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Petra
We are not back to normal. In fact the weather became even more unusual as we had plenty of snow last night – maybe 10cm and that right beside the sea and in Ireland is very unusual.
So I couldn’t resist and went for a walk before breakfast. Ok, not at 7am but still … What made the walk even more enjoyable was that the sun came out. So I spend two hours walking around with my camera, all smiley like everyone I met, like happy children. I haven’t seen that many cameras out before.
I took almost 200 pictures this morning – sometimes I hate digital photography! So it took quite a while to go through them and decide which ones I want to show on pix.ie / flickr / Facebook. I managed to cut them down to 39 in the end. Still too much for my liking to upload in one lot as I can’t expect anyone to have the patience to look at them or even comment on them, not to mention those poor friends that follow me on all three pages. And I think it usually takes away from each individual picture when there are too many new ones at the same time. Anyhow I felt they belong together and tell the story of those two hours.
Finally I decided on my favourite of today. Might change my mind again. But at the moment it is the one above.
I don’t get out much these days to take pictures. I hope that will change again once my course finishes. So I was glad to see this picture looking out of the window today. We had the weirdest weather I ever experienced last night. Lightning and thunder at -1 degrees combined with snow and hail showers. It now starts melting again which is not unusual for snow in Ireland so it seems we are back to normal. 
I went for a quick photowalk this morning to take some pictures for the assessment of my course as photography is one of the modules. And I needed some sunny pictures of the area for the website of the SME I’m working on.
A truly lovely morning for this walk. Only because I didn’t have breakfast before I left I went back home. Otherwise I could have walked for hours.
While around Sandycove beach this dog was looking forward to his morning swim. When I then looked back and saw him swimming between the rocks I was pretty sure I would like this picture.
It represents nicely the lovely morning and all the other (human) swimmer in forty-foot – a very busy place at 10am on a sunny Saturday morning.
This is another picture from the photowalk with @photowalkie and @091labs in Galway earlier in September.
Probably not one I would print as there is too much going on. But one I like for other reasons. It’s taken with a Zenith TTL. The camera was a wedding present of a russian friend who moved to Seattle in August. I couldn’t believe she didn’t want to keep the camera. But she even called her husband in Seattle (7am his time on a Sunday) and he agreed.
So I value the camera even more and am glad that I managed to take some decent pictures with it already. And I love the quality of film pictures. 
While looking again through my pictures from the photowalk in Botanical Gardens Dublin yesterday I couldn’t decide which one to use for my blog. So the nice side effect is I have two updates in a row
This picture was again taken with my zoom lens. But on top I had a 4x close up lens from @sharononeill. Difficult to handle. As you can only get things into focus by moving the camera. We are talking about a difference of mm to be in or out of focus bearing in mind that you might have difficulties standing still leaning towards your object. But I love the effect from this combination. So close up lenses are definitely another item on my wish list.
Mid September we met for a photowalk organised by photowalk.ie in the Botanical Gardens in Dublin. A rainy day but not too bad so we could experiment with the raindrops. And as you can see the sun came out from time to time as well to improve our pictures. This was taken with my zoom lens as a macro lens is still on my wish list.
Last Friday we had some time during the webactivate programme to use the Panasonic Lumix we got for the photography part of the course. And as it was a lovely morning it was a nice opportunity. We didn’t take any suitable pictures for our project 103 website but walking along Thomas Court all of a sudden some doves started to fly towards us. I have to say, sometimes a compact camera comes in very handy. I don’t think I would have got this shot with a SLR.
Yesterdays photowalk in Galway was mainly dictated by the ever-changing weather. Sun – rain – clouds – rain – sun (with rain I mean torrential rain!). And always the question: how much further can we walk before we need to find shelter again?
But none the less a very enjoyable day. Probably because of the weather we were less than expected but with nine people a nice crowd. And I somehow prefer smaller groups anyway. Many thanks to Mark who organised this walk
For me it was the first time walking through Galway with a proper (read: SLR) camera. Actually two of them. My digital and the Zenith I got a few weeks back from a friend. The film is still not finished. Fascinating how I can take 130 digital pictures within a few hours but struggle to finish a 36 exposure film in two days.
Anyhow. I didn’t finish completely deciding which of those 130 picture I find worthy to publish. But I like this one for sure.
Don’t like the fact that at the moment I don’t really have the time to go out there and take pictures. But I hope that changes latest in October. And meanwhile I’m looking forward to a short trip to Galway on the 10th of September for a photowalk organised by Mark and Photowalk.ie. So hopefully I come back with some suitable results.
Last weekend now I had my first exhibition – along with friends from boards.ie. Even though I haven’t been that exhausted in ages I absolutely enjoyed it. Especially when people passing by stopped and even pointed at pictures / talked about them. I “only” sold 5 of my postcards. But two people were asking for prices and a lot took my business card. So hopefully someday I will be more lucky
Quite a few friends came to have a look which I found brilliant. But not everyone could make it, so here is the picture of my display on Saturday. On Sunday I changed it a little but only had a film camera with me so that will take a while before I have it. Especially as I used a Zenith camera I only got the previous weekend. So I’m not too sure about my result there.
