The garden in front of my parents’ house this morning. The snow has defamiliarised the Irish landscape and made it strange and beautiful, but at this stage I think we’re all ready for it to thaw and free up the damn roads again…

Here’s a HDR I made of a thunder shower as it sweeps out over Oranmore bay behind the house. As I write this, another shower of golf-ball-sized raindrops is pelting down outside, knocking over my long-suffering tomato plants…

Here is a HDR I created, but I’m still not sure if I’m doing HDRs correctly. This one has a lot of noise due to the high ISO (1600, I think) I used. It was taken in Muir Woods, in Marin County just north of San Francisco. Beautiful old forest of sequoia redwoods, many of which are more than 1,000 years old. Their height (over 200 feet) cannot be fully appreciated in this shot, but I will try to upload other shots including people to show the scale.

I snapped this mallard drake as he glided past me along the canal in Galway yesterday. I was trying to find and photograph some recently hatched cygnets but by the time I found out where they were nesting the day had turned dreary and wet, so they’ll have to wait for another day.

I wish them the best of luck with this, and hope they can take on the might of the local community council, whose negligence and cronyism over the years have conspired to drag the village and its local economy close to ruination.

Check out their blog here: http://easkeyseafront.blogspot.com/

Also, here is a letter from concerned local Joseph Rolston to the Sligo Weekender which eloquently describes part of the problem.

Here is an old shot, taken almost two years ago (oh god, that’s a depressing thought…). It was taken just south of Agia Anna on the beautiful Greek island of Naxos.

Here’s a shot from a number I took of the cliff to the east of Easkey, known locally as The Alt. In recent years, a quarry has been operating on top of the cliff, imposing an ugly gouged wound on a once picturesque vista. You’ve got to love the peculiarities of the Irish planning authorities, allowing this cliff to be destroyed along with, presumably, many of its nesting bird population while they reject on preposterous grounds the planning applications of so many people trying to build themselves homes in remote locations with little impact on the local environment.

You can’t see much of the quarry in this shot, although you may see the tops of some of the machines to the right of the wave. In the left background, Knocknarea stands dappled in light and shadow as rain-heavy clouds are hurried landward by a brisk northerly.

A cuckoo flies away after calling from the top of the tree.

Here’s the better of the two shots I managed to snatch of the cuckoo just as he flew off. I was sitting in the house reading when my mother walked in and asked if I had ever seen the cuckoo, telling me one was sitting outside on the tree. I grabbed my camera and snuck out, but he flew off just as I was shooting. This shot is also blown up from a much wider original – I still only possess a 50mm prime lens for my DSLR so shots of birds require blowing up until I manage to purchase a telephoto zoom lens.

Just spent the bank holiday weekend up home. Glorious sunshine, bumblebees, lambs, a cuckoo – spring has well sprung now. I managed to snatch a shot of a cuckoo (it was my first time ever seeing one, although they could always be heard around my parents’ house at this time of year for as long as I can remember).

I’m taking inspiration from a friend’s blog and considering the possibility of rejigging this decrepit and unused blog into a more photography-oriented thing. Anyway, here’s a standard touristy shot of Easkey castle from the weekend, I may have to fiddle with the settings and repost this if the photo’s size is too much.