Cushendun, The Antrim Coast

It's been years since I've been to Cushendun so off we headed with limited supplies onboard not realising just how difficult it would be to get a chip in this neck of the woods. Halfway up the mountain my son woke up and when he posed the inevitable "where are we?", our daughter quickly retorted "looking for a bloomin chip shop!". It didn't all end in tears as the local mace came to the rescue but we managed to get a few nice pictures before the typical inclement weather decided to spoil the party.

Coloured Bottles

Decided to have some fun with some coloured bath bomb bottles that we had kicking around, no post processing on any of these images....as shot :)

The Fridge

I'm just sorting out my images from the last few days to get the updated on to the blog but I was having a play about with photoshop this morning and it's amazing how quickly you can turn a simple image like a fridge door handle into something completely different. Enough messing for now, must get some proper pics uploaded!

Around Antrim and At Home

Mobile Phone

White Box and Coloured Ice Cubes

Spent the evening attempting to build my own white box and it wasn't a bad first effort. I think I need to reduce the height slightly as I wasn't getting enough bounce from the lamps I was using I think so a quick edit with the scissors tonight should sort that out. Here's the pix I took while using it, it almost looks like there is a face in the glass at one point...see if you can spot it!

Lough Shore Antrim

Been busy this week with a few other things but have been snapping away and attended the Antrim Camera Club tonight for the first time and discovered it has been running for 21 years, hopefully I'll learn a lot from those with plenty of years of experience. If it hadn't been for the wonderful display in the Antrim Library I would have knew nothing about it. The kids were back to school today as well so I got a few snaps before they headed off to their day of study!

Ten Miles from Antrim...Eighty Bands Later

We had toyed with going to the Botanic Gardens in Belfast today but instead opted to take the kids to the Black Saturday band parade in Ballymena. It was a great turnout but the weather was hit and miss and as soon as it started raining I didn't know whether to put the camera away or hide it under my coat. Some of the shots weren't great as I was trying to see if it was better to shoot with shutter or aperture control. I started out with the 18-55m lens and then switched to the 70-300mm lens, the latter was a better option. I could have ideally done with a better position for taking the snaps but I ended up meeting a few old faces from about ten years ago and got chatting into the bargain. Click Me!

Down by the Riverside - SixMileWater, Antrim

I was in two minds about whether to do some indoor shots last night or if it was another adventure around Antrim. In the end I decided on the latter but in hindsight I had probably left it a little bit late to get setup and ready to take some snaps. The shots were ok but I did learn a few valuable lessons with regards to light and movement again so in line with the age old cliche you know what they say...practice makes perfect! Only another 9900 pictures to go.....they reckon your first 10000 are the worst.

Sunset at Antrim Technology Park

Tried to take a few landscape/sunset pictures this evening up at the Technology Park in Antrim. I took about sixty pics and these were my favourite, the lighting was more difficult to work with than you would have imagined so plenty more practice required in this particular area.

Dice, Helicopters and Coloured Balls

Just having a fiddle with different exposure and aperture settings tonight with a plain background. A helicopter even landed in my kitchen!

Candlelit Wine Glasses

Ended up not getting very far today so practiced a few shots with the tripod tonight and finished up with this image....a half hour well spent I think.

Greenmount Agricultural College Antrim

We were lucky to be bestowed with another sunny Saturday but that doesn't always make easy work when taking pictures as I am slowly learning....bright light doesn't equal bright pictures! The original plan was to make a trip to Tardree forest but with the wife and troops in tow this didn't turn out to be a great first choice destination, you know what they said about the best laid plans. Anyway to cut a long story short we ended up at Greenmount College which turned out to be a beautiful location as it happens and it was hiving with artists and horticulturists galore. Maybe one day I'll appreciate the art of Bonsai trimming but for now I'll stick to the photography. I've already hit my upload limit for the month on flickr so you'll pick these ones up on Photobucket.

Greenmount College