I love Dublin, and love taking photos there - it's beautiful!

how can you not get fired up when you come across a street scene like this one?!

This isn't the first time I have said how much I love Dublin - and it certainly won't be the last time! It's honestly one of my favorite spots to visit. Clearly there is a lot of the world that I have yet to see, but with many cities and countries under my belt - and at least 5 different visits to Dublin over the last few years - this place just makes me happy every time I visit, and I don't get tired of going there. I feel like I smile a lot there. The Guinness helps. :-)

a tram coming down the street with sunset behind it

But seriously, apart from a gloriously delicious pint of beer, the city really offers up a lot of wonderful things to see and photograph. I love the churches, the pubs (there are a lot of pub photos in today's post), the people, the street scenes (lots of those today, too) and even the graffiti (I found some good stuff last time!). I need to process those graffiti shots, now that I mention it. Actually, there's a lot I need to process from all 5 trips - I have around 7000 images in total from Dublin. A quick look in Lightroom lets me know that number! (And yes, I dumped Aperture finally and moved over to Lightroom - and I love it.)

The brazen head - ireland's oldest pub, and one of my favorite spots to stop in for a pint!

So today's post is a collection of shots from my most recent trip over there, which was in early April. Having so many shots to choose from in my library is great fun, but also a bit challenging, because I am always running fast and trying to find time to get more and more things processed - but it just keeps adding up (though I am not complaining!). And admittedly, I usually process recent shots for a little while and then when I end up going somewhere new and shooting again, I process some of those, and forget about all the older stuff. In fact, this is the first group of photos from that trip to Dublin that I have processed. I just haven't gotten to it. And the trip ended weeks ago. First world problems I guess. :-)

Initially I processed two different sets of photos - one from an afternoon stroll around some streets I like (that led into some evening shots after dinner), and one from an outing one evening that was mostly around the Temple Bar district. And that's what I love to do in Dublin - wander around the streets, pretty much any hour of the day...especially in the Temple Bar District, where the cobblestone streets add an extra touch of character.

But then when I looked at all the photos, they seemed to all fit together in many ways, so I figured I would just combine them all into one big fat post and share them at the same time. So that's how you ended up getting 22 photos in today's post - instead of 2 posts of 11 pics each, separated by a week or so. Seems easier this way, no?

It's also a good way for me to hit one of my goals for this year, which is to publish more photos than ever before. I am rocking right along on the path to my goals, and getting real close to hitting them. So pretty soon I will make an update on that, and lift my goals for the year. I've been busy, and I hope you are enjoying seeing more photos here!

walking home from dinner, i just had to stop for a shot along the river liffey

I have walked past this so many times - finally stopped and shot it!

Now normally when I travel, I tend to take photos of places, instead of what I would call "street photography". But today's shots - at least in my opinion - fall more into the street photography camp than into my normal sort of shots. These are observational in nature. I would walk, and if I found something that caught my eye, then I would set up and shoot it. I find that my style keeps morphing a bit, moving away from the "I have to get a wicked HDR of that place" and instead moving towards "I found this interesting, and took a photo of it". In fact, I have not been processing any HDR photos in months, actually. I'm finding plenty to work with in most single exposures. Plus, my tastes have changed a bit. It happens, and I've enjoyed a break from HDR anyways.

the mural on the side of the Auld dubliner pub in the temple bar district

By the way, if you were curious about the best places to take photos in Dublin, well, I have a list for that right here on the blog. I do need to make a few additions that I discovered recently, which means I need to spend some time and process a bunch more Dublin photos. Darn. :-)

Temple Bar is normally crowded, but so beautiful during blue hour that it's worth going out anyways!

In fact, one thing I did on my recent trip is take a train out to the little seaside village of Howth. It's a short ride on the train, but well worth it. I spend half a day wandering around there and taking a hike along a seaside trail. It was very relaxing, and rather beautiful. Yeah, I better go process some pics. The photos from Howth alone could take up a few blog posts - I have hundreds from that afternoon that I need to go through. But, more on that later.

And by the way, many of today's shots were taken with my prime lens, which you can read about here. It gives me the flexibility to shoot wide open at f1.7, so it's great for wandering in the evening. I didn't use a tripod at all - in fact, I left it at home on this trip! Traveling light is nice!

Well that's all my rambling for today folks. I appreciate the visit, and do let me know if you have any questions. Oh yeah, and enjoy the pics! Feel free to share too! :-)