A wee day off on Easter Tuesday and Janette and I took a wee trip down to Banbridge and a walk along the ‘Boulevard’ – the new name for the outlet centre. After all it was a wet day, with thunder storms and hailstones, and the Boulevard is covered, at least in part, and that meant there were quite a few people about to add human interest. Needless to say I brought the Fujifil X-T2 camera, and made a couple of exposures as we walked around.
Category Archives: Beautiful Ulster
Upper Ballinderry – Co.Antrim
Q. What does a photographer do on his day off?
A. Photography.
With no studio appointments on a Friday, and lured by the prospect of a decent spring day, and with another matter to be attended to in the area, I travelled to Ballinderry. It’s a rural area in Co Antrim, between Moira and Crumlin.
To be more precise, my real destination was Upper Ballinderry –
(There was a yarn – about a Ballinderry man who wanted to travel home from Japan, and who went to a travel agent in a small remote Japanese town, and asked for travel to Ballinderry. With oriental inscrutability and precision the clerk replied, Yes sir. Upper or Lower Ballinderry?)
He’d find it hard to travel to Ballinderry by train now as my first stop in the village proved. NIR has mothballed the line between Lisburn and Antrim and Ballinderry Station is now a shadow of its former self. The Antrim bound platform has been dismantled and the station building allowed to decay. The entrance to the station is now blocked. The track is still in place, – it was always a single track line, – but the passing loop has gone and the line seems to be used now as a siding. Today it had goods wagons sitting on the track.
Killinchy, Co. Down
Killinchy, Co. Down.
On a recent visit to Killinchy I travelled on down to the shores of Strangford Lough at Whiterock Bay. The Lough is splattered with islands at this point, and closest to the shore, joined by a causeway, is Sketrick Island, with its distictive castle.
The castle is a 16th Century Tower House, a defensive position which saw battle in the 17th Century. Originally four storeys high, part of the castle collapsed in 1896, and what remains is now curated by the NI Communities Historic Environment Dept.
Kellswater.
A visit to Kellswater in Co Antrim.
Kellswater Reformed Presbyterian Church, near Ballymena, Co.Antrim. Built in traditional ‘barn’ shape in 1806. The congregation dates to 1760 making it the first RP Congregation in Ireland, and still singing only the Scottish Metrical Psalms in worship.
Abandoned Agriculture Project
Completed in 2009, the ‘Abandoned Agriculture Project’ was part of an exhibition of photographic work by local photographers in the ‘Curve Gallery’ at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast.
Photographs made using a NIKON D700 with 24-55mm f2.8 lens.
New Year – New Gear #2
I’m still playing with the new Fufifilm X-T2, so today I took it on a walk around Kiltonga Nature Reserve in Newtownards, to test out the film simulation feature. One of the interesting features of this camera is the ability to set it to emulate various Fufi Films, like Fuji’s popular Velvia colour film for example.
The camera has a black and white option to record images on virtual ‘Acros’ monochrome film, which should give outstanding contrast, and a rich tonal range. Furthermore, Acros simulation will produce grain in the image exactly the same size as the film version, by ISO. The claim made by Fuji is that Arcos film simlation is even better than shooting in RAW and later converting to monochrome in Photoshop. Fufi even claim that Acros will outperform any other high end digital camera shooting in B&W mode. So, today I set the X-T2 to shoot in Acros Monochrome on card two, and in RAW on card one. (Shooting in RAW, of course means that should I want a colour image, I can use the RAW unprocessed files to produce it.)
St Patrick’s Church
This is one of the nicest church buildings in the Newtownabbey area. A fine black stone construction with a tower and entrance porch. Inside is beautiful too.
Photo-Essay: Dundrum, Co. Down
On a warm sunny winter day in December, Janette and I visited Dundrum Castle, and took a wee walk around the town. I took with me my ‘twins’ – the two Nikon D610 dSLRs one with a 24-120mm f/4 lens, and the other with a 80-210 f/2.8 lens. Before I started I metered the ambient light at f/14 @ 1/100 th sec on ISO100. Because the day was so bright and sunny, the 24-120 lens was fitted with a circular polarising filter which reduced light by around 2 stops
Here’s some of the images.
We started at the ‘Belfast Road’ side of the town, parked in the small car park and wandered along the street. Continue reading Photo-Essay: Dundrum, Co. Down
Photo-Essay ‘Scrabo’
On Saturday 1st October, I went for a walk up to Scrabo Tower, on the outskirts of Newtownards. This landmark has towered over much of my life, living and working around the Ards area. The tower was built in 1857, 540 ft above sea-level, as a memorial to the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, Viscount castlereagh, Charles Stewart. The tower is situated in a country park, close to Scrabo Golf Club, and is approached by car only as far as the golf club entrance, then by foot up a steep path to the summit. Thankfully, there are resting places on the ascent!
Being October, the road up to tower ran beside fields that had just been baled, – which provided my image of the day, and set the scene for my exploration of the towers surroundings.
Review time!
Sometimes it’s a good practice to look back at image one has made over the years, – with a critical eye! Here’s a few I’ve been mulling over recently:-
This image of the Playhouse Theatre, Derry/Londonderry was part of a commercial commission. The brief was to show the effect of the lights on the wall opposite the Theatre.
This simple image of Slieve Bunion, in Co Down, part of the ‘Mountains of Mourne’ range has been one of my very best sellers! I’ve sold this image in framed prints, magnets, even mugs!
This image of Ballycopeland Windmill in Co. Down is a real quirk, as anyone who knows it would realise! It is of course, heavily photoshopped, to show the sun rising in the North! Just for a wee change.
And finally, for this selection, an image that’s just a little more personal…
This image of Janette’s parent’s old kitchen, after they’d moved out of the farmhouse, was part of an exhibition at the Curve Gallery, Belfast. I called it ‘Dereliction.’
