Another one from last may – I liked how this light streamed the branches of the tree. Nothing special, just found it while looking for another picture!

Another one from the archives! This is one of my many attempts at a self-portrait for a Limerick Camera Club challenge last November. I originally strayed away from this idea because I was limited to a 12×8 print – and it’s a crop that just didn’t suit the image (IMO).

Unfortunately I can’t say that the idea was my own – I got it from the cover of a book called “Crashed and Byrned“. Worth the read for the Motorsport heads – can be stomach turning in places, but it’s an interesting book about a very interesting character.

I’m not sure about the image or the processing. Any suggestions?

I took this shot last year, but didn’t think much of it at the time. These giants stand above an abandoned building site here in Limerick. I hear that the developer responsible for the abandoned mess has since gone out of business – I’m not sure if that is true or not.

The Cranes have been standing, motionless, over this part of Limerick for the bones of two years now. I doubt they are being maintained. Should they be taken down permanently? It might help lessen the impact of Limerick’s biggest eyesore.

The National Lottery Skyfest kicked off the 2010 St. Patricks festival in Limerick. We didn’t have the best vantage point (this was taken from Sarsfield Bridge), but I couldn’t really get any closer and fit the whole lot into the frame.

It was a pretty good show – nice to see the streets of Limerick packed on a Saturday night – everyone in good form.

About the car:
When the DTM series ended in 1996, Mercedes-Benz wanted to find a replacement top-flight racing series. Enter the FIA GT Championship in which Mercedes-Benz campaigned their very successful and infamous CLK GTR.

Successful:
It won everything around it. AMG-Mercedes won both the Driver and Team Championships in 1997 and 1998

Infamous:
We were very lucky growing up, we had Eurosport on satellite during the nineties. I was watching Le Mans live in 1999 when this happened:

That weekend, two CLK GTRs (technically they were CLK LMs, essentially the same car with a V8 instead of a V12) took flight – both spectacular. Unfortunately you can only win at Le Mans by going fast and going the distance… being spectacular will only win talent contests.

About the photo:
This is a shot of a 1:18 scale model of the GTR – I got it back in 1998 and it’s been sitting in a box for the last ten years or so. I found it a few weeks ago and thought it would be something different to try and capture.

The lighting was a bit of a nightmare, but it worked out ok. I had a black card under the model, a reflector above. I managed to bounce the on camera flash up onto the reflector and back down onto the car with a bit of trial and error. Here’s a shot of the setup, it’s not great, but it did the job: