Picture of the month - December 2005

Inny Valley Idyll
 

The second picture from Ireland on this web. Although first time photographing digitally during holidays, I am still not faster bringing some of the shots from this years vacation onto the web. A harddisk crash and upgrade needs on the rest of the computer hardware take time - the negative side of the digital world. And my camera -you might remember an EOS20D- is on repair. This is the first time one of my SLR bodies requires repair - the other side of the rainbow. Modern DSLRs are computers themselves ...

Anyhow - this is one of my favorites of the already sighted pictures. A landscape as I expected to find in Ireland's nature. A hilly terrain, crossed by a peat-coloured burn, and the green which gave Ireland it's nickname "Emerald Isle". And of course some clouds - (nearly) indispensable in the country. At least in the three weeks we enjoyed it. But never exclusively: The sun is never far, and the clouds are very rarely only a uniform grey area.

The landscape can be found in the Inny valley, in fact very close to the most populated touristic areas of Ireland - the Ring of Kerry. But only close. While sightseeing busses more or less invariably take the main ring around the peninsula, we took a smaller road to the East, 3km North of Waterville, into the center towards the Balaghisheen Pass and then North to Lough Caragh / Glenbeigh. Less traffic, less people, more nature.


The picture is taken with my EOS20D and the newly bought EF-S 10-22/3,5-4,5 USM at 21mm, ISO 100 and 1/50s F5.6. An excellent lens for landscape photography, with the typical wide angle lens distortion, which gives such pictures the special touch - the close front items in the picture (flowers) get large compared to the back bits and pieces. Only disadvantage - the lens is only compatible with the APS-C sized image sensors, but not with a full-format SLR such as the EOS 5D. So if you have an Canon SLR with one of the smaller image sensors today, you have to buy another wide-angle for your full-format chip later on. Who knows, what Canon (and other vendors) finally will set as Standard?

 

Enjoy nature,
your Mr. Mooseman !