McHugh’s in Queen’s Square is believed to be the oldest surviving building in Belfast, dating from around 1711. It’s a popular bar and restaurant especially when there’s an event in Custom House Square.
I’ve taken many photographs of McHugh’s over the years but always found it difficult as the front of the building seems to be often in shadow when I’m passing.
On the day these photographs were taken it was cloudy but bright. I think it was the flowers that first attracted my attention and when I noticed people sitting at the tables, well it was always going to make a picture. That the building was fairly well lit, with the clouds diffusing the sunlight, was the icing.
They were taken using a Panasonic 100-300 mm lens that I’d recently bought. I had decided I needed longer reach and with the field of view on Micro 4/3 this gives the equivalent of a 200-600 mm lens. Its second best in the Panasonic line up but I wasn’t prepared to part with over twice the money for the 100-400 mm. These long lenses are nice to have and I’m more than happy with it so far but I don’t expect it to be among my most used.
I took a few photographs (two are below). The first has just the people sitting at tables talking while the second has one of the men holding his mobile phone up, perhaps taking a selfie, while a young guy walks past. Not what you would call an action pic but enough going on to make it interesting.
I’ve put the second image, the interesting one, on Alamy. I was tempted to upload the other one as well, thinking that it would be interesting to see what one, if any, sold. That plan was dismissed as, although it looks fine here, when I started to process for submission to Alamy I found that it just wasn’t quite as sharp as I would like.
Maybe I should change the title of this post.
