Killarney.Ireland (night one)

today i was in the art building, as usual, and my friend asked me if i had a shutter release (its a cord that triggers the shutter so you don't have to physically touch the camera, this is useful for long exposures when you don't want them to be blurry). i told her i didn't and then remembered the beautiful days when i once did, and what became of it.....

...it was a brisk evening perfect for a walk through a quaint irish town, take killarney for example, it's a nice sized town close to the ring of kerry and blarney castle(the blarney stone's home)...



i was on this beautiful island to with a mission to capture every moment on film (yes film, the 20d hadn't come into my life yet) this ment that beautiful fog and quality of light that only happens at like 5am to the fast paced exciting night shots at like midnight or later...and EVERYTHING in between! it was my first night in killarney, and after dinner (most likely lamb and CREAM of VEGETABLE soup, NO guinness), i jetted out of the hotel and walked around the town.

the night scene in most irish towns is typically the same- pub after pub with cheery folk drinking (what else)- guiness! most of the time there is authentic irish music being played live, sometimes its not live...and sometimes...like in the case of dingle, ireland- it was an irish band playing american oldies covers, like "my brown eyed girl" and other hits-

night photography is pretty fun, and hard to mess up. one thing to be aware of when in a foreign country is that you stand out, in ireland there is no language barrier, but we all weren't blessed with the accent. regardless, you stand out, and when you have a camera, even more, when you are photographing everything in sight, and have a tripod, you might as well be wearing a flashing sign as well.

when you have a tripod all set up, you draw alot of attention to yourself, when you have a group of people that all have tripods, you commonly get asked the question "oh who's in town?" thinking you are poparazzi. most of the people that ask you questions like this have had one too many pints, so it can be really fun to make up excellent stories, about who's in town. "oh meredith evans is coming to killarny she is the hottest new pop singer from the states"

generally street secenes, with the blurred headlights and tail lights, well illuminated store/ pub fronts or cathedrals and castles. i knew there was a cathedral on the other side of town, so i headed out to it, stoppping every so often for anythign interesting that came my way. i made it to the cathedral, set up tripod, etc. take some shots. the beauty of this cathdral was that it was out of town, so there wasn't any excess ambient light, which can be a killer for night shots.

no excess ambient light means, the front lawn of the cathedral is dark. when you take night shots, you use a tripod and a shutter release. somehow in my moving around to get the perfect shot, my cable release fell out. i searched the front lawn over and over, and couldn't find it.

i decided that i'd get up early in the morning to go look for it in the daylight. so i got up extra early, walked out to the cathedral and on my way stopped to get some blackcurrent sore throat drops (a product, though made by halls, is only available in the UK.) the cold dewy grass got my feet wet, as i walked back and forth combing the grass for the coveted shutter release. i realized that there were more and more people showing up at this cathedral. it dawns on me that it's sunday and they are comming for mass! most of the people that were there were old men in navy suits, and by navy i mean color, not the military.

i couldn't find my shutter release, and i don't have one.


look for part two of killarney.ireland later