Blues

Donegal, Ireland

I stopped to compliment this man on how beautiful his house and garden looked and we chatted for a minute, after which he graciously permitted me to photograph him in front of his house.

Leaving Galway

We spent the first two weeks of August, traveling around Ireland. We started in Galway and proceeded more or less counter-clockwise, including time in Ulster, then Donegal, before traversing the island to Dublin and our flight home. I shot over 1000 frames, so expect to see lots of verdant landscapes, castles and other postcard-genre, tourist shots over the coming days and weeks.

The tour was designed for photographers and their non-photographer partners and I was expecting to travel around in a small coach. In fact we were in one of those gigantic modern buses. The first couple of days in Galway town were quite rainy but then we got on the bus and left. Here are a few snaps through the window of the bus before we made our first stop.

Ambleside

Our first stop was Ambleside. After a brief nap following our almost 30-hour odyssey, we walked up to the Stock Ghyll Force, a small waterfall, through Stock Ghyll Park, taking a first few pictures along the way. Click any image to see them each full-size.

3 Generations

My wife has been taking me down the shore to Sea Isle City for 25 years now. When I was first going down there most of the homes were a bit older, 2-story structures up a couple of steps to a front porch. There were still a bunch of the previous generation, single-story houses around. One of the charms of the town wass it’s faintly blue-collar, Catholic feel, so different from the patrician Hamptons of Long Island. Then, some years ago, the old places all started getting pulled down and replaced with 3-story-double houses with no living quarters on the ground level, just garages and boilers and storage. And since then, this third generation has started sprouting a new cohort of 4-story variants. And while the town has clearly been getting wealthier, it has lost some of its older charm (OTOH, it is finally getting a tad more diverse and colorful, which is a nice change). This year I thought I would document some of the older 1 and 2-story homes before they all disappear.

click any image to see them all enlarged.

Backyards

Sea Isle City, New Jersey
Sea Isle City, New Jersey

I was shooting with a long lens (Fuji 55 – 200mm, 300mm 35 equiv, for those who are interested) one of the side effects of which is the compression of distance, making the houses look all pressed upon one another.