It’s images like this that makes photographing amateur athletics worthwhile.
Here’s Jordan Heron of North Belfast Harriers, who has just crossed the finish line, running 5 miles in just 26:12 minutes and achieving overall first place in the Broughshane 5 Mile Race, organised by Ballymena Runners. These people train hard and give their best for pure enjoyment and personal satisfaction. To capture their achievement photographically is not just a challenge, it is a privilege.
Culcrow is a townland between Kilrea and Coleraine, in County Londonderry, and not far from the amazing Brown Trout Inn, where one can enjoy fantastic food. It has a lively Primary School, a handful of houses and farms, and a few old characteristics that always caused me to slow down as I travelled up the road between Kilrea and Coleraine, on route to Portstewart. Of course I never got around to stop and take a closer look because I was in a hurry, or it was raining, or someone was with me… whatever. But Culcrow has still got an old red phone box, and despite driving past it for years, I really wanted a closer look.
Continue reading Old CulcrowI use public transport – a lot. What I most like about it of course, is that for senior citizens of my vintage it is free to use here in Ulster. So, being a skinflint, I use it extensively.
Now, I don’t want to be over critical, – after all, our public transport in Northern Ireland is vastly superior to that in some other jurisdictions. We have clean modern trains that run on time and can usually get you to your destination without the risk of getting mugged. Buses that are punctual and clean and with reasonably polite and helpful drivers (speaking generally). But if there is one minor criticism that I hope I am allowed to offer on the subject of public transport it is this…
APOLOGIES TO THOSE WHO SPEAK PROPER ENGLISH. This post contains a lot of colloquial idiosyncratic diction. (Slang!) It’s just the way we spake over here, so it is…
It is PUBLIC. Too public for comfort. I know there’s little that Translink can do about the public nature of its public transport, but at least allow me the comfort of having a decent rant about it.
Continue reading What’s Wrong With PUBLIC Transport?A day spent around Belfast city centre can be quite boring for the dutiful husband who is required to take his ever patient wife to the city for a shopping trip – especially when that shopping trip involves what seems like endless browsing around the many clothing outlets!
The answer, of course is simple. Bring a camera, and leave her too it. That was my course of action a few weeks ago, when I left Janette in the care of the retailers, and wandered off on my own with the Fujifilm X-T50, and headed for Belfast’s touristy dockland, once the home of the coal boats, and the shady haunts of visiting seamen – now a venue for visiting cruise ship passengers and folk on city sightseeing bus tours. Safe access from the shopping area of the city to the docks is via an underground walkway, amply adorned with vivid graffiti.
I’ve had quite a few conversations about weeds over the years. Not just the complaints at home about the weeds that grow in the lawn, and seem to be indestructible. A few weeks ago I was complaining about those garden weeds, and the persistent clover in particular, and the other party to the conversation implored, “Let the weeds alone… they’re part of nature…” Another joined in with the perceived wisdom that weeds are just flowers in the wrong place!
Anyway I’ve just discovered why weeds exist. To relieve boredom! On Saturday 6th June 2026, I was standing on the edge of Portglenone Forest in Co.Antrim, waiting for an athletics event to finish, and I was in a lull in the action, I was bored. Then I saw some WEEDS and I lifted the camera. Here’s one of the shots…
So, I have been enlightened. Weeds exist to relieve the boredom of a photographer, in athletic action lulls.
This photograph was made using the Fujifilm X-T5 with a 70-300mm lens, and the aperture was open wide, because I was shooting athletics, so I needed a fast shutter speed and reasonably high ISO.
A visit to Kilcooley Estate in Bangor today, left me reminiscing about my teens and early twenties, when I lived with my parents and family on Owenroe Drive, – one of the main routes through this large social housing development, – the third largest in Northern Ireland.
No.2 Royal Avenue
I was wandering about Belfast City Centre, with the Fujifilm X-T50, and quite honestly, I was tired! It had been a busy week, and the old heart arrhythmia was playing up. I needed somewhere to sit down for a few minutes. It was then I came across No.2 Royal Avenue and being a public building, owned by Belfast City Council, I wandered in to see what was inside. It’s an open space inside, with lots of seating and a cafe, and a library and a piano, which someone was playing, – very nicely too. I took a seat, wondering how long it would be until someone came and asked me why I was there… But it didn’t happen.
The building, described by the City Council as an ‘Indoor Park,’ is for everyone to enjoy, and all are welcome. I sat inside the building for around 20 minutes, just to get my breath back, and rest my legs, and it was while I sat there that I noticed this truly magnificent dome, and as you’d expect, it was just asking to be photographed. (I did ask one of the staff members for permission – and they were most obliging, – there’s no problem with photos inside the building, so long as no-one else objects).
Continue reading No.2 Royal Avenue: A Community Hub in BelfastChapel Lane Belfast
As a boy of 12 or so years of age, so, in the late 1960s, a real treat was a Saturday afternoon in Belfast City Centre with my grandfather, – for although he seemed to spend ages browsing through the stock in various tool and equipment stores, – what would probably be known now as DIY shops. But the compensation for this period of boredom would be when we eventually got to Smithfield, the old ‘shambles’ style covered market in between Royal Avenue and Millfield, off Gresham Street. Smithfield wasn’t a market with stalls, nor a modern style shopping centre, but a unique shambles of musty run-down outlets packed with books, records, tools, second hand furniture, bric-a-brac and much much more, including a popular ‘joke shop’ – every small boy’s favourite.
To get to Smithfield from the city centre bus stops required a walk along Queen’s Street, and then along Chapel Lane, and past the Roman Catholic Church of St Mary, and its strange and imposing Marian shrine. To a small boy, not of the Catholic persuasion, and unused to Catholic piety, the shrine appeared mysterious, unwelcoming and even frightening. We hurried past it with eyes looking away and heads bowed.
I don’t NEED another camera. I really don’t, and I keep telling myself that, but it never seems to work! When the Fujifilm X-T50 mirrorless digital camera came along in June 2024, it just tugged at my heartstrings so much, I knew that one day my resolve would weaken… So, I’ve got one, despite the fact that I’ve already got an X-T3 and an X-T5. (And of course, a half dozen or more film cameras). Overkill, some might say. My self-justification for the purchase, and I suppose, my excuse to finally yield to the temptation came when the price of a new X-T50 camera body dropped from £1299 to £1149.
One of the growth sectors, it seems, in Northern Ireland, at least since the so-called ‘ceasefires’ of the 1990’s has been ‘Troubles Tourism,’ where visitors to the city are given guided tours of relics of the troubled past pf the region. You can book a ‘Troubles Taxi Tour’ from around £75. Hotels, travel and holiday companies and cruise ships are including Troubles Tourism in their itinerary offerings. Visitors take open-top buses, coaches, bicycles and walking tours, looking at the locations of riots, bombings and shooting, photographing political murals and of course visiting the infamous Belfast ‘PEACE LINES’
Portraits2Go.co.uk 