Another from Rocky Bay, this time practically right out of the camera. Slight boost in contrast, bit of sharpening and send to flickr. Nice to see that Claire finally buckled under the immense pressure and bought herself a 5D. Bad thing about that is, now she’ll be making the rest of us look even more like rank amateurs (as per usual).

The studying for the third module of the CCNA continues. Exams this Wednesday and Thursday. Good God how glad I’ll be once this course is over!

Water running towards the sea and cutting into the sand along the way. The ever wonderful yet little visited Rocky Bay in Cork. Went down the other day during the golden hour and felt immediately inspired. Such amazing light. All you’re going to be getting over the next week or so are Rocky Bay shots!

Spent a most enjoyable couple of hours around the Lough last weekend with Donncha, Donal, Katie, Kevin and Will just about made it! I haven’t taken any photos at the lough in.. well, probably years now. It’s a great spot for Christmas Day to walk off the dinner and test out all that new camera gear one gets for Christmas.

One could quite literally spend hours crouched at the side of the lake with a telephoto lens and a bag of bread bits. Throw a chunk of bread, point the lens and attempt to catch seagulls killing each-other for a nibble. The entertainment knows no limits. Now, I’m off to toast the end of an era. More on that tomorrow evening.

Perhaps not the most PC title, but quite fitting. The ‘nuthouse’ is a semi-abandoned asylum on the northside of Cork city in the Sundays Well area. I say semi-abandoned in that three quarters of the (possibly longest in Ireland) building has been converted into apartments. The last quarter sits unused, almost completely gutted and looking devoid of any life or future development plans. It’s almost as if it’s been left alone for some reason.

Now I’m not saying it’s haunted or anything, but given it’s past use and tales of what went on in there in decades gone by, I personally wouldn’t live in one of the apartments if it was offered with a free car and a cheque for €300k. Maybe that makes me superstitious. Or cautious. Or at least I was cautious enough (this time at least) not to try and enter the building via the ridiculously flimsy looking ‘bridge’ (pictured below) that someone had installed in haste. Didn’t really fancy the 20+ foot drop to the glass & various debris littered below.

It’s both a massively interesting building and a bloody massive building. If you’ve walked in the Lee fields or along the Carrigrohane road, you’ll no doubt have looked to your right over the river and gazed at the ornate grey building half way up the hill.

Having said all of the above, if someone offered me a guided tour of both the abandoned and lived in portions of the building, I wouldn’t refuse.. Anyone?

More on flickr.

I’ll take full credit for this one before it gets used & abused elsewhere. I did this, send all your royalties cheques and kind words to the provided address.. (It’s possibly partly inspired by a recent re-watching of “Sin City”)

‘Blue Steel’, an incredible reconstruction of the film “Zoolander”.

Y’know what? I just couldn’t be bothered copying and pasting anymore. There’s a whole load more photos and this time, you’ve got a choice of where to view them. You can either flickrise yourself or visit the pixie. I’m off to bed. The perils of going to the pub early on a Saturday night.

I’ll start with this one of an award winning photoblogger. Well done to Claire for picking up Best Photo Blog on Saturday night. Not really much of a surprise (to me at least). For the last 3 or 4 months I’d been of the strong opinion that she’d take it. So much so that I would have given Paddy Power some of my hard earned spondoolicks. Some more winners over on my pix.ie album.

It was great to meet up with a few of the folks for some disjointed photoblogging in the hours leading up to the awards. A walk around Trinity College and Grafton street was interrupted by a shower of rain. It was enough to lead us to…

But alas, before that there was…

And a few more on Flickr. More from the awards itself and the all important ‘shoot from the hip with one hand while holding a pint in the other’ session in the coming days. God almighty, I need sleep. That was one hell of a weekend.