World Class Location

When it comes to photography locations there are several things that I like to find when I arrive on site. I want something that is raw nature at its finest and this can be rugged cliffs and monster waves, I am particularly fond of jagged formations and more particularly gnarly sea stacks.

When I first heard of this location I was in disbelief that it was in Ireland and also that it was as stunning in real life as I saw in the images from my buddy Bernard. I had also planned to visit here while I had Gavin visiting last year, however, due to time constraints and also the time of year, we didn’t take the journey to visit it. This year however I was going to rectify that.

I was on a few day’s adventure with Bernard and even before I had sat into my van to take the journey up to him, I knew that we were going to have to visit this spot, It had everything I wanted and I was sure there would be a lot more, so off I went on my adventure, with a skip in my step, knowing that I would be on location soon. 

Before we got there we spent a couple of days exploring Connemara, and that was a fantastic location for photography in itself, however now that these shots were in the bag, we set our sights on the main prize. Boarding the ferry we were greeted by strong winds and a large ocean swell, it was going to be a rough ride out to the island, and even though the waves were large, and the swaying of the boat feeling even larger, we took it upon ourselves to brave the elements as the prize at the end would be worth any type of discomfort that we would have to ensure to reach the spot.

Now I have been on many boats over the years, and I do personally like to be more or less thrown all over, I consider it a free rollercoaster ride, however on this day, I was starting to feel the effects of the motion, and had to use my trick of keeping focus on the horizon ahead to limit the internal motion effects from the waves. I still managed to film this crossing and I was glad I did, as I could relive the crossing again and again later.

Reaching the shore, we took off like runners out of the traps, we headed to the only hotel on the island, dropped our bags, and had a quick bite to eat before we were off once again on adventures. Now as I mentioned at the beginning of this, I had seen images of the location before but they didn’t prepare me for just how awesome it was seeing it in the flesh. Towering sea stacks,pointed sea stacks, 100m high cliffs, perfect wave swells, and a northern wind driving them towards the shore were all in eyeshot once I stepped closer to the shooting location. It was amazing in the flesh, I couldn’t wait to shoot it.

Before I got my camera out, I felt some nostalgia for the year before when Gavin and I had planned to come here. Now that I was here, I felt it fitting for me to show it to him. So I called him for a video call, not to make him jealous, but to show him just how awesome it was. I do believe that I did wake the green eye monster though, as the views were also right up Gavins Street. But, at least he got to see it for himself, albeit through the small camera on my phone. He would have to wait to see the shots I got, but you can see them today below.

Formalities over, I took my camera out to frame up my first shots, I went handheld at first to get an idea of how it looked in the viewfinder and to also see how much of the scene I could fit in at 16mm. It looked incredible and I could get many shots in at that focal length. Bernard had a 12mm lens and was able to get that little bit more into his frame, nonetheless, I was ecstatic to be finally standing there with my camera in hand ready to capture all its goodness.

My first comp was a good one, I was looking at the incredible cliffs that curved around with one stack below that had two spikes. The wave motion as mentioned earlier was excellent, so I started with some long exposures to smooth them out, but to also capture the detail of the white water as it broke against the stacks and the cliffs. It was amazing on the back of the camera when that first 30-second or so shot finished cooking.

One particular stack caught my eye, it was the double spiked stack, sitting gracefully in the scene below me, I wanted to see if I could frame it up without anything else and do a long exposure to smooth out the water motion. I knew this would be hard to do as I couldn’t get it totally isolated in the frame, the cliffs below me and the cliffs that spread out away from me would still be in the shot, but I figured a 1:1 crop would eliminate most of the intrusions, Bernard exclaimed that it didn’t do it for him, but for me it did and I guess that’s all that matters in photography. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all, and when I got round to editing the shot, I was brought right back to that moment when I decided to take it. Below is the shot, Let me know in the comments below if it works for you please?

As I made my way along the edge of the cliff, I started to see some flowers in bloom that would make for great foreground interest in my shots, the yellow colour would also work very well with the deep blue of the ocean below, so I started to frame up some compositions using these in my shots, which I felt worked very well overall. I particularly liked how the cliff framed the scene, with angles to die for holding that one stack in their grip. This I felt was my strongest composition so far and my excitement was really now starting to build.

I then looked to my left, towards the 3 jagged sea stacks that lay below me, and framed up a shot of them with a cluster of flowers at the bottom, I needed to focus stack this shot as I was quite close to them but knew even as I was taking the shots that I had an incredible image in the bag again. I went for a horizontal and a vertical composition for this one, I still can’t decide which one I like most, perhaps you can assist in the comments below?

These 3 stacks would form the base for my next set of shots, as they were very impressive in the frame, I continued further left to frame them up, and as I took each step in their direction I was blown away by their form. The textures were amazing, and the shapes of each of them looked incredible as I got closer. From above I felt they looked impressive, and as I continued further left I was able to next frame them up for what has become my next favourite shot from this outing.

I immediately noticed that I wasn’t getting full separation of them from the cliffs that were now in the background due to my repositioning, but the shot still looked incredible and I took it. The shapes in them cliffs beside me, the green of the grasses worked very well with the deep blue of the water and the sky above tied it all together. It looked like an otherworldly location, a place that belonged in the movies, and more so a place that was a Wold Class location for photography.

Meanwhile, my buddy Bernard was perched on an outcrop of the cliff getting what seemed like the ideal viewpoint for these stacks to be fully separated, and given that I was feeling totally chicken due to the wind and my recovering back, I felt that I wouldn’t be able to get the ideal shot. It was then that Bernard offered to take my camera out there and nab the shot on my behalf. What he needed up taking was an incredible shot, at 61 seconds to totally smooth out the water below. It was an amazing adventure already, and we still had an hour or so to go before the sunset.

Speaking of Sunset, we currently had a thick bank of clouds all around us, however into the distance a favourable gap started to appear and despite many occasions in the past thwarting me, I felt that this gap would work out in our favour, so it was time to head back up to the starting point and ready ourselves for the oncoming light show, but before it would come we would get a blush of colour higher up, so it was time to frame up a shot of the lighthouse in the distance and capture the first rays of light as they broke through using my long lens. I decided I wanted to get a sun star in this shot, so I framed up the lighthouse in the bottom left and placed the sun at the top right, put my aperture at f/16 and boom,I had the shot.

Now that we were ready and poised for action all we had to do was wait, we had scouted out the potential compositions and to be fair we didn’t have to wait long, the gap had stayed and the light burst through, hitting the cliffs opposite with a stunning glow, long enough anyway for us to catch the shot before it was gone again. It didn’t matter, we had the shot in the bag and the thrills and screams of excitement from both myself and Bernard we felt could have been heard on the mainland. This location just kept getting better and better and each change in the light added more to the overall feeling we both had while shooting here and now it was the turn of the blue hour next, which once again didn’t disappoint.

I do enjoy shooting in blue hour, the softer light helps with exposures, the landscape takes on a whole new look and feel and for this location, the blue tones of the water mixed well with the deep contrasting tones of the stacks and cliffs and it also works well for long exposures, which of course we had to do, and the results were incredible, The scenes took on a whole new level of awesomeness like they hadn’t before, and once again we were pumped up with excitement to see how these shots would turn out when editing.

The entire trip with Bernard had been great and this was the cherry on the top ( so far ) we still had the morning to come and were going to head to another location on the island to capture that, so, for now, it was time to head back t the hotel, drop off our bags and go for a well-deserved pint in the only bar on the Island, to say they were nice pints is an understatement, we deserved them as we had worked hard for our shots and I couldn’t wait to get home to start editing them plus the incredible footage that I had recorded for my video.

You can watch the video in the link below and see the images I captured during this amazing outing below also

Thanks for reading and your continued support