Getting it Totally Wrong
I’ve said for years that bad conditions don’t exist in landscape photography, there’s always a shot, and it may not be a banger, but there will always be something.
For this adventure we are about to visit a fantastic location for photography, a location that sits right beside the road and is passed by thousands of people each day, what it needs for the perfect shot are no wind, flat calm water and some nice light, and when we arrived there we had hopes of them all but in reality, we had none of the above.
After being almost frozen solid on the cliffs in Achill, myself and Diarmuid decided that we would hit the road, come back inland and visit a location that he hadn’t been to before, Pine Island which sits on Derryclare Lough, in the heart of Connemara. Travelling in the dark towards our location I let Diarmuid lead the way, he had sat nav after all, so what could go wrong?
The truth is that he had indeed typed in the location into his sat nav, but not the specific location we were looking for, so after driving up and down the same part of the road a couple of times, I eventually said, ok, I will take over, within minutes we had arrived to our park up spot, to hunker down for the evening before sunrise the next morning.
The weather forecasters here in Ireland in my opinion have a pretty easy job, cloudy with a chance of rain will work more than it doesn’t, and with the forecasted arctic blast arriving, we hoped that by going inland, with the cold weather overnight, we might just be treated to the ideal conditions for our shoot.
Waking before sunrise, I took a look out the window of the van, not only was there no light, but there was also lots of wind, meaning the water looked like it was by the sea with the amount of movement, so I once again for the third day in a row, put my head back on the pillow and went back to sleep. there was no point in getting up and bracing for the icy cold conditions for a scene that could look so much better I determined.
A while later, 3 hours, in fact, myself and Diarmuid decided that while in Rome we should at least give it a go, so as I left the warmth of my van and proceeded to layer up plus 2 coats, Diarmuid would proceed to tell me how it was so cold that a tear fell from his ear, yes that’s right, his ear :-), luckily I was recording video at this time and it makes it into the episode.
The conditions had remained relatively the same as earlier, very windy, bitterly cold and very rough water, the only difference now, as I headed to my first composition, was that the sun was higher in the sky offering at least some bit of light on the scene. As I set up my camera I heard a familiar voice over my shoulder, it was Norman McCloskey, he was still on his road trip and spotted our vans parked at the side of the road. After a quick chat I was back into composition mode once again, framing my shot with the wide open expanse of water with the island in front of me adorned by stunning scotch pine trees, not the best composition from here but one I felt that I had to at least take. I tried to be considerate of my composition, I wanted the trees to at least have some separation from the impressive mountains that lie behind them, so backed up on the bank a bit to allow this. I took two shots, a standard fast shutter speed and a long exposure to try at least smooth out the water in some way.
“I’m done” were the next words I heard, Diarmuid had already had his fill, the bitter cold was cutting right through him and he wanted to retreat. His idea felt inviting to be honest as it was very cold, but I didn’t want to call it a day yet, I wanted to get the “ideal” composition from there even though the conditions were all wrong, so I took the short walk over towards the other bank where there is a stone walkway that leads over to the island itself. This walkway acts as a great leading line for the subject and offers an interesting foreground to balance the shot.
The biggest challenge with this location, even in good conditions, is a set of power lines that run right across the scene and no matter where you place the camera it is not possible to avoid them. They can, of course, be removed in post-production but because the lines run over a clear patch of sky and then intersect the tree line, it’s not a straightforward edit. I mentioned while recording that I don’t like them, but in the end, because the shot wasn’t ever going to be a banger I elected to leave them in the images, so at least you the viewer can see that they exist and how they can also affect your images.
With two shirts, two coats, two hoods, a hat and heavy gloves, it was still not enough to stop the piercing cold that was engulfing us, so the time had arrived to call it a day, and a trip for that matter. The 3 days that we had spent in this stunning part of the country were over, we didn’t get great light or conditions but what we did get was another adventure in the bag, full of laughs and of course some shots to boot.
Where will the road take me next?
You can see the images I managed to capture in the gallery below or watch the adventure on the Youtube video from Sunday at 5 pm
