A Photowalk Through Sunny Dublin - Part 2

"Previously on ..... " I've always wanted to do that! Seriously though... In the first part of my little trip across the city I talked about the weird and wacky sights I saw while walking across the south side of the city. I finished the first part of my journey in Temple bar heading for the river. 

I arrived at the Liffey and crossed by the Millennium bridge. It was still a beautiful day, although a few clouds were beginning to form. The Liffey itself was a weird colour, even for the Liffey. You can't really tell from the above photo, but you'll see what I mean in a minute. From one angle it looked like a beautiful shade of bright blue...

... but that wasn't really the case. It was more of a green. I was going to head into the north side of the city, but I decided to stay around the river instead. It was such a lovely day, it would be a crime not to walk down the boardwalk which was full of tourists.

It was at this point that I began to notice a commotion around O'Connell bridge. There were lots of people gathering at the banks. At first I thought that maybe there was a canoe race or something going on, but it turned out that there were people preparing for a "Liffey Fun Swim". I can't imagine swimming in the Liffey is in any way fun, but any way.

See what I mean about the green?

I hung around for a little while, but things didn't show any sign of progressing so I continued on my journey. I headed back up towards College Green and Grafton Street. Along the way, more fun little observations were to be had. Like this sticker someone had put on a pole. I'm not entirely sure what the message is supposed to be, but I thought it was funny:

Then there was this little gem on a parked bicycle. I think I  laughed out loud when I saw this one...

I was so tempted to leave a note in the basket with "Down with that sort of thing" written on it. (for those of you not from Ireland google "Father Ted Careful Now")

And then there was the obligatory ice cream truck. I remember that the last time I was in New York I was amazed how every time it rained, street vendors would appear as if from nowhere selling rain coats and umbrellas. In Ireland we have the ice cream trucks doing the same thing every time it's sunny.

My favourite sight of all had to be "Jesus on a stick"

So much symbolism.

Anyway.....

I headed up Grafton Street and back towards the Luas stop to head home. My feet were pretty sore at this point. On the way there was the usual buskers...

These guys play here quite often and are actually pretty good. Something sad about the facade of HMV becoming the ideal spot for bands, but anyway.

That was pretty much it. It's always nice to get out across the city on a sunny day, because you never know what you're going to see. The sun seems to bring out the characters! I hope you enjoyed this little photo essay. Stay tuned for a brief behind the scenes!

A Brief Behind the Scenes !

Here's a few quick notes on how I got these shots, and how I processed them, for those of you interested in such geeky things. I was using my Sony Nex-7 which for me, is the ideal camera (at least of my collection) for shooting street photography. Why? Well, the pop up screen allows you to shoot from the hip and be relatively unobtrusive. I started off the journey with the 30mm attached, but I ended up changing it for the 50mm early on. This gives an interesting perspective when shooting from waist level.

I know lost of people have different philosophies when it comes to shooting Street photography, but for me, I prefer the candid approach. I like to be a silent documentarian. I think that a sort of hiesenberg principle applies here, that if you're too obtrusive in your observation you'll influence the scene around you. Such sentiments can cause heated debates, so I'll leave it at that. Either way, with the screen flipped up and the tiny Nex-7 hanging around your waist, no one really pays much attention to you. The autofocus is pretty fast too, so you can get some nice shallow depth of field too without having to zone focus and shoot everything stopped down (Ok, now I'm just committing street photography blasphemy :-) )

Anyway....

The files were processed in Lightroom. I have my own look that I've been working on for some time called "steely blue" (don't ask - it made sense at the time) which I used for a few, and others were graded using VScO's Film 1, in particular the Porta 160 setting.

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