Here you will find all of the images to date from my Year of Photos challenge. While the primary distribution of the photos is via email, I wanted to make them accessible to those that may have joined the list late and even those that have not joined it yet.
Click on any of the images below to open up that month’s collection of images. Once inside click on any of the individual images to start a full-screen slideshow of that month’s photos.
Enjoy!
Chris
October
Another one of the friendly harbor birds in Kinsale. I came across these guys while stopping in town to do some gift shoping and when I walked out to where I parked by the seawall they were playing in the afternoon sun. They look like they are full of grace and style, but as you can se here that isn't always the case. I think it looks like the gull that is already settled ins't too happy to be getting splashed by the clumsy landing of the other. Everyone is a critic I guess.
The second shot of a bumble bee because as I mentioned, there was a run of them in my photos in the summer of 2014. This guy is perched on the flower instead of floating, and the flowers are yellow, not blue, but the theme is the bee. Apparently, I am fascinated by pollinators as we have seen them before in this series, are seeing them now and will, I am sure, be seeing them again 🙂
Sometimes you don't have to wait very long for a set of similar circumstances to come along. Summer has lots of flowers in Colorado, native and otherwise, and where there are flowers there are bees. The image from today was taken in our front yard where my wife plants pots full of flowers that the bees just love. Not sure what the specific plant is or the species of bee but the contrast between the purple of the flowers and the yellow of the bee in (again) the morning light makes for a great combination.
In the themes of both yellow flowers and repeated occurrences in nature that I run across on a repeated basis. Today's shot is an echo of a shot I took five years prior and I find as I go through my backlog I see similar shots which I imagine has as much to do with what I find visually appealing as the repetition of patterns in nature. Regardless, its hard to pass up a beautiful yellow rose in the early morning sun when you are presented with it.
Being back in Colorado doesn't just mean bigger birds than in Ireland, but bigger flowers as well. To be honest, however, these are not native to the state, and with our much drier than almost anywhere climate it takes a lot of water to keep them going. This shot is in the same bed as has appeared previously (7-18-2018), but this is a year later. A lot of my photography loops back to the same places but different times, and I like being able to compare from one year to the next how things have changed. Its usually much more obvious with trees and such than flowers as the same one persists year over year, but all the sequences are fun to go back and review to see how time has moved along.
Returning from overseas to home is often a bit disorienting as things are so different. One of the things I noticed the most in Ireland is the relative lack of birds compared to other places I have been, including home (you may have seen there were no bird pictures in the Ireland series, it wasn't for lack of trying on my part). But one of the first days I was back a blue jay showed up in our front yard and started giving me grief, and I knew I was home. I don't remember blue jays being around when I was younger, but they are relatively common now. I got to know their 'unique' personalities quite well when I was in Oklahoma for school and had a nest of them outside my bedroom window. Somehow I still like them and was glad to see this one on a bright June morning.
One last photo from the Ireland trip and its another from the old church/graveyard. I wish I had paid more attention to the dates on the graves when I was there because I am very curious now and would never be able to find the place again. I am sure there were dates from the late 1700's and early 1800's on stones that were still standing, and as you can see, there were many that had fallen due to age. The second and third from the left seem to me to be the oldest and most weathered, I can only imagine how they date in comparison to those still standing. Ireland is a unique blend of the ancient and the modern. They are a country trying to move into the 21st century regarding business and technology, but their cultural roots and heritage are still at the heart of everything.
Today I deviate from the work on my photo backlog and instead send out one of my newer images. This one is in honor of my dear Aunt Helen who passed away this morning. She loved butterflies, a passion we shared, and I was so happy to have been able to capture this image last month and present it to her. She was truly loved and will be dearly missed.
Another in the mini-series of religious buildings today, this one fitting in somewhere between the beehive hut and the cathedral. As you drive across the countryside in Ireland, you see a lot of old stone buildings that have been abandoned and are now just walls without their thatched roof. Often there is a new building not far away, and the old is left to the elements. I saw this on many farmsteads and also on the site of a pub where the patio was actually in the walls of the old building, open to the world. In this instance, the old building was a country church with no replacement evident. The structure is surrounded by headstones (you can just see one on the outside at the bottom of the frame), and when that area got too crowded, they started burying folks inside the walls. I don't know how old the building is or how long it's been abandoned, but I am reasonably sure that on the closest stone I can read 1741 as a date of birth. I now wish I had made better note of where this was located as I would genuinely like to know more about its history. I am certain it is an interesting tale.
I wanted to provide a better shot of one of the drain spout gargoyle's I mentioned in yesterdays email. I don't know why these fascinated me so much, and I guess it's because I don't think about scary animal heads and churches going together. In this shot, you can also get a feel for the level of detail on the stonework even though the focus is on the head. You can also see the green of the moss on the stone, completing the scene.
Today's photo is in pretty stark contrast to yesterdays simple penitants hut, it is of the back side of the Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, in the city of Cork. This cathedral was built in 1870, or about 1000-1400 years after the beehive huts were in vogue. What a difference a millennium makes. I like this shot as it has a kind of bleak, gothic feel due to the rain and clouds and the grey of the stone of the building. This is one example of what I mentioned earlier, moss growing on the slate shingles and the walls of the building. Also, the street lamp is showing signs of life in one of the wettest environments around. They are hard to see in this shot as it is such a wide one, but there are dog-headed gargoyles around the various levels that do double duty as drain spouts. Just another item to add to the uniqueness of this structure.
One more shot from the outdoor museum, this one of a monk's cell from the early Christian era in Ireland. These huts were built on the Blasket Islands off the west coast of Ireland and were used by monk's in the more reclusive orders to have isolation for prayer and meditation. While not as grand in scale these were the precursors to the larger structures that were later reused as a set for the film The Last Jedi.
Today's photo is of a wedge grave that was in an outdoor museum of ancient Irish structures. It is a type of crypt that was common on the west coast of Ireland from 2000 BC until about 350 BC. The focus here is on the flowers (hey, it's me taking the photos after all) but you can see a bit of the grave that protrudes and get a little feel for it.
Today's photo is also of some rain-soaked sheep, but this time its a mother and a much younger lamb than the punk that was staring me down yesterday. I really thought the visual of the mother stoically standing in the rain while her young one nursed was quite touching. Throw in some of the famous Ireland green and the inclement weather, and this is one of the shots that fairly shout it was taken on the Emerald Isle.
Sheep are a big part of Ireland as so much of the locally made clothing involves wool. They are a bit different than the sheep you would find in the US, at least from my part of the country, and I can't help but think of Shaun the Sheep and all the other claymation sheep by the same studio when I see this little guy and the others in the flock. The little guy in this photo was the braver of a group of adolescents as he keeps peeping over the hill to see what I was and what I was doing. I am also pretty sure that he was drier than I was in a fog and rain that blanketed the mountains I was traveling through.
Last of the city seagulls now with this almost weirdly sharp photo. The background is slightly out of focus but the bird is tack sharp, and the contrast between them has caused a couple of folks that saw this one as I was getting it ready to ask if I had cropped the bird from another image and dropped it in here. In this case, and in all my photos, what you see is what I saw, no pixel manipulation happens beyond adjusting the contrast and if needed white balance. The air indeed was crystal clear and the sun just right to illuminate this one and make it seem almost three dimensional. The light is your friend, and the lack of it is the enemy as shown here.
Today's photo of Ireland shows a bit of the cross-cultural blend you get when you travel to multiple countries that were once a part of the British Empire. This sign is for an Indian food restaurant that is off an alley in Ballincollig, Ireland and I thought it incongruous enough to take a photo. I love the various signs for the rest of the businesses down this dead-end alley, especially the "Hairy Fairy" salon 🙂 One of my managers in the Cork office said that the Brittish gave our company (which had offices in the US, Canada, Ireland, and India), two things; a common language, and a hatred of the Brittish to bind us in solidarity. I will go wholeheartedly for the first one, but the second point was perhaps a tad extreme. I will say, however, as I traveled through India and talked to some of the kind folks that guided us through various palaces and temples I found that they also had very strong feelings about the British (or Britishers as one charming gent called them as he congratulated us as Americans for defeating General Cornwallis in 1781) so perhaps my Irish friend wasn't all wrong.
Do note the stone construction of this arch/fence is the same as the previous fence with the violet flowers (just not as dark as it actually not raining in this shot) and there is a lot of vegetation growing off of it as well. Wet.
While the cliff gulls are in the past but today and the next couple will be of gulls in the harbor at Kinsale which is a quaint fishing village in the south of County Cork, Ireland. This is an excellent example of the great late day light I was talking about. The sun behind the bird and the light coming off the water combine to provide a unique look with all natural lighting. Even though these are 'city birds' they have just as much personality as the gulls on the cliff.
Following up on the theme of Ireland as a rainforest I direct your attention to today's photo of a fiddlehead fern. This was also taken in the gardens at the Blarney Castle alongside the palm trees and the moss. I have always loved fiddleheads for both how they look and their very evocative name, and it was a pleasure to run across them in this unexpected place.
Until I traveled to the UK for the first time, I never really considered it to be someplace where I would see palm trees. The ones you see here are on the grounds of Blarney Castle, and they seem pretty darn happy there. I think the fact that I am as far north as Newfoundland and Ukraine, but there are palms here really informed me as to the massive impact the gulf stream has on the climate of Ireland and the other British Isles. This place is a rainforest, just not a tropical one.
Today is a simple landscape shot but I think its quite beautiful. A sunny, holiday weekend Saturday in Ireland spent on the grounds of Blarney Castle (which you can see poking up in the distance). Not much more to be said about this one, just some good memories.
As I came off the cliffs at the old head, the road drops pretty quickly, and before long you are at lea level with a beautiful flat beach with an entirely different type of bird. My best guess on these guys is that they are semipalmated sandpipers but with the lack of them holding still and over 50 varieties of sandpiper and related species known to frequent Ireland it is only that. This flock was running back and forth, towards the retreating waves and then away from the inbound ones, snatching what they could of what was left on the sand in between. The waves didn't bother them, but apparently, an American photographer did as they scattered as I approached, captured here in the last rays of a long Irish summer day.
As we get ready to leave the seagulls and cliffs behind I wanted to include this shot that was not what was initially intended, but which I feel came out very good anyway. I was set up to get a shot of a seagull flying right at me with the green hills in the background when BAM! the other one flew into the frame and startled my intended target. Just as you can't stage the intended shot (which is something that frustrates the hell out of many folks), the resultant shot is more than one in a million. Just another glimpse into the somewhat odd and whimsical behavior of the seagull.
I wanted to send along a photo that gave some context to the seagull shots of the last couple of days. This image was taken from approximately where I was taking the bird shots and is looking south along the old head. For scale the white dots you see on the outcroppings and above the waves are seagulls. I would say that I was at least 200 feet above the water where I was standing. There isn't a lot of resolution in this shot as I took it when the sun was almost down with a very high iso setting, but I thought it might be of some interest here. The portion where I was laying to take the photos was more like the large outcropping you can see in the water, straight down from the lip, as opposed to the more gentle slopes further away. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have been lying on the edge as its evident that the cliffs have formed from pieces falling off but at the time it seemed like a good idea 🙂
As you can probably guess I didn't decide this shot was good by looking at the gull's eye :). This shot was taken as they were practically buzzing me on my perch at the edge of the drop. I don't' think it was personal or that they even knew or cared I was there, it just happened to be where the wind took them. I could hear them coming as the wind was causing nose across their feathers and they often called out, giving me just enough time to get ready to take the pic. Not gallery material but it makes me smile.
More seagulls today off the cliffs of the old head. This one is a good example of a shot that I know I got, and it is good while still in the field. When I check the shot on my camera if I can see the pupil of the eye and it is in focus then I am pretty sure it will be good. This one was really sharp, and as I had hoped, it looked good when I got it on the big screen at home.
My time on the cliff this day was towards the evening, and the seagulls were soaring on the updrafts and enjoying the beautiful evening. I didn't see a lot of fishing, but there was lots of cruising and gliding. Interesting as there were lots of calories being expended for no apparent reason. That is why I like seagulls; they are one bird that I am reasonably confident that they are playing, and that makes them different than almost any other bird that I have tracked.
Today starts a series of photos from one of my all-time favorite bird sessions. They are all taken from the top of a sea cliff on the far south of Ireland, the Old Head at Kinsale. I wanted to get to the water and find some of my water birds and was lucky enough to stumble across this stunning location. The cliffs are very high, the best reference I can find says 'hundreds of feet', and the seagulls in particular just love them. They use the steep, jagged cliff walls for nesting sites and take advantage of the updrafts to soar and dive and play. The one in this shot is returning to the nest from a trip down to the water and as you can see (up is up in the photo) is really having to strain to get there. You can see the black rock of the cliffs behind and note the little white and yellow flowers growing in the grass on a part of the cliff that is slightly less than straight up. Even the steepest part have moss on them keeping with the theme of the emerald isle. It was a truly spectacular location and I hope to be able to give you some sense of it over the next few days.
While the flowers in Ireland were tiny, the trees indeed were not. While not on the order of the redwoods I posted earlier, these oaks lining a path around a park in Ballincollig certainly make you feel a bit small and young. The mass along the left is one of the ubiquitous stone walls of Ireland, just covered in growing things. The park this scene is in was formerly the grounds for a large gunpowder mill that was built in the 1700's and was active until just after WWII and from the age and size of the trees they may have been there for much of that time. The river Lee passes not far past the wall, and that probably has a lot to do with the even more extreme green in this photo such as the moss covering the fourth tree in the line and perhaps the size of the trees. Any faeries in this park should hang by the flowers.
Ireland indeed is the emerald isle with everything that isn't paved (and some things that are) green as they can be. That said, there are lots of other growing things around in and amongst the green such as the beautiful flowers in today's photo. They are quite small, about the size of a penny, and just as bright white as if they had been bleached. I am not quite sure why but all the flowers I saw while in Ireland were similarly very small. They may have bigger native species, but if they do, they eluded me. Perhaps its because the pollinators are little as well, or maybe vice versa? Either that or they are appropriately sized for the leprechauns and other mystic inhabitants. No one wants to feel too short.
As you have probably picked up, I tend to take photos of (mostly) wildlife and nature with a few people/building shots thrown in for variety. What I rarely do is still life type photos of everyday objects, but in today's shot, I made an exception. I took this one at a great little pizza joint in Cork after a long afternoon/evenings drive and photo shot. I ended up here as it was the only place in the vicinity of my hotel that was still open (it being about 930 PM and Cork being at heart a small town) and I am glad I found it as it was super quirky. Every time I see this photo or think about my meals there, I can still taste the middle east kabob spices that these gent's used for 'Neopolitan' pizza. It was a warm and inviting place with a very middle east feel with the music and the sounds and the voices from the kitchen. A bit of Marrakesh in Ireland.
Today's shot is of some street art I ran across in the back streets of Cork. It is stunning in color and odd in content. The book says 'The Peoples Republic of Cork" which makes me smile as we call Boulder in Colorado the Peoples Republic of Boulder. Not sure of the political dynamics but interesting to see such detailed artwork on an obviously temporary wall that is being damaged by the work around it.