storms end,
originally uploaded by Ragorder.com.

Sometimes I hate Winter. With a vengeance. Sometimes I love it. With a passion. Yesterday was a day I loved it. I took a stroll with my family along the cliff-walk from Donabate in Co Dublin, towards Portrane. The waves were thumping against the rocks, the sun was low and barely visible, so the light was weak. It was pretty miserable, but it was fantastic. I put my life, and dry shoes, in serious danger when trying to get some decent shots of the seascape in front of me. In fact, I got totally drenched taking this one in particular, but I feel it was worth it – esp after seeing how it turned out after a bit of processing in Photoshop. If you want to comment on this, please visit my flickr page.

In Dublin, Ireland we take Christmas lights very very seriously. Maybe it’s because it’s so dark and gloomy here at this time of year. Maybe it’s just cos we’re barking mad. Either way, here is a classic example of Christmas lights gone nuts. Thankfully, it’s all for charity so you gotta hand it to the guy who makes his house look like Las Vegas – it’s all for a worthy cause.

turtle cross-processed,
originally uploaded by Ragorder.com.

Meet ‘Clown Buachaill’ – my strangely named (by my son) male turtle. We have a female one too. Her name is ‘Clown Cailin’. Buachaill is Irish for Boy, Cailin is Irish for Girl, but that’s not what this post is about

For as long as I’ve seen it, the cross-processing effect in photography has really appealed to and interested me. And as with all things in photography, it’s usually possible to imitate film effects in Photoshop, and as my interest in digital post processing just increases all the time, I’ve been on the lookout for a good digital corss processing tutorial for Photoshop.

Well it seems I’ve found a good one here. The results are in this shot of my friendly turtle, and I’m quite happy with them. Feel free to comment here or on flickr.

.flickr-photo { }.flickr-frame { float: right; text-align: center; margin-left: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } car lights originally uploaded by Ragorder.com. Don’t tell anyone, but while driving home on Friday night I put my Canon 400d on the dashboard of my car, set the shutter speed to 10 seconds and started [...]

Though I’m sure they’ll disguise this with typical corporate spin, it seems Microsoft sees marketing potential among the poor kids of the world. ‘Nuff said.

Its always nice to get some external validation of your work. Sometimes thats people saying it to you, but in this world of the web it’s also pretty cool to get some comments from strangers on flickr, or my photo pages. Even cooler though, is when an online publication asks for permission to use your [...]