Wandering the city the night before St Patrick’s day

So that’s what I was doing, wandering around. Aiming for Hanover Quay and Grand Canal Square mostly after tracking down those RAIA pieces.

I had to try and take a snap of the Exhibition Centre and the Samuel Beckett bridge. The place was mobbed with photographers. all much more professional than me, tripods and everything but I’m happy enough with my hand held result.

The light was fading fast at this point – you can see above that the cars all had their lights on. It was properly getting dark when I hit Grand Canal Square. But the new lens was coping. Things were getting a bit noisy because I threw caution and ISO to the wind but it’s quite mad to be able to take hand held pictures like these in conditions that really were dark.

The place was mobbed, they had a movie projector up with a screen on a boat floating in the dock. Very, very cool.

The lighting was amazing.

You can see the movie screen in this view from the Hanover Quay side. It’s really funny looking at this because I couldn’t see those people when I took the picture. To be honest I could barely make out that the ambient lighting on the Theatre facade was green. I love this new lens.

I wasn’t alone in trying to get pictures.

And then there was the piece that brought me here. It’s still clearly a WIP but it is already pretty special. It’s going to be a real showcase piece when it’s finished. I’m going to call it the “Hanover Hoodie” until it gets a real name.

And a close up to show the parts that aren’t quite finished yet.

And I think this is going to be the ideal framing point for capturing this in future. I’ll have to bring a tripod with me once it’s finished. I’m thinking this is a much nicer picture than any I could ever have taken of the Exhibition Centre so I’m quite chuffed even if the noise level is atrocious once you blow it up to full resolution. Doesn’t matter, I love it.

At this point I was interrupted by my Dad needing tech support for his new uber-TV that he couldn’t figure out how to switch back to his SKY box after he’d somehow switched it over to analogue. I needed a pint to help me cope. But I got there and after a minor detour for some liquid refreshments in Mulligans I ventured into O’Connell St and then to Temple Bar. It was all very green and full of drunk people. They were very amiable drunk people it has to be said but there were an awful lot of them so I beat a hasty retreat as soon as I’d exhausted all the options of shooting Green Buildings. And once again ISO 1600 made it all possible and made it all very noisy. Then again, it was dark, very dark and I’m still a bit stunned that I was able to take hand held shots with no flash that turned out more or less OK when it was basically night time.