One  particular set was from a trip I trip I took to Washington DC a few years ago, and in particular to the beautiful suburb of Georgetown. 

I was walking through a park in Dublin city the other day and there were swans swimming around in the pond that was a feature of the park. As I watched I noticed that  there was this small stretch where the pond itself was mostly in shade, but the swan was being lit by a beam of light from the dappled rays coming through the trees above. Coupled with the symmetry of the Swans reflection, I thought it made for a nice image!

As I mentioned on my main blog recently, I've been scanning in lots of my old negatives and slide film recently. One of the patterns that's emerged from looking at my old shots is that I had an interest in Street Photography even from the early days of my photographic interests. Of course I didn't know it was a genre called "Street Photograhy" at the time. I just like taking pictures around the city. Most of these were taken between 15-20 years ago, on my trusty Canon Eos 5.

Last week I posted some black and white photos from my time in the little town of Heppenheim in the German countryside. I had taken a lot more photographs while I was there and I’ve finally had the time to go through them to my satisfaction. 

In the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains, just outside of Dublin, is a beautiful old 18th century estate and gardens, called Powerscourt. The estate features a restored mansion and some pretty impressive stately gardens that are kept in perfect condition. The house and gardens have been used in several movies, most notably the Count of Monte Cristo. 

Last week I was travelling in Germany and I got to spend some time in the beautiful town of Heppenheim. Heppenheim is a little town about 40 minutes outside of Frankfurt and is filled with some really pretty medieval buildings. I had been there last year too and I had gotten some nice shots, but this time I was trying to do things a little differently, and so I was focussed more on the details. 

I love images of patterns and textures, which I guess comes from years working in design and animation. However, I do love how some modern (or relatively modern) architecture can make some really interesting graphic shapes when taken in the right light and from the right angle. Dublin's Trinity College has some great buildings for taking these kinds of shots.

Summer has come to Ireland, and unusually we're having a prolonged spell of good weather. The up side of that, for the photographer is that with it comes some really nice light, at least if you know where to look. The other advantage, well for me anyway, is that it makes me get out. I fond it hard to look outside and see the beautiful sunshine, and not take my camera and go outside.

I had been walking in Dublin's Stephen's Green park and it was a beautiful sunny day. So far this year, we've been having a great summer, which is unusual here in Ireland. The summer sunshine falling through the patterns of light in the trees makes for a beautiful canvas.

I've always been fascinated by the changing seasons. When in the depths of winter it's hard to imagine that the bare trees were ever burdened down with leaves. In the summer it's hard to imagine that they were ever bare. This year, the winter seemed particularly long, and so, when summer finally came around, the explosion of growth seemed especially dramatic.

It's been a while since I've done one of these Street Photo diary posts. The last one was in March and it's now may. I haven't been doing as much street photography as I would like lately. For one, I was focussing on some writing, and getting my Iridient Developer book out. Secondly, because of all the lovely nature blooming around the city and the surrounding areas, I've been doing a lot more nature photography. I finally took my camera back to the streets recently though, and set about capturing the life around me.

Every now and then there is a kind of weather that we get here in Ireland that I really love. Where I live, we're sort of in the foothills of the Dublin mountains, and during the summer, sometimes we get a kind of misty cloudy rain, that has a real mountain like feel to it. It reminds me of so many episodes of the X-Files which took place in forest settings of Canada, and it has a real frontier feel to it, even though we're still just in a superb of the city. I always think of it as "Alpine" weather, even though this is probably just a name I've given it myself. 

Making the most of April Showers! An abstract study of the beautiful flowers and greenery of spring in the parks of Dublin City, on a overcast and wet day. 

I headed into the city yesterday to go for a walk and take some photos. It was a beautiful spring day, and while there's been some nice days this year so far, yesterday was glorious. While there was still a cold bite to the air, the sky was a beautiful shade of blue, the light was a rich golden hue, and the air was fresh and breezy.

A full collection of images from my recent blog post: Capturing Autumn in Dublin City on the Sony A6000