Summer in Dublin

Having realized that today’s scheduled post failed to go live, I’m bumping it in favour of this sneaky lunchtime post, which is about as close to live-blogging as it gets around here.  Lunchtime today took me to the restaurant in St. Stephen’s Green shopping for a quick meeting, and en route back to the office, as I walked past where I had my pitch last weekend, I spotted this scene, which just had to be photographed.   To me, it sums up summer in Dublin.

Not only did I stop to take a photo, but I stopped to blog it also, though I won’t push this post live until I have a chance to watermark the photo above, something my iPhone can’t do.  Everything else related to this post it could do, including capture the image you see above.

It may be a case of having to be there, but the image has a real feel of summer to it as far as I am concerned, and indeed so does St. Stephen’s Green as I sit here and type.  It’s hard not to think that the lovely day that today is in Dublin could be the start of the end of our summer and it could be many months before we get to sit outside at lunch again, so it is welcome.

To speak about the image for a moment, what caught my eye initially was the light – strong sunlight, but dappled through the trees – and the potential to compose a shot using the overhanging branches as framing elements.

The shot is almost taken looking into the sun, so the camera on the phone did a good job to hold detail.  It’s processed (minimally) on the iPhone using the Best Camera app, save for cropping (and the watermarking I mentioned) which will happen shortly back at the PC.

It’s interesting to see what the camera chose for settings on this one – at first glance f/2.8 seems strange – not what I’d have chosen, and it looks like the camera had to drop the ISO down to 64 to compensate for that aperture.  Though at a focal length of 3.9mm, and with the small sensors, perhaps the rules change.  I’m sure if I thought about it I’d figure it out more, but let’s not get too technical on this one!