As I write this evening, Storm Frank blusters and drenches outside my mother’s house in Cork. It’s hard to believe it was so calm at the other end the day when I took these early morning shots along the south channel of the River Lee between Albert and Union Quays.

Route I used my Panasonic LF1 pocket camera mounted on railings with the Gorillapod. They were all taken at about 28mm, f8 and ISO 80. Shutter speed varied from 4 seconds in the dawn light for the first shot about ten past eight to 1/6 of second for the last one an hour later. As this camera doesn’t have a cable release option, I used the 10 second delay feature to make sure the camera was stationary after I released the shutter.

The first shot is of the City Hall on the south bank with the Elysian Tower behind - the tallest building in the Republic of Ireland. It is followed by a shot of office blocks on the north bank on Lapps Quay next to the Clarion Hotel. Both were taken from Parnell Bridge. The third shot is of Connolly Hall, the local SIPTU HQ, also on Lapps Quay.

001-River Lee Buildings © John Coveney2015 002-River Lee Buildings © John Coveney2015 003-River Lee Buildings © John Coveney2015

The next two are from the Eamon De Valera bridge looking upstream to the formerly openable Clontarf Bridge - with the Moon setting over it. The second shot is a stitched panorama of five shots using Lightroom’s new photo merge feature – this does the job entirely within Lightroom without the need to export the individual shots to Photoshop.

004-River Lee Buildings © John Coveney2015 005-River Lee Buildings © John Coveney2015

This is the view upstream from the Parnell Bridge towards Morrison’s Quay on the right.

006-River Lee Buildings © John Coveney2015

Along the way is the now closed Moore’s Hotel – visitors using this fine establishment had to be sure not to transpose the two first letters!!

007-River Lee Buildings © John Coveney2015 Finally, here are two shots of the  Cork College of Commerce – the second one includes the Trinity Pedestrian Bridge. There's very little colour in this building and the sky was already greying over as the breeze strengthened - so I converted them to black & white in Lightroom.

008-River Lee Buildings © John Coveney2015 009-River Lee Buildings © John Coveney2015