Hello again to everybody still persevering with my blog after almost 2 years of photography posts.  I’ve finally managed to transfer my blog to a self hosted domain, so now you can look forward to a more personalised look to my blog with some important new features like video posts soon to materialise.

I’m still ironing out some kinks with the transfer so do bear with me if you encounter any problems with the new layout.

Now I’m armed with new my new camera and website, I’m going to be spending a lot more time in front of my computer getting to grips with video editing and tinkering with web design.  So in order to make the most of some free time during a rare bout of decent weather, I thought I’d go looking for some delayed signs of the onset of this year’s disappointing spring.

And in fairness, I don’t think I did awfully bad.

I’ve decided to mess about with the shots of a tadpole that I found in our garden pond in Photoshop, because it’s good for a bit of practice, which I’m sure that  you can see I’m in some need of.  So please do forgive for breaking one of my own cardinal rules of photography by overindulging in some crass photo editing, but I can assure you that this shall remain a rare occurrence.

The rest are all straight out of the camera though, and I’ve even uploaded them in higher resolution to enhance your viewing pleasure and make the most of another benefit of self hosting my blog- the fact I don’t have to worry about running out of space with wordpress.com anymore.

Anyways, I hope that you enjoy the shots, alongside the new and hopefully improved website.

Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions.

Here’s a few shots that I took yesterday with my brand spanking new canon 5d mark iii of an abandoned schoolhouse that I came across on a roving drive around county Monaghan yesterday.

It took me 5 years to upgrade from my canon 450d, which was my first entry into the world of photography.   I finally decided to splurge on the best camera that I could possibly afford because I really fancy moving into making videos and I figured that it’s best to go for the top tier of the market if I want to start making some money from my photographic efforts.

I’ve not had the time to make many videos just yet, but the difference in the quality of the images and the ease with which I can take them is one hell of a step up from my old camera.   On my old 450d if I put the iso up to 200 I’d start noticing noise entering the image. Some of these shots are taking at iso of 12,800 and I still can’t see any noise.  That’s one heck of a difference!  Gone are the days of lugging a tripod around everywhere or worrying about my shaky hands.  Behold progress.

These shots are of a derelict schoolhouse that caught my attention as I was driving around looking for an interesting subject to test out the capabilities of my new camera on.  I thought that it looked like a schoolhouse from the outisde, so I threw caution to the wind and parked up and hopped over a fence or two to carry out some investigations.

Turns out that the school has been left to crumble since the 1970s.  Seems a strange place to have had a school out in the middle of nowhere, but I guess that times have changed.   I found a sign for planning permission inside dating from 2007 to turn the school into a house, but I guess that the crash of the Celtic Tiger put an end to that notion.  Personally, I can’t help but feel thankful that instead of another faceless rural abandoned property development, there still remains this dilapidated vision of rural Ireland’s past.

I hope that you enjoy the pics.

So after deleting and resizing a few old photographs on my blog, and having wrestled myself away from my computer for a few hours in order to enjoy my last few weeks of shooting with my old trusty canon 450d.  I came across this nice little riverside scene at dusk over the Corrib…