Storm Eunice brought high winds but it also brought snow, so I headed for just north of Newport, County Mayo as the worst of the winds abated. My plan was to walk along Glenamong river on the edge of a forest and somehow head up the moutain range beyond to get to a lough on the other side. I'd planned it all out by utilising an OS map and Apple Maps (because it's got the best satellite photos), but was to discover that the situation on the ground was different to what the maps suggested. First I encountered an incongruous No Parking sign and then found the track cut off by a fence. I

Pretty much two months of terrible weather and photographic failures had proceeded my arrival at Silverstrand Beach on the South West tip of County Mayo. I don't expect every trip that I take with my camera to be a success, but when you've had several abject failures in a row you start to question your abilities. But while some decisions that I have made have exacerbated my failures, what I have been dealing with is a very mild winter. By January I should be reveling in frost, icy flurries and snow capped mountains, but instead it's just warm. The landscape still looks the same as it did

I became aware of the Devil's Chimney waterfall earlier in the year and had wanted to photograph it then, but a Covid related travel ban meant shelving that plan. But on reflection I realised that sitting as it does above a wooded area, that it might be better to capture the image in the autumn. Apparently it's Ireland's highest waterfall and ostensibly isn't as well known as its near neighbour Glencar Waterfall. I wonder if this is due to Glencar being more accessible. The conditions that I was waiting for was plenty of rain the night before, followed by a calm morning. Of course when

I was new in Galway when I first saw the diving tower in Salthill, didn't previously know of its existence. My first thoughts were that I wanted to photograph it. You can see the results in this blog post from April, 2013. They were taken before I developed my style and I didn't even know to check the tide times (I was only lucky that it happened to be high tide). I never attempted to capture it again as I got better at what I was doing, despite only living up the road. However, what with the current Covid restrictions keeping me local I thought I may as well have another go. I hate

As I type, it is the last day of February 2021. So far this year we have had two separate days of snow on the west coast, one in January and one in February. While a decent amount of snow fell in Galway in February (see my previous post), in January the snow was predicted to fall the heaviest further north. Under normal circumstances I would have headed north to take advantage of the conditions, but 2021 is not a normal year and we are all stuck to within 5km of our homes. In light of this, I decided to stay put and hope that we'd get a reasonable amount of snow in Galway. What we did

There is a tree near Castlebar in Mayo that I've had marked out for snowy conditions for a quite a while now. It's on a slope, it's an interesting shape and it's on its own. Pretty much perfect. Unfortunately I'm currently unable to get to it as I'm stuck to within 5km of my house thanks to Covid-19 restrictions. But it's funny what you can find nearby when you're forced to. It seems having driven around searching for trees, that the interesting trees aren't on their own and the ones that are on their own are ugly. But I managed to find this one and the snow plastered to the trunk and

I arrived at Streedagh Point for the dawn as I'd marked out a point on top of the dunes from where there is a great view of the mountain range - nicely coated in snow - that Benbulbin belongs to. However the light was completely flat and wasn't going to improve for hours judging by the thick blanket of cloud over Sligo. So I decided to move to a lower point where I could possibly use alluvium to capture a reflection of the mountain range instead. Ultimately it was a wasted hour though. From there I went north to Gleniff Horseshoe where I'd marked out a spot from which can be seen the

On a recce I decided to visit a cluster of locations near to each other in County Clare, presuming that I'd be able to get through them all in a day and either find some subjects to photograph or have a nice day out exploring. I like to mark neolithic monuments down for a visit because they're invariably in out-of-the-way locations and sometimes I stumble on something unexpected that piques my photographic interest. And even if I don't, I just really like neolithic monuments. Upon arriving at the first location it occurred to me that I'd been there before, on the way back from

In my last post I said that I'd have to wait for another foggy morning to have another go at photographing the Corrib Viaduct. I didn't have long to wait. I made an impromptu dash to Woodquay after the school run and had about an hour to get what I needed. From the previous visit I knew where to set up my camera and also that I wanted to use a longer focal length. However, when I was able to compare what I'd captured that morning to what I'd previously captured, I could see that the longer focal length had the effect of bringing background elements in closer to the subject, making it

I'd just gotten myself a new shutter release remote control and was waiting for an opportunity to try it out. Happily I got my chance on a Sunday morning with a few hours of lovely thick fog over Galway. I headed down to Woodquay where the stone supports that used to hold the Corrib Viaduct are situated. They are interesting structures in the middle of the river that used to hold the Galway to Clifden railway line. There are three of these pillars but unfortunately the more photogenic ones (the ones with an arch in the centre) are situated on the opposite and harder to access side of the