Category Archives: Photo-Essay

Beautiful Ulster, Black & White, Co. Antrim, Landscapes, Photo-Essay, Reportage, Scotland, Travel

Rathlin Island

On Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Janette and I visited (for the first time) the small island of Rathlin, just off the north coast of County Antrim. Rathlin is the only inhabited island on the coast of Northern Ireland, with a population of around 150, although it is reported that the population is steadily growing. I can understand why. We were quite taken with its tranquility, and its peacefulness. The island is very community focused, and a graphic near the Co-op lists the values that mark the community, – seeking to make Rathlin a welcoming place for everyone. 

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Black & White, Co. Antrim, Fun Shots, Photo-Essay, Reportage

Music at Randalstown Festival

I spent an hour at the annual Randalstown Community Festival, an event aimed at bringing the community together in the town centre, for a night of free open air entertainment and fun, with cuddly animals and funfair rides for the kids, a mini-market selling novelties and food, and a stage featuring local artists.

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Beautiful Ulster, Co. Antrim, Fun Shots, Photo-Essay

Lisburn, Co.Antrim, – and a strange encounter…

So, there was me, taking a stroll through the beautiful city centre of Lisburn (there’s a joke – boarded up shops and empty buildings – the place looks decrepit, a shadow of its former self). I got up to Castle Street, where once stood the Co-Op supermarket, and the big NIE electricity showroom, and Frederick Thomas Prams and Nursery Goods, and I noticed that amid the dereliction, there were ridiculous balls of some sort strung across the street. I decided to make an image – this is it – mediocre enough, like Lisburn itself.

All that makes it interesting is what happened next. 

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Beautiful Ulster, Black & White, Co. Antrim, Photo-Essay

Crosskeys Inn

The Crosskeys Inn is a traditional thatched building in Co.Antrim, sited between Randalstown and Portglenone, north of Lough Neagh.

Photographed here with a Fujifilm X-T30 camera, F= 21mm, f/4 @ 1/1250th sec on ISO640. If the shutter speed seems a little fast for a static building – I agree! I’d just managed to capture a shot of a motorcycle and sidecar roaring by!

Photo-Essay, Photo-Technique, Training

TT Artisan Lightmeter

My Nikon FM2 film camera has no meter, for the battery connection is broken and I can’t find anyone willing to fix it. “It’s too old, – it’s not worth it…’ etc etc. But I bought this great camera back in 1987, and it’s been like an old friend. I can’t just throw it away. I’d tried using it with a Sekonic analogue meter attached, but the numbers are too small now, for me to see them!

But there may be a solution, the TT ARTISAN LIGHTMETER.

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Fun Shots, Photo-Essay, Photo-Technique

Join the Brownies!

Another in my occasional series featuring cameras in my rather eclectic collection. Here’s my Brownies! (For those of a more recent generation, – Brownies are NOT a crumbly dark confection!)

The earliest Brownies were made by Eastman Kodak in the first years of the 20th century, and production continued right up to the 1950s. My maternal grandfather, the late Bob Kirk owned one of these in the 1960s, and I can well remember family caravan holidays in Millisle, and lots of photos being captured with the ‘Box Brownie.’

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Beautiful Ulster, Belfast, Black & White, Photo-Essay, Travel

Queen’s University, Belfast.

Rarely is there anywhere to park a car in the vicinity of Queen’s University, – parking spaces are few and hotly contested, but on 27th December 2023, I was driving through the area on return from an appointment in South Belfast, when to my surprise, I found an empty space, right beside the Students’ Union. I quickly parked, and stepped out with the Fujifilm X-T30 fitted with an 18-135mm zoom lens.

The Queen’s University, Belfast.

Photographed with a Fujifilm X-T30, F=18mm, f/5.6 @1/125th sec on ISO250.

Because it was still student holidays, traffic around the university was light, and that helped quite a lot with the photography. I stood outside the Student’s Union to capture the main image, but it wasn’t long before some human interest occurred.

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Beautiful Ulster, Co. Antrim, Photo-Essay, Photo-Technique, Streetscapes, Travel

Feehogue Terrace, Randalstown

In September, 2023 I visited the Belfast Book Fair, held this year in Methodist College (Methody) at Stranmillis. There was little in interest this year, by way of books, (mostly Irish history etc), but there were a couple of dealers selling antique postcards, and I spent quite a time trawling through them – with no intention of buying, of course, (some of these antique postcards can be rather expensive), despite the enthusiastic sales techniques of one of the vendors, who mistook my prolonged browsing for a potential sale. I was looking for photographic inspiration! Actually, I was sorry I hadn’t taken a notebook and pen! 

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