Being a week behind again this will be a double-edition of Photo of the Week. This time the ‘theme’ is that both chosen photos were taken on the same day, the 3rd of May 2009. They were taken on the first ever Typical Shutter Bug photo-walk in Ireland. Rather than just post the two chosen photos and a little description of each, I’m going to post a report on the photo-walk first. Then, at the end, I’ll post my two chosen photos with short descriptions. Before I start, I just want to give you all the link to my full photo gallery from the photo-walk on Flickr. It might be fun to follow along there since I’ve geo-tagged all my shots.

I should probably start by explaining that The Typical Shutter Bug is a new photography podcast run by Victor Cajiao of The Typical Mac User Podcast. I’m involved with the community around this podcast, as are Justin and Dave from the MacCraic podcast. Victor encourages the idea of photo-walks, so Justin decided to organise one for those of us in the greater Dublin area. As it happens it turned out to be just the three of us (myself, Justin & Dave), and we used a rather liberal interpretation of the term “photo-walk”, deciding to drive between locations, though they were all within about 10 minutes drive of each other, most closer than that.

We started off the trip with what I hoped would be a really spectacular location, Rathcoffey Castle just outside Maynooth (our chosen ‘base’ for the ‘walk’). I’d seen some recent shots of the castle on Flickr, and it was surrounded by a field of bright yellow Rape Seed flowers. A spectacular sight, to put it mildly! Unfortunately, the Rape Seed had been harvested in the intervening week. That was rather disappointing, but not really a big deal because the castle made a nice subject regardless. Rather annoyingly the owner of the land the castle is on refuses to allow access to the castle. It would not even involve walking through his crops as there is a private road up to the castle, but I digress. We got some nice views of the castle, first from a distance, and then from as close as we could legally get (which was not very close at all really).

Our second stop was the old Lady Chapel church just a mile or so away. This church is now in ruins, having been replaced by the new Lady Chapel church located closer to Maynooth village. The grounds and the cemetery surrounding the old church are still maintained though, and the ruin has been made safe. The location of this church is in many ways quite strange, located as it is, in the middle of nowhere at the end of a cul-de-sac. The peaceful surroundings only add to be beauty of this old, but not abandoned, cemetery. We spent quite a lot of time here, and could probably have spent quite a bit more. Justin in particular seemed to be having great fun with imaginative compositions.

Our next stop was also our most distant stop, and as it happens, also our least successful one. I didn’t really know Donadea Forest Park very well, and neither did Justin or Dave, so it was a bit of a gamble, and in hind-sight we should have left it off our itinerary to leave ourselves more time elsewhere. The place was jam packed, the old castle in a depressingly bad state, and it started to rain. We did get a few shots in, but not many. I think Donadea bears a repeat visit, but not in the afternoon. Morning light should work much better here, lighting the front of the castle rather than the back, and of course, there will be much fewer people around in the early morning!

After Donadea we headed back towards our final destination, Maynooth itself, but with one small detour to take in one of my very favourite haunts, Taghadoe Round Tower. This is one of a number of old monastic site in the Maynooth area (Laraghbryan being the other big one). The round tower dates back to the early Christian period, and is well preserved, though not complete (it’s missing its distinctive pointed roof). What makes the site seem very strange is the ruined church next to the tower, which is in a completely different style. This is not surprising since it’s only about 200 years old, and was a Protestant church. The ornate turrets on the ruined church look very strange next to the ancient tower. My favourite shot from this stop was not actually a shot of the tower, but of some lovely Forget-me-nots growing next to the road. If you’re wondering what the tower looks like you may be interested in my gallery of photos of Taghadoe on Flickr.

Finally, we spent our last hour or so on the St. Patrick’s College Campus in Maynooth itself (also known as the NUI Maynooth South Campus, or just ‘the Old Campus’). We could probably have spent the entire afternoon here, and it could perhaps be argued that we should have. If nothing else, that would have made it a more traditional photo-walk!

We started in the Junior Gardens which are a riot of colour at this time of the year. Justin got some nice macro shots of the flowers, including a particularly nice one of a large bed of Bluebells. From there we went on to the college cemetery, a little oasis of peace in what is often quite a busy campus. You enter the graveyard through a massive covered avenue of Yew trees, and the graveyard itself is surrounded by trees, including some wonderful purple Beeches, which look almost autumnal at this time of the year when they’re sprouting fresh leaves. Their orange tones really stand out because everything else is so green at the moment.

From there we took a walk around ‘the Graff’ with its spectacular views of St. Mary’s House, and then on around the playing fields, ending in St. Joseph’s Square. The Graff held a particular treat because the grass had been mowed recently enough to still be lined, but long enough ago that there were flowers blooming again. This provided a fantastic foreground for the views of the old buildings.

So, finally, on to the two photographs form the day which I picked as my best, and worthy of being a Photo of the week. The first one I’ve chosen was shot in the cemetery around the old Lady Chapel. I really liked the framing the trees made possible here, providing a great backdrop for the cross in the foreground, while also forming a perfect ‘v’ shape to centre the remains of the old church tower within. The dramatic clouds were just the icing on the cake! The dynamic range of the shot was quite large, so I subtly tonemapped the RAW file in Photomatix to balance the exposure over the entire frame.

on Flickr – Full-Size

• Camera: Nikon D40
• Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
• Exposure: 1/3200 sec
• Focal Length: 31mm
• Focal Ratio: F4.5
• ISO: 400
• Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
• Processing: lightly tonemapped in Photomatic Pro

The second image I’ve chosen was taken on the Graff looking towards St. Mary’s House with the spire of the Gunne Chapel (AKA College Chapel) in the background. The leading lines combined with the spots of colour in the grass were just too good not to try to use. Thankfully I had my hyper-focal distance calculator with me (a great little iPhone app called DOFMaster) which gave me the info I needed to make sure I got everything into focus from the grass near my feet, right back to the buildings in the distance.

on Flickr – Full-Size

• Camera: Nikon D40
• Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
• Exposure: 1/100 sec
• Focal Length: 32mm
• Focal Ratio: F22
• ISO: 400
• Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
• Processing: lightly tonemapped in Photomatic Pro