Paudies Photoblog

One named Peter one named Paul … … and one named Pamela

Hey all, there’s a proposed new pier that could potentially damage one of the best waves in Ireland (Crab Island in Doolin),  even if you’re not from Ireland your support on this matter would be appreciated. If anything it would help to show that this wave has a worldwide reputation with lots of potential tourist euros associated with it.

Anyway there’s a petition here, http://www.petitiononline.com/Doolin10/petition.html, it’ll only take a few seconds and it’ll help save a world class wave.

The petition isn’t to block the construction of the pier at all just redesign it so it won’t have as much of an impact on the wave.

A reminder of what you’re trying to save.

This is why I live in the countryside and not the city.

This is my back garden for the past few sunny weeks.

They’re all fairly similar but I think each photo has something different going on.

Got to love the f1.8

That blue smudge in the circle is the earth viewed from 6 Billion Kilometres

And now a few words from Carl Sagan

Consider again at that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Wow, this is hard.

My PC has been acting up for the past few weeks, hence the delay in posting new stuff.

So I decided to completely wipe the hard disk and install Ubuntu, for those who aren’t aware, Ubuntu is an operating system just like Windows or OSX, except better. I had a good look around before doing this to make sure that there are sufficient programs to meet my requirements.

Namely something that can handle RAW photos to the same degree as Photoshop, a decent photo management program and usable video editing program.
There seems to be plenty of options, so I went ahead with the wipe and install on Sunday.

Things are … interesting lets say. The good news is that you can get an Ubuntu version of Google’s Picasa which is the photo management software I’ve been using for a good while now, basically it lets me flick through all my photos very easily and does some fairly minor editing. However at the moment I can’t get Picasa to run. I had downloaded the latest Beta release and followed their instructions on how to install it, but it didn’t work so I’m currently trying to install the last stable release, which is proving slightly difficult.

The easy of installing it is by doing something with repositories, which I half understand. But that doesn’t seem to work for my version of Ubuntu so I’m trying to do it via the Terminal which is also proving difficult. So I’m taking a break to write this.

All I ever used Photoshop for was to develop my RAW files. This is just pushing about a few sliders relating to brightness, contrast, white balance as well as cropping and straightening. The only reason I ever opened a jpeg in Photoshop was to clone out some dust spots from a dirty sensor. So I knew I wasn’t going to be missing much by jumping ship to Ubuntu.

At the moment I’m trying to figure out how to download the UFraw program that apparently does what I need done. I’ll report back on that later.

My plan for the video editing is to use Cinelerra.

I’ll keep you updated.

Love the choice of words

Goodday,

Sincerely,

Andrew Likierman.
Barclays Bank.

Good times in the white stuff

Hugh Galloway has done a heck of a lot of good surfing this year. Here’s my entry for him for etnies you-tube thingy.
Here he is last January willing the cold away. It was better than it looks.

I literally only went to a handful of gigs, which is disappointing. Hopefully the 7D will inspire me to head into a few more. February brought Conor O’Brien from Villagers, new album due out some time in the new year. Keep an eye out.

I did manage to shoot a fair bit of non surf stuff which is good. I want to expand, getting stale and content never improved anybody.
Stacked logs in March.

Of course there was some cracking surf as well. I reckon 70% of my sessions this year were at everyones favourite death slab. I wish it wasn’t so damn photogenic, I kinda want to shoot other waves as well. Thing is all though, everyone ends up there if it’s any good.
Tom Gillespie in April.

Oh how I want a ski (and a helicopter, but more on that another time), managed to grab a lift on a ski in May by complete chance. What a session. Dan Skajarowski on a monster.

Unfortunately Liam Joyce had to head back to NZ for a while, but hopefully everything will work out and he’ll back over to us again.
Sneaky solo session in June.

I used to drive past this host almost everyday. I’ve always thought it has the best looking garden. I always get the urge to run around in the grass.
July ly ly ly ly ly ly ly.

Photogenic chap is Tom Gillespie, in and out of the water.
August parties, not for the faint hearted.

You don’t always have to look seaward. Sometimes it’s even better looking if you turn around.
Explorations in September.

Honestly it is Ireland. Really. Weird that water can bend and hold it’s shape like that.
October Coral.

Cold, short, dark days. There was waves, but I went surfing.
Pete Fleming on the lookout in November.

Cold? Did I say November was cold? That was a joke right?
Dawn breaks in December.

is chilly.
Took four trips to completely clear the windscreen on Friday morning, kept refreezing by the time I got back to the car.

The roof looked cool though.

Teeny DOF with sunrise.

Love that F2.8

Zoom in of previous shot, cool crystals.

What a manky day.

Here’s to happier times.

On a side note, Aussie/Irishman Glenn Hall is competing in a pretty damn important heat this evening. If he makes it through he has a very good chance of being on the CT next year.

Should be on in maxing Sunset here http://www.triplecrownofsurfing.com/oneill/index.html?x=122232