Springtime photo Gallery ….
Springtime 2017 Colour returns to the Woodlands Kilkenny Nigel Borrington 
Early Spring in Ireland Nature Photography Nigel Borrington 
Hoverfly feeding Wildlife photogrpahy Nigel Borrington 
Spring Rabbit
Black and white Landscape
Nikon coolpix A
Black and white image from this morning walk, the weather here is settling down a bit, following a very stormy week.
I am studying and reading a lot at the moment about black and white photography and made it the main subject of this morning photo walk about 🙂
Poem for the Weekend : Just Over The Mountain by Michael Ruger
Just Over The Mountain
© Michael Ruger
Just Over The Mountain
Irish landscape Photography
Nigel Borrington
As a tangerine sky lights up countless trees
sunrise has come to bless my way
Comes another day away from my yesterdays
Yes they wait just over this mountain
Down a steep ragged hill
across a rock gurgling streams
into the valley low
I will never go back
This mountain and me are one
It know I mean it no harm
It allows me to live here in peace
Today is fresh wild strawberry day
Compliments of this mountain meadow
I will take only what I need
for there are so many creatures that have need of them.
The Blue Jay screams you go
as Crows on the way give a call
I will walk back to the spring down below
and just sit there and take in THE ALL
Its is another grand day on the mountain
Classic lens review : Tamron Adaptall-2 135mm f2.5
Tamron Adaptall-2 135mm F/2.5 Model 03B:
Lens Review, Nigel Borrington
Classic lens review : Tamron Adaptall-2 135mm f2.5
I have a few classic Nikon and Tamron lenses in my kit of photography equipment as I find that there is something truly enjoyable about using an older manual focus lens.
One of the lenses I love using the most is my Tamron Adaptall-2 135mm f2.5 lens, it dates from the late 1980’s through to the mid 1990’s, as it was in production during this period. On both an FX and DX camera this lens offers a great field of view in your images. It is also a very fast lens at f2.5 however as with many fast lenses when wind open they are not at their sharpest, yet by using a still very fast F2.8 this lens produces very acceptable images.
Sharpness
These images are an attempt to show the sharpness that can be obtained, these images are taken outside and handheld …..
F2.5 to F8
F2.5
F5.6
These images are just a very quick sample of this lens at different apertures, outside in the real world and without the use of a tripod. I feel that this is a very good way of showing just how usable this lens is in a real world environment and on a day to day basis.
Depth of field
One of the great features of a lens with this focus length (135mm) with a fast aperture is that you can isolate subjects that are at some distance from the camera, this is a powerful tool when used in your images and can help to create some interesting effects.
Here I post some very basic examples of using a different depth of field for the same subject.
F2.5
F8
F2.5
F5.6
F8
F2.5
Build Quality and Verdict
I feel that another great feature of this lens is its build quality, the copy I have is many years old yet still feels like new, its a great lens to use and a pleasure to work with. The focus and aperture rings are both wonderful to operate. Manual focus lenses from this era are built to last, constructed using all metal and built to operate with precision and smoothness. The colour and contrast produced are also among the best I have seen, even when put against my modern Nikon lenses.
All in all this is a lovely lens to use. Its very important to me that I like the equipment I use and this great little lens is right up there with my most loved in this respect.
If you can find one I would highly recommend this lens to anyone!, however as for my copy its not for sale! as I look forward to using it for many more years to come 🙂
Lens Gallery
Tamron SP 500mm f8 Reflex lens, a review of Mirror lenses
Tarmon SP 500mm F8 Mirror Lens, Real world review
When you make a start in the world of Photography, Sooner or later you will want to own a dedicated Long Telephoto lens. These lenses offer the ability to get some great images in the world of (Landscape, Wildlife, Portrait and Sports) Photography.
Fixed focus (None Zoom) Telephoto lenses come in many focus lengths, but the most usable are 200mm to 600mm, depending on how much magnification of distant subjects and objects you need. The cost of these lenses my surprise many starting photography and to be honest even many long term photographers, they can start in price range from around €800 and end up way into the many €1000’s.
There is however an alternative option with this type of lens, this being to look at what are called Reflex or Mirror Lenses. These kind of lenses replace some of the glass elements within their construction with two Mirrors both used to fold the light entering the front glass element in much the same way as a reflex telescope does.
i.e. NASA uses this method in the Hubble space telescope that has produced some amazing ground braking images of the cosmos.
Third party and OEM Camera manufactures started making these lenses in the 1970’s and continued through to the 1990’s, today mostly only third party lenses are available. The quality of these Early OEM/Third party – mirror lenses was very high, even second hand some of these lenses can set you back some €300 to €800 on ebay, even today in 2017.
Nikkor Reflex Lenses at 500mm, 1000mm and 2000mm
I purchased a Reflex lens made by Tamron (500mm SP F8) way back in 1988 and in this post I just wanted to share my thoughts on some of its upsides and some of its downsides.
To be honest, I have not used this lens very much, for two main reasons.
Firstly : at 500mm and with an lens aperture of F8 it needs to be Tripod or at the very least mono pod mounted in order to create very sharp images. This maybe a little unfair as this is true for most long lenses but Nikon VR lenses are so good at helping go handheld!
Secondly : these lenses have one very different down side to that of refactor (Glass only) lenses, they produce a doughnut ring effect on bright out of focus objects or even just areas in the image that have a bright, lighting than the darker areas around them. I have included some examples at the bottom of the posts images below.
With the first point above, today in 2017 with the high ISO abilities of SLR cameras such as the Nikon D7200 and D750, this issue has been made redundant to a great extent! When this Tamron lens was produced, 35mm film could only produce clean images at a rating of no more than ISO 400.
Today the Nikon D7200 can work very well between ISO 3200 and 6400 with very little help from good noise cleaning software in post processing, this up-rates the usable shutter speeds for hand held work for even a lens of 500mm at f8, letting you work handheld more than ever before !
Remembering that even on a DX sensor slr, you need for some 750mm (X 1.5 DX factor!) to keep a shutter speed of 1/800th to 1/1000th to create fully stable images, If you have a steady hand. Even on a cloudy day ISO 1600 gives a shutter speed of around 1/1600th and ISO 1600 on a D7200 is little to worry about! noise wise. It is for this reason that I am starting thinking of trying using this lens again.
For the rest of this post and review of the lens, I will let the following images do the talking, with a small amount of comments made in each of the related image types.
Tarmon SP 500mm F8 Mirror Lens – sharpness and quality
To test for the image sharpness and quality I placed the camera on a tripod, I don’t use a remote release, so there could be some small effects but all in all these are sharp images.
You can see from the below image that this lens can produce some very sharp images under the correct conditions, its just as good as some much more expensive glass only lenses from Nikon.
I have no worries here and would be very happy in trusting this lens to produce sharp images from corner to corner of the frame.
Above : Nikon D7200 with Tamron SP 500mm Mirror lens, Tripod Mounted
As image sharpness has been tested above, what about color fringing and other detects, color fringing is visible in an image at bright edges in the frame, so I used the wires and other equipment on the telegraph post in this image, I see no fringing Green, blue or otherwise in this image.
So again I would trust this lens to produce sharp and clean images that need little or no post processing to clean them up later.
Using the lens – in the Landscape
The following images speak for themselves, just general landscapes and animal images from medium focus distance subject to long distance landscapes, the town and wind farm in the last landscape is some 8km away from the location of taking the image, crazy!. Again its sharp enough taking into account the haze of the atmosphere, no color fringing problems in the wind turbines.
With the main set of images here, I am less happy with the out of focus effects as the bokeh of this lens is not great!, anything bright and a little out of focus (i.e. The grass!) takes on a distracted look, feeling tangled and distracting with the image smoothness, Most noticeable in the two images of the sheep sitting down.
Those Doughnuts !! OMG!
As you can see from the photo of this lens sitting in my camera bag at the top of the post, a mirror lens is constructed very much like a reflecting telescope, like this diagram :
Mirror lens
Physical construction
You can see that the center of the front glass element is used to hold the housing for the smaller secondary mirror in the construction, that folds the image light back down the lens and into the camera.
This system works amazingly well but for one problem!
For in-focus areas of an image the central lens obstruction is never visible, however for brighter areas of an image that are out of focus this central obstruction created by the secondary mirror housing, created a bright doughnut effect.
In the below images this is very clear!
The light gaps in the trees below turn into bright cycles, the rain on the table in the background focus also does the same.
In some images you can work around this effect and even use it as an interesting advantage?, you just have to get to know when this kind of lens is and is not usable !!!
For the most when you have a subject that has the potential to create this circle effect ! it just distracting and not likeable. This is the point at which the little price you paid to get a budget Telephoto lens €300 not €2000 starts to gets you back !!!
Getting Arty , MayBe?
Like any camera lens, Mirror lenses have their down sides (Slow, bright Cirles, Manual focus, etc …), you just have to get to know these features and ether use them to your advantage or don’t !!!
Some people love the bright rings and make good use of them 🙂 , one use could be nighttime street photography ?
So then ?
So if your looking for a cheep way to get a telephoto lens into your camera bag, a Mirror lens is well worth looking at in my own opinion. Don’t expect to work quickly with them or be lazy in your approach, however – but then most telephoto lenses need hard work to get good images, with a mirror lens you just have to add a little on top!
In the end, just like with all of your image making, you get out what you put in !!!!
Will I take this lens out more than I have? Maybe ! most likely not !! Watch this space ?
If I was starting again with few lenses and wanted a low budget long lens, would I get a Mirror lens , Hell YES !!! , With Great high ISO SLR’s even more so !!!
Sometimes the harder you have to work to get good images , the more you learn !!!!
Also see : Mirror Lenses – how good? Tamron 500/8 SP vs Canon 500/4.5L, a older review, ISO has moved a long way since this article but its a great comparison test (€300 Tamron v €2000+ Canon).
County Kilkenny Landscape photography in Black and white, Kyle, coolagh, Kilkenny
Black and white Landscapes
Kyle, county Kilkenny June 2017
Nigel Borrington
They say that some animals see the world in black and white , I would love to be able to switch this ability on and off when out and about with my Nikon, you can see the results of taking a shot in black and white very quickly on the back of the camera but having the ability to view the world in-front of you in monochrome would be a perfect gift for many photographers, even more so if you love the light that can be captured using only the shades from white to black.
This image was taken a while back, one early spring morning while out for a walk, up a lane that passed through a local community of special needs people near Callan, county Kilkenny. It was a foggy morning but by the time of this shot a lot of the mist had lifted. the atmosphere was wonderful.
The World from an Insects point of view .
The World from and insects point of view
To be an Insect ?
Very often when I am out in our local woodlands with a Macro lens, I like to get in close and find all kinds of Insects to photograph. Its like a completely different universe down at this level, I find that I also end-up studying what these little creatures are doing in-order to keep existing day to day.
I often wonder how they see the same world that we share with them, what perspective they have on life without our daily activities and life styles.
Life without News and Media communication, life without TV or Radio and the latest phone, Life without Cars or Vans and Motorways – No Banks or need for Money with Tax to pay.
I wonder if we could even for one moment, a single day, begin to understand just how much of life in our world exists without all the things that we surround ourselves with, thinking that we actually need then in order to exist?
I also wonder when capturing nature with a camera, if its possible at all to capture these questions, to get across the true existence of a bee or a hover-fly, not only showing the outwards wonder of these insects but capturing the life that they are actually living ?
The cycle of life – Spring time, Hoverflys feeding and new garden flowers.
Hoverfly feeding
Wildlife photogrpahy
Nigel Borrington
Last week we took sometime to visit my Family in a holiday home in South Wales, it was a great week together and very special as we have a new baby in the family 🙂
Before we left for Wales, spring was just staring but on our return it was in full flow with so much new life all around, the cycle of life continues in so many different ways 🙂
Like the waves , Poem by Cyrille Octaviano
Like the waves
Cyrille Octaviano
clashing against one another
Struggling to keep up,
but aware of the power
Rising up,
streaming drown
rushing and hurdling
coming ashore
As the sun radiates
illuminating the water,
I can see crystal clear
there is hope.
Water – a life giving element
Water, giver of life
Water, is a great necessity, without it nothing can live. Only earth and water can bring forth a living soul. Such is the greatness of water that spiritual regeneration cannot be done without it.
Thales of Miletus concluded that water was the beginning of all things and the first of all elements and most potent because of its mastery over the rest. Pliny said “Water swallow up the earth, extinguishes the flame, ascends on high, and by stretching forth as clouds challenges the heavens for their own, and the same falling down, becomes the cause of all things that grow in the earth.
Water is a cleansing, healing, psychic, and loving element. It is the feeling of friendship and love that pours over us when we are with our family, friends and loved ones. When we swim it is water that supports us, when we are thirsty, it is water the quenches our thirst, another manifestation of this element is the rainstorms that drench us, or the dew formed on plants after the sun has set.
The power of the energy of Water, can be felt by tasting pure spring water, moving you hand through a stream, lake, pool, or bowl full of water. You can feel its cool liquidity; it’s soft and loving touch, this motion and fluidity is the quality of Air within Water. This Water energy is also contained within ourselves, our bodies being mostly composed of Water.
As well as being vital for life, within the energy of this element is contained the essence of love. Love is the underlying reason for all magic. Water is love.
Water is a feminine element, it also the element of emotion and subconscious, of purification, intuition, mysteries of the self, compassion and family. It is psychic ability; water can be used as a means of scrying or as an object for meditation. Water is important in spells and rituals of friendship, marriage, happiness, fertility, healing, pleasure, psychic abilities and spells involving mirrors.
The Element Water and its Natural Qualities
The Element of Water is a heavy, passive element and is contrary to Fire. It is associated with the qualities of darkness, thickness and motion.
The River Of Life, A poem By Thomas Campbell
River of life, River Suir
Clonmel , Ireland
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
The River Of Life
Poem by Thomas Campbell
The more we live, more brief appear
Our life’s succeeding stages;
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.
The gladsome current of our youth,
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders.
But as the careworn cheek grows wan,
And sorrow’s shafts fly thicker,
Ye stars, that measure life to man,
Why seem your courses quicker?
When joys have lost their bloom and breath,
And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of Death
Feel we its tide more rapid?
It may be strange—yet who would change
Time’s course to slower speeding,
When one by one our friends have gone,
And left our bosoms bleeding?
Heaven gives our years of fading strength
Indemnifying fleetness;
And those of youth, a seeming length,
Proportioned to their sweetness.
The River Of Life
Thomas Campbell
When Dorothea Lange Visited Ireland in 1954
![Dorothea Lange A Chat at the O’Halloran Farm [Ireland]](https://nigelborrington.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/dorothea-lange-a-chat-at-the-o_halloran-farm.jpeg)
Dorothea Lange A Chat at the O’Halloran Farm [Ireland]
It is amazing the range of her photography work and telling just how brave and out there she was to capture the vast majority of her subjects. During the great depression in the USA she captured the massive Migrant of farmers from east to west (Dorothea Lange : Migrant Farm Families ).
I have studied much of her great depression images and I am in love and have total admiration with them as a body of work, a hugely important historic study !!!!
One body of Dorothea’s work that I have until recently not looked at, is here images of 1950’s Ireland, I have shared a couple here, living in Ireland for this last ten years or so I have visited and photographed many of the locations she visited – so its wonderful to see these images and amazing to compare just how much life and these places has changed.
I am only starting to collect some books and look at the images from her 1954 Irish visit, however as you cam see the b
lack and white film images she took at just amazing !!!!
![Dorothea Lange Michael Kenneally on His 30 Acres [Ireland]](https://nigelborrington.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/dorothea-lange-ireland.jpeg)
Dorothea Lange Michael Kenneally on His 30 Acres [Ireland]
A Thursdays evening walk at the bay …..
Thursday evening Landscapes
Irish Landscapes : Nigel Borrington
Just a quick image share today 🙂
It is hard to believe that after all the long winter months with their dark evenings, at last we are here in the early days of the summer 2015.
Its has been a perfect start to the summer here in Ireland with long warm days right from the beginning of the Easter Holidays.
I cannot wait for the long warm evenings, with long walks until the sunsets ……….
Summer evenings Gallery
MIR-1 37mm f/2.8 lens , from 1954 to 2015 – Using old lens
Mir 1b 37mm f2.8 m42 lens
Nigel Borrington
Its a while since I posted anything about photography equipment, even though I do keep one eye on making sure I have what I feel to be very good cameras and lenses (Mainly Nikons) , I don’t feel that equipment is what photography is really all about. To me photography is about capturing the world around me and so long As I feel my camera can still do this I am very happy.
Old lenses
At the Same time some of the lenses I have, have been with me for many years and I have used then with many subjects and at many locations with both film and digital cameras.
My MIR 37mm f2.8 lens, I have had since my very first SLR camera back in the 1980’s and I still have complete confidence in it 🙂 even using a Pentax K3 24 megapixel SLR.
Why Pentax ? , The lens is an M42 lens which means that it connects to a camera body using an adapter and the best camera bodies on the Market for using these lenses are Pentax SLR bodies as they only need a metal lens mount adaptor that allows the lens to function without any changes in focus distance, basically all the lenses setting and scales work as they were originally intended to.
There are many things I love about using this lens. the focusing is manual as is the setting of the lens apertures but however the dials used for both these settings are just perfect in operation, no modern plastic jumpy manual focus rings here- just smooth and perfectly controlled movements. One thing also great about this lens is the fact that there are no click stops for the aperture blades , there are marking that show ” f 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8. 11 and 16″ but you can set the blades to any setting in between, this is a huge help for video !!
Another great thing for Video is that this lens is 100% silent , simply no noise feeds back through the camera body !!
The back of the lens shows depth of field and focus distant marks, its not a macro lens as its closest distance is only .7 meters so Landscapes only here !
Some History
The production of this lens originally started all the way back in 1954. It was manufactured in USSR (along with my favourite Helios 44-2) and was mainly made in 2 mounts, M39 and more popular M42 (although both are adaptable to modern cameras). The design of the lens was based on Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 35mm f/2.8 and unlike Helios 44-2 was not a complete clone, but using same optical formal as Flektogon 35mm f/2.8, which is definitely a good sign considering how much more affordable they are than just about any Zeiss glass.
In 1958 Mir-1 received a prestigious Grand-Prix Award during the Brussels World Fair. Russians were probably so proud of the award that every Mir-1 lens produced since the 1958 World Fair, sports the “Grand Prix Brussels 1958” inscription on the side of the lens, so don’t mistake these lenses for some sort of special/limited edition.
Lens Flare
Another great asset of this lens is the lens flare it can produce , this link shows some lovely deep spherical Studio flare results 🙂
.Compared to other Classic M42 lenses and modern lenses
.MIR 37mm f2.8 Gallery
The following are some local Kilkenny landscape images that I feel show just how good this lens still is at capturing some great sharp and contrasty black and white images , even with 24 megapixels to expose any defects!
Monday Poems : Donkey of Brown
Monday Poems : Donkey in Brown
Photography : Nigel Borrington
Well What a weekend we had here in Ireland SUN on SUN , just perfect 🙂 🙂
Its hard to believe its Monday already, my post and included Poem this Morning is just a reminder that while your getting your week going , don’t forget to take the odd moment to slow down and take a look at the world around you, it’s Spring-time so take just a few moments and check out what’s really happening in the world – your meeting / phone call or email can wait for a while 🙂 🙂
Donkey of brown
By : Patricia Higgins
Please let me know
Why is it that you go so slow?
He turned round gently and to me said
I have some sense in my little brown head.
.
By hurrying so as you go by
You miss the beauty in earth and sky.
So I took his advice and looked around,
And I saw diamonds in dew drops on the ground.
Daises that dance in the sun’s golden ray,
Things I missed as I hurried each day.
Gold in the buttercups, clouds in the blue,
What the donkey had said was perfectly true.
Saturday Morning on the Mountain : Slievenamon . Co, Tipperary
The Mountain of Slievenamon,
County Tipperary
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
Its the weekend, so its a great time to get outside, Relax, walk or just sit and take in the landscape around you 🙂
From yesterday the Spring Equinox, the days are getting longer all the way until the 21st of June, the long evening will soon be here 🙂 🙂
How do people see Photography, Commercial or Creative?
Commercial or Creative Photography ?
How do people see Photography and creativity?
During my time here, in the WordPress blogging community the one thing I have loved the most is to see images and posts from around the planet. It is an amazing thing, how quickly you can take this for granted but this is a very recent ability!!
Before the internet with its blogs, you had to visit a book shop and look for international photography publications in order to to see images from other places around the world. These images however as a standard were highly processed and you only got to see a hand full of photographers images.
Personally I have been taking photographs for most of my life and I feel I have a reasonably good idea how this medium can be used, yet its only in recent times that I have attempted to earn some money from images, working with weddings, commercial agencies with landscape images for commercial purposes. I think the oddest job I have been asked to do is to be working in the castle at Enniscorthy, taking pictures of some 7000 historic Irish items from photographs to physical items that go back many years.
As an outsider, attempting to make a living in a small Irish town has not been the most simple of tasks, I have ever taken on in my life, I could tell a story or two for sure ( Things said and done!! ) but I move on very quickly – simple as that !!! 🙂
I think that the factors I have found to be the most limiting are in the way that local people see the subject of photography itself , photography as a medium locally here is mainly viewed as being for Weddings or for Family pictures , yet I know this not to be the case in many other parts of the world. To myself photography is a socially creative medium, one that can be used for much more than (Babies and Weddings,or is it Weddings and Babies ?) and even more so in current times with digital photography offering so many more options.
Digital photography at the same-time however has created some new problems and it does not relate to the problems that some long standing professional photographers have, in that they would love to be back in the days when they were viewed as something special, with skills that actually anyone could do but just did not want to – Sorry old pro’s but maybe its time to face facts Hay !! , anyone could do what you did and since they all went out and purchased a digital camera they have proved it , filling the world around them with wonderful images !!!
To me the problems that digital photography has created is with the drive for pure image perfection, this is the world of the photography purists who would spend a lifetime trying to achieve the unobtainable so that they can die happy ?
It is not that you should not care how good your image is , its that its not the main factor in taking images at all !!!
Personally I feel that photography as a medium is as artistic as any other art form, to make it artistic however you have to let go of pixel peeking just to check how much detail you have, along with as many areas as you can think of that drive for perfection. Where digital cameras truly come to life is in the hand of a creative mind not a perfectionists one , after all some of the best and most creative photographs in history were taken using cameras from the 1900’s that few today would even dream of using , yet the images they created still standup today!!
Irish Landscape Photography , the Killarney National Park – an image Gallery
Killarney National Park
Irish Landscape Photography
Nigel Borrington
The National park Killarney , county Kerry, is one of Ireland treasures as far as landscape photography is concerned.
The basic details of the park are as follows :
“Killarney National Park (Irish: Páirc Náisiúnta Chill Airne) is located beside the town of Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland. It was the first national park established in Ireland, created when Muckross Estate was donated to the Irish state in 1932. The park has since been substantially expanded and encompasses over 102.89 km2 (25,425 acres) of diverse ecology, including the Lakes of Killarney, oak and yew woodlands of international importance and mountain peaks. It has Ireland’s only native herd of red deer and the most extensive covering of native forest remaining in Ireland. The park is of high ecological value because of the quality, diversity, and extensiveness of many of its habitats and the wide variety of species that they accommodate, some of which are rare. The park was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1981.
The park forms part of a Special Area of Conservation.
The National Parks and Wildlife Service is responsible for the management and administration of the park.Nature conservation is the main objective of the park, and ecosystems in their natural state are highly valued. The park is also known for its beautiful scenery. Recreation and tourism amenities are also provided for.”
I have visited many times here over the last few years and hope to return for many more landscape images in the coming months.
On my last visit I did a full image study of Muckross Abbey – of which there is one image in the Gallery below. I will upload a full post next week on this fantastic place 🙂
Killarney National Park – Landscape image Gallery
Using Classic Lenses, Yashica DX 35mm f2.8
Yashica 35mm m42
Using classic lenses
Nigel Borrigton
Yashica DX 35mm f2.8, M42 Lens
Over the years I have collected a few classic camera lenses, the Yashica f35mm f2.8 m42 lens has to be one of my most valued and liked.
Back in the 1960’s this lens would have cost a good amount of cash as it was at the top of Yashica’s Slr lens range, the main reason for this being that it had the then New DX coating and a 35mm focus length was becoming very valued for 35mm film camera.
I use this lens a lot, not all the time but its always at hand if I need it, I think you can see from the images below why.
If I use it on a dx sensor camera it provides for a 50mm focus length, a length that I like a lot for framing landscapes. As for the famed DX coating, well I think that you can see form the images below that it still works very well. The colors and the contrast in these images ( taken last week ), are just great. The images taken facing right at the sun show just how little flair this lens produces.
Gallery
Planning and starting 2015. a Picture board.
Picture Board for 2015
Well I have been a little quite on my blog during the holidays and into the new year, I hope you all had a great holiday period 🙂
To start 2015 here, I just wanted to say a huge thank-you to anyone who has been visiting this blog since I started it about two years ago. Thank you for your many likes and great comments I have enjoyed sharing my images and the places I visited and also enjoyed reading and visiting so many other blogs from around the world 🙂 🙂
Starting a new year is always a challenge, we are all meant to reinvent the wheel and take on life in a new way – aren’t we !!
Maybe however the best plan is to just look at what you have been doing with your life and just build on these areas, I sat down on Monday morning and put a little picture board together of the things I want to build on during the year ahead, these areas are included in the images there.
I am going to start to look at how I can include some new areas in posts here, it could be that I start some new blogs in word-press and then just place links here if the posts are not relating to photography etc ….. ?
Almost all my posts to date have been mainly about the places here in Ireland that I have visited along with some poetry and art that I wanted to share, this year I am going to share the things I am learning or doing a little bit more !
Violin and Music Plans
For the last few years I have been learning and planing the Violin and I want to share a little more about these experiences and the type of music I love playing the most.
I am not an advanced or a professional player but love to play and learn, I feel that music like many things is not about being the finished item but about journeying your way through a learning process and having some great fun along the way !!!
Computer development skills and plans
For a large part of my life I worked in the I.T. industry, starting back in the 1980’s on IBM main frame systems, mainly programming in Cobol/rpg and C++ during my time. I want to start to share a little about some plans I have to get back and then keep in touch with these skills.
This will most likely be a new Blog !!!
I also would like to start to share how I see the current computer industry, when I started training in ( I.T. ) it was not easy to get the skills you needed however it was much easier however to see how you could apply yourself to these skills. Today with the internet and you-tube etc … its must easier to put skills together but less easy to see how these skills can be used, mainly due to the all controlling Microsoft !!!
Over the last three years or so however, there is a growing change in the area of small scale computing and its nothing to do with tablets or phones , it’s in small computers such as the credit card computers or Development boards, systems like the Raspberry Pi here above – have sold well over a million units in a very short time and have been followed by many other single board PC’s like the cubie-truck.
These systems have reset the computer industry back to a time when learning about computer technology was not about Microsoft windows and it many ( problems, virus, its costs, and its latest versions ) but about being able to learn fully and openly what a computer can do and at the cost of the hardware only, these computers use Linux OS – as their operating systems and as such follow almost the entire growing world of none Microsoft based devices such as (Apples OS-x, Android phones, Bare-metal devices(using machine coded applications), Linux based desktop and laptop systems along with internet servers and cloud servers).
I want to share something about this area of modern computing, from a very basic level to a level that shows just how the two systems in the images here the (Raspberry pi and Cubie-truck – boards) can be used both independently and along side a windows based computer, many of the current engineering and science fairs show projects using just these kind of devices !
Photography Plans
I will still be posting lots of images and articles on locations here in Ireland!
One thing I want to do very much is to capture my local landscape as we move from the winter months into spring !
A morning walk in December.
December in Ballykeefe, County Kilkenny
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
So far the early mornings this week, the first week of December 2014 have been perfect , bright clear blue sky’s, an overnight frost that has melted away by 9am leaving the fields and woodland paths very wet and damp.
One walk with molly I love doing on mornings like this is in Ballykeefe woods county Kilkenny, this is a circular walk around the nature reserve that slowly claiming to a viewing point at the top of the hill, the view here is just wonderful. There is a bench to sit on after the walk and the landscape views below are of all the farms between the these woods and the mountain of Slievenamon just across the county border from county Kilkenny and into county Tipperary.
The images below are from this walk and the last image shows the landscape views from the wooden bench at the top of the hill
Views from the Old Bridge , Landscape Gallery
Views from the old Bridge
GlenPatrick, County Waterford.
Irish Landscapes : Nigel Borrington
One of the walks I always love doing with Molly our Golden retriever is through the woods at Glenpatrick, County Waterford and up into the mountains above. There are some great old mountain paths here that wind their way through the Comeragh Mountains and the landscape views are just wonderful.
One place I love to stop and rest and let Molly swim for a while is at an old bridge, the images posted here are takes from this bridge, its a great spot on a sunny morning but wild on a stormy winters day.
Images from the Bridge : Gallery
A Faithful Old Barn, a Poem By : Laura Lynch
The Barn, Bordeaux, France
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
A Faithful Old Barn
By : Laura Lynch
Apr 28, 2012
Erect and secure, yet weathered and worn
Faithfully it stood surviving the storms.
Cracking and peeling … its colors are muted
Stubbornly standing yet obviously wounded.
Absorbing abuse for those in her shelter
Unobtrusively stands against all ghostly specter.
Nigel Borrington 
Kells priory, county Kilkenny, Art work and Photography.
Kells Priory
County Kilkenny
Pencil on Paper
Nigel Borrington
One of the location that I love to take both my camera and sketch book is Kells Priory, county Kilkenny. Its an amazing location to capture in many forms and I am very lucky to live only a few miles away. I have posted here on my blog about it many time, you can used the search box to find these post if you wish.
The above is a Pencil on Paper drawing I worked on from about two weeks ago and below is a photo taken earlier in the summer when there was many more visitors around the site.
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October 9, 2017 | Categories: Art and craft work, Comment, drawings, History, irish history, kilkenny photography, Landscape, pencil on paper, Sketch book work, Travel Locations | Tags: art work, county Kilkenny, drawing, irish history, KELLS PRIORY, Kilkenny, Nigel Borrington, pencil on paper, Photography, Sketch book images, Sketchboob | 2 Comments