Ireland's Wicklow Mountains are amongst the most visited in Ireland; situated just a short drive south of Dublin the Wicklow Mountains offer access to expansive landscapes like in this panorama overlooking Lough Tay.

I have written about Wicklow before, especially Glendalough and also indeed of Lough Tay.

This lake is also known as the Guinness Lake, the estate in which it sits used to be owned by the famous Guinness family and has recently been sold.

It looks exceptional on a fine, sunny day with no wind and a big blue sky above filled with white clouds but usually this lake is choppy with the strong windy gusts sweeping across the treeless mountains.

This part of Ireland is also out of bounds for now, the movement restrictions placed across the country due to Coronavirus / COVID-19 mean that few people have legitimate reason to visit this remote area.

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Threecastles, County Wicklow - Ireland

I've been out photographing in the Irish countryside in recent weeks as autumn makes its way across Ireland.

On one of the bright blue-sky days I stopped at Threecastles in County Wicklow, south-west of Dublin.

Sunset at Glendalough after a long day of photography in Ireland

We spent from before dawn right through to sunset photographing in Ireland's County Wicklow, situated just south of Dublin it is an area that I know very well.

Wicklow in the morning, this is without doubt one of my favourite images.

Working on assignment for the Ritz-Carlton Hotel magazine I had the task to capture representative scenes of Ireland - landscapes, green, classic Dublin buildings.

There are many factors that contribute to making a good image. Not least among them is lighting, in fact without light we have no image and without good light we have a bad image.

No matter how many times you visit a location as a landscape photographer there is always something of interest, something different to photograph.

The subject matter might be the same, the image might be from the same location as your last visit and the weather might be as good as it was before but the scene is not the same and the image will be different.

Wicklow Mountains Panorama

The Wicklow Mountains lie close to Dublin and for many of the millions who live in the Greater Dublin area these mountains are their piece of wilderness. And what a place to take a journey to, escaping the busy city streets and getting into the Wicklow Mountains can be done in less than an hour.

Today was one of those days, I had nothing big planned but I had a meeting in Belfast scheduled for the afternoon. And as always I had a plan to head to the coast for sunset even if today’s weather was not going to be kind in providing warm sunset colours.

The meeting in Belfast was cancelled at short notice, postponed by mutual agreement to later in the week. So instead I headed towards Wicklow for some landscape photography.

Wicklow is known as the Garden County and is situated south of Dublin. Home to some of the best locations for landscape photography in Ireland it is an easy choice, mountains and valleys, lakes and rivers make up this county.

Getting close to the action is sometimes necessary to get a better perspective when photographing, in any circumstances whether it be landscapes or street photos. In this case it involved getting wet feet, and a wet filter on the front of my lens.

For many people Ireland is synonymous with sheep and lamb.

Travelling through the Garden County it is easy to see why, with sheep and lambs in spring on verdant fields or by roadsides grazing on heather.

Wicklow sheep were common throughout Ireland before the Famine and produced wool very suitable for flannel (as well as mutton for stews).