PORTOBELLO AREA OF DUBLIN
I walked from Richmond Row, Portobello Quay River Walk (should it not be canal rather than river?) and then along Portobello Road as far Longwood Avenue.
Portobello (Irish: Cuan Aoibhinn, meaning ‘beautiful harbour’) is an area of Dublin, within the southern city centre and bounded to the south by the Grand Canal. It came into existence as a small suburb south of the city in the 18th century, centred on Richmond Street. During the following century it was completely developed, transforming an area of private estates and farmland into solid Victorian red-bricked living quarters for the middle classes on the larger streets, and terraced housing bordering the canal for the working classes.
As a fast-expanding suburb during the 19th century Portobello attracted many upwardly mobile families whose members went on to play important roles in politics, the arts and science. Towards the end of the century, many Ashkenazi Jews, fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, settled in the area; this led to Portobello being known as Dublin’s “Little Jerusalem”.
The Grand Canal is the southernmost of a pair of canals that connect Dublin, in the east of Ireland, with the River Shannon in the west, via Tullamore and a number of other villages and towns, the two canals nearly encircling Dublin’s inner city. Its sister canal on the Northside of Dublin is the Royal Canal. The last working cargo barge passed through the Grand Canal in 1960.
The Sony 85mm GM is supposed to be one of the best lenses that I own but I am not convinced that it is better than my Zeiss Batis 85mm … I must admit that I cannot explain why I have two 85mm lenses. Anyway, today I combined it with my Sony FX30 on which the 85mm is effectively a 130mm lens and in general the results were disappointing as many images were badly focused. Also the GPS was inaccurate but that is likely to be an iPhone problem.
