With conditions really unfavourable to photography those high winds, sideways rain and sea spray all combine to dampen not only the photographer and equipment but also the spirits. Don't get me wrong, I love these conditions usually, when the strong winds are hitting your face it is truly awakening.
But trying to capture the changing light that storms often bring while standing on a cliff 100 metres above the Atlantic with a southwesterly wind trying its best to blow you off your feet and fill every cavity in your camera with water of the fresh and salt variety, it can be challenging to say the least! I wrote about the challenges before, when I visited the western coast during Storm Darwin.
Between the weather fronts that were coming in thick and fast yesterday I got some great shots with alternating patches of sunlight and clouds spreading across the landscape but it was the post sunset conditions that really appealed to me.
The image above is looking out onto the Atlantic from Connemara, the sun had set somewhere to the west of me but was obscured by cloud.
That's the best part of landscape photography, you never know what you're going to get. Not in Ireland anyway!
With perseverance, however, great scenes can be found with the right conditions.
The coast of Connemara is part of Ireland's newly created Wild Atlantic Way that stretches 2,500 km from Kinsale in County Cork to Muff in County Donegal, it is a long, long drive and best taken in sections like here in Connemara and Mayo.
I regularly run photography workshops / tours in Connemara and around the rest of Ireland. For more information send me an email or sign up to the newsletter on the front page of the site.
Prices for a day start from €200 and we will cover the use of filters, tripod, composition, planning a landscape photography trip, post-processing with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop and anything else that interests you as the day is tailored to what you want to learn and improve.
If you are interested in my forthcoming small group Ireland workshops (max per group 6) to the Antrim Coast, Connemara and Dingle then please contact me through the Contact page.
