Needing Inspiration
Have you ever experienced this? A Sunday afternoon, you wanted to head somewhere for photography but couldn’t decide where to go, even though you knew you had many options available?
This scenario faced me recently and while thinking about my options I decided to let random luck guide me instead, so opening my phone I picked one of my Photography Location Guides to act as the compass for my next adventure. My finger landed on Dingle, good choice I thought, next was to decide where I would go, and the destination I ended up choosing was Coomeenoole. This is a fantastic location to visit as well as photograph and looking at the weather I could see that there was a good chance of some nice light. Patchy low clouds with some high clouds above.
I packed my bag, jumped in the van and took the drive west, passing through some incredible rain showers, quickly followed by warming light just as fast. As I was going to be passing through Dingle town I decided to see if my good buddy and extremely talented photographer Jaro Fagen was going to be in his phenomenal shop in the town, thankfully he was so a quick detour along the way was perfect. Perfect to add more inspiration for the destination I was heading to and to catch up with him as always.
While there I met a gentleman, Ed, who was picking up a print of one of his shots that Jaro had printed and framed for him, After a pleasant conversation I had to leave as I needed to be online for my weekly YouTube video premiere, the destination of choice to watch this was the home of Fungie the dolphin, right at the pier in Dingle town. It was now time to head out along the Peninsula, and using the accompanying map from the guide it told me that I was 30 minutes away, with plenty of time left to photograph now that the clocks had gone forward.
As I arrived over the brow of the short cut to the Peninsula( details of this shortcut are in the guide BTW ) I was greeted with a sight that always makes my heart race. The sight of the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean far below me, with views of all the magnificent Islands that lie just off the coast. The light was great too, patchy clouds remained and the expectations of a good shoot grew.
As I arrived at my destination, I took a look around to see that the wave action was good, the tide, however, was coming in, so it meant that I wouldn’t be able to get down to the beach to photograph, nonetheless I was still happy with my choice as from a very small footprint you still have great photographic opportunities and add to this some great light I was sure that I would get some shots.
If you are looking for rugged cliffs, it doesn’t get much better than these, the texture of the rock face(s) are very unique and the light interacts with them superbly. Add to this two jagged rocks, known as the devil’s horns and you are in for a treat. I waited until around 40 minutes before sunset to set up my camera, it was handy having the van as I could chill out in the back and continue writing my next publication, and when I took the very small walk to the shooting position the light show had already begun.
It was going to be a long lens day, so immediately I changed from my 16-35 to my 70-200, I had my 150-600 with me, but didn’t need that length for on this occasion, framing up my first shot the light that was streeming in behind the subject was already fantastic, I popped off a few frames and immediately knew I was going to have a good shoot. Framing my shot with the devil’s horns prominent in the scene, I let the background light also form part of the composition as I waited for a wave to crash against the base of the structure, then boom a bird flew directly into the frame and managed to grab the shot.
Looking around I could see that this golden light was also hitting the waves behind me as they crashed towards the shore, so these were going to be my next subjects, I went handheld for these to ensure that I could be as fluid as possible, watching where the light was shining and waiting for a good wave to come into that spot, and hopefully, it would break as the light shone through it, Thankfully I managed to get a few shots of the waves with this glorious light before it was blocked out by the headland in the distance.
Now the Gentleman that I had met in Jaro’s shop had arrived at this location, so I had a great chat with him, albeit not fully focused on him as I was constantly taking shots of the light as it broke on the waves and also as the golden glow continued spilling over the Blasket Islands in the distance, the scene was incredible and I didn’t want to miss it. Thanks, Ed for being so understanding.
As the sun set, the high clouds didn’t catch much light, instead, they went a bright yellow, which made it difficult to then expose for shots of the Devils Horns, with them being in shade at this stage, so I decided to take my final frames before turning one last time out to sea to take a shot of the impressive Skelligs, that lie far off in the distance. From here you need good visibility, which thankfully I had, so I zoomed into 200mm and grabbed a shot with the belt of venus behind them.
As the sun set on another great adventure, I was happy with my decision and also glad that my guide had indeed acted as inspiration for my choice of location.
It was now time to relax for a bit as I had another friend of mine Cian Ryan who was coming down for the evening to photograph the stars. It was going to be a cloudless night so I decided to hang around and try my luck at some astrophotography.
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
