Dublin Irish Festival 2011 - Session 2

Here's another great session video from that Sunday afternoon rainstorm delay:

The Elders

The Elders, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Another concert pic from the Dublin Irish Festival 2011. Steve Phillips and Tommy Sutherland of The Elders in concert on the Celtic Rock stage on Friday night. For more images from this year's festival see: http://wolfe0823.zenfolio.com/p681200453

Newport bridge

Newport bridge, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Another in my series of photos of this bridge from July 6, 2011.

Open wide.....

Open wide....., a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Penstemon speciosus detail showing the anther morphology. This is a species in the Habroanthus group. The anthers dehisce from the distal ends but not across the connective.

Penstemon anguineus

Penstemon anguineus, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

This is one of the penstemons seen on the American Penstemon Society meeting trips. The glandular hairs are very distinctive in this species.

Dublin Irish Festival 2011 - Session 1

Another session video from Sunday, August 7, 2011 at the Dublin Irish Festival.

Dublin Irish Festival 2011 - session video 4 (but first posting)

One of the videos I recorded from the most amazing session of the Dublin Irish Festival - all because of a huge thunderstorm, which caused the suspension of festival operations for a couple of hours.

Working hands

Slide in concert at Byrne's Pub, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

For some reason I like to photograph hands at work. Maybe it's because I enjoy working with my hands and am interested in what others are doing - making objects, playing instruments, exploring the world around us. Here's a series of photographs of hands.  The image above is of Colm Delaney's hands while he's playing concertina.



Debbie from Killashandra playing harp at the Dublin Irish Festival 2010.



Another one from Dublin Irish Festival 2010.



A stone carver at the Dublin Irish Festival 2010.



Michael Hosaluk at the lathe.



Exploration of a Bill Luce bowl by a blind man; AAW symposium 2011.



Session with the blind at AAW symposium 2011.

Brendan Holmes - Young Dubliners

Another Dublin Irish Festival 2011 image. I really, REALLY! like doing photography at the Celtic Rock stage. The lighting is awesome, and the special effects amplify that quite well.

Dublin Irish fest teaser

Gaelic Storm, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

It will take a long time for me to sort through my photos and videos from this past weekend. However, here are a few that I've already processed, starting with Steve Twigger of Gaelic Storm.

The festival was awesome, as usual. We did have a bit of a challenge with a big storm yesterday afternoon. However, I have about a half an hour of cool videos of the best session in the region. I'll be posting those on YouTube this week and linking here on the blog.



This is Brendan Holmes from the Young Dubliners. I'm finding that I really enjoy doing photography at the Celtic Rock stage. Brendan struck up a conversation with me about the lens I had on my camera. It turns out that he's a Canon shooter, too, and I had my Canon EF 70-200 mm f/2.8 L lens on my 7D. Surprisingly, that lens attracted a lot of conversations with band members, sound crew and others associated with the rock stage. A bonus, for sure.

Tommy Sutherland of the Elders. He is definitely passionate about the music.

Gaelic Storm

Gaelic Storm , a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Dublin Irish Festival 2011 began on Friday, August 5. My band had an early evening stage time, which went well. For the rest of the evening I did a bit of roving photography. This is one of my favorite photos of the evening - Gaelic Storm on the Celtic Rock stage.

A Dodge Ford - a new American auto

A Dodge Ford - a new American auto, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Cave Junction, Oregon. There's an interesting wood burl lot that has an assortment of fun sculptures that qualify as yard art. Out on Highway 199 there sits an old jalopy with a sign to advertise the store. I'm always interested in seeing jalopies and taking some photos of them. Imagine my surprise, then, when I did my standard "front grill" shot and found that this particular jalopy is a hybrid between two American manufacturers. I should have spent some time inspecting the rest of the rig to see if "Chevrolet" was also part of this display.

My dad collected old Studebaker pick-up trucks and I well remember those Sunday drives dedicated to prospecting for junkers to salvage. He used to tow the jalopies home and cannibalize them for parts to restore other Studebakers. Our back yard often resembled a junk yard, but it sure made for some great hiding places for hide-and-go-seek games with the neighborhood kids.

Tiger Lily

Tiger Lily, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Tiger Lily

Walter Adolphe Roberts


GRAY are the gardens of our Celtic lands,
Dreaming and gray,
Tended by the devotion of pale hands,
On barren crags, or by disastrous sands,
That night and day
Are drenched with bitter spray.
There rosemary and thyme are plentiful,
Larkspur that lovers cull,
Love-in-the-mist that is most sorrowful.
Flowers so wistful that our teardrops start….
Scarcely one understands that regal, rare,
Bravely the tiger lily blossoms there,
Bravely apart.

Our gardens are enamored of the spring,
Of silver rain,
The cloudy green of buds slow-burgeoning,
The sorrow of last apple blooms that cling
And are not fain
To yield their fruit again.
We do not long for tropic pageantry,
Yet surge with love to see
The tiger lily’s muted ecstasy.
Watered by mist and lashed by wind-blown rime,
She is no alien thing; but vivid, free,
She has no heed for paler rosemary,
Larkspur or thyme.

It is in vain they worship her who knows
Pity nor pride.
Their petals whirl down every wind that goes
South to the palms or northward to the snows,
Mourning they died
So distant from her side.
But the brave tiger lily blossoms on,
Never to be undone
Till the last rosemary and thyme are gone.
Tattered by autumn storms, she will not fling
Herself to sullen foes. The winter rain
Alone can beat her down, to bloom again
Spring after spring."

Ainslee’s Magazine

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962).  Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

Mysteries of the spruce forest

Mysteries of the spruce forest, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

I can only imagine what the primeval forests of the Pacific northwest were like before the European invasion of the continent. When I was a small child there were still some pristine forests in the coast range of Oregon. They're all gone now and all we have left are some patches of old growth scattered amongst the checkerboard of secondary and tertiary growth plantations.

When I encounter one of these old growth groves the hairs on the back of my neck rise up, and I feel a thrill of adventure in imagining what's lurking under the ferns and in the understory layers. We need our forests to be intact as shelters and cradles for biodiversity. Maybe mankind will eventually learn how to balance civilization with nature. One can hope.

Iris

Iris, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

Steve spotted this lovely iris growing on a decaying stump of Sitka spruce along a trail at Cape Perpetua. In the muted greens and browns of the forest, this bright flower was a jewel.