In an effort to stave off cabin fever I took a drive up around Wicklow to a few of my favourite spots yesterday. I like driving and taking snaps, so there’s no excuse not to while things are the way they are. Took my Nodal Ninja 4 off the shelf and dusted it down, took me a while to remember how to use it, but it’s pretty straight-forward and it wasn’t long before it all came flooding back.
This first shot was taken at Sally Gap, Wicklow, heading into the sunset on one of my favourite roads to drive. Back when I was in college this was where I took one of the first photographs I really liked, and my lecturer at the time, Tom Kelly, seemed to like it too. That was taken on a Canon AE1, probably using Ilford FP4, and processed in my usua slap-dash guesstimate manner which always lead to exaggerated grain. This was taken on a Canon 5Dmkiv using a Ninja Nodal 4 - 7 shots wide, 3 deep, giving a file size around 350mb.
This one was taken near Clogleagh Bridge in Wicklow after the sun went down behind the hills in the distance, in colour it’s quite flat looking so for the moment I’m going with B&W until I get my grading sorted. The worst part about this photo was retouching the wires that were hanging down between poles, they cut right through the image from left to right and, as there were three of them, an absolute pain to remove. Similar set up to the previus shot, another 7wide by 3 high panorama. Used to cycle up to this place when I was younger and fitter, we’d sit on that boulder that’s in the river foreground, with our bare feet in the cold river and just chill out watching the sky through the trees above.