Silverstrand

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 in the autumn. It’s depressing to think that this is probably the shape of things to come.

I’d come to Silverstrand with no objective in mind other than to try and recapture a bit of the magic that keeps me hooked to landscape photography. And while I didn’t get that Eureka moment where I captured something that I knew was going to be great, I did enjoy the process of photographing what I did get.

It was windy enough to have sent my tripod flying down an incline at one point, so I had to hold on to it at all times when I had the camera attached, and at times windy enough that I was able to physically lean in to the wind. I really enjoy the feeling of battling the elements, and this coupled with occasional patches of light breaking through the clouds and lighting up parts of the scenery, meant that I was feeling pretty good. And although I didn’t get an image that I’m particulalrly excited about, I came away feeling contented and with a renewed vigour.