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The small town of Killaloe, at the bottom of Lough Derg in County Clare, Ireland, is a real beauty spot and tourist attraction.
With its riverside location, olde worlde buildings and stone arched bridge spanning the river you'ld think I'd have been able to take a decent photo of the place.
But it was not to be.
Although I did take dozens of photos while Liz and I were visiting, none of them were to my satisfaction, primarily because the light was grey and flat, with low cloud and drizzle the order of the day.
However, every cloud has a silver lining, and the flat light that was pants for taking meaningful photos of the big scene was just fine for photographing details, as the diffuse light softened highlights and brought out textures and colours that would have been overwhelmed by bright sunlight.
So while Liz enjoyed a coffee by the river I had a wander around to see what I could find to photograph that would portray the air of genteel decay that sort of sums up this part of Ireland.
I didn't have to go far before I spotted this knackered old rowboat, tied up and abandoned against an crumbly old stone wall and being slowly overtaken by weeds.
A polarising filter killed off any remaining glare from the boat's paintwork, and a bit of colour and tone manipulation in PhotoShop brought out the atmosphere of relaxed neglect that I wanted to portray.
A gentle sort of image for a gentle place.
Filename - boat 03.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 105mm
Exposure - 1/13sec @ f11, ISO200
Location - Killaloe, County Clare, Ireland
This image - 800x450px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - Polarising filter used to reduce glare.
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