The heatwave that has finally hit Ireland has now ended, with thunderstorms over the country.

Temperatures exceeded 31C this week but as of Sunday night thunder and lightning is now the dominant weather.

Here, lightning over one of Ireland's many fine church buildings.

Meet Jack the black cat, Cork's friendliest cat.

Walking through Cork, before or after one of my Cork City photo tours I often take time to go out of my way and visit Jack, who will definitely appreciate it if you do indeed stop to say hi.

Join me to photograph in Cork or somewhere else in Ireland.

Red sky at night, shepherd's delight goes the old saying. And that red sky in the evening does usually bring good weather the following day.

There is science to back up the ages old phrase, a red sky is caused by small particles of dust and other airborne particles are trapped in the atmosphere by high pressure.

These particles block light from the sun, scattering or deflecting the light as it passes through the atmosphere.

The shorter wavelengths of blue and violet get scattered more easily leaving more of the longer wavelength red light to make its way across the sky.

Of course, to see this weather phenomenon often it helps when the predominant weather comes from the west which it does in Ireland.

So between you and the sun is the incoming high pressure from the west with dust that scatters shorter wavelengths of light.

Photographers usually enjoy photographing sunsets, so maybe it should be changed to Red sky at night, photographer's delight.

Join me, Panoramic Ireland, to photograph fine sunsets like these all over Ireland.

Adobe Lightroom Classic is full of shortcuts and learning them all can be slightly overwhelming.

Here is one shortcut that is useful, well two maybe.

Exporting photos from Lightroom is one of the most repeated tasks and speeding up that process can make a project quicker.

There are a few ways to get to the export dialog in Lightroom:

Standing atop steep cliffs high above the Atlantic Ocean, I watched the power of the incoming swell as it met subsurface changes.

A fairly calm ocean on a warm, late spring day yet this power came from almost nowhere.

It looks small just like a small crashing wave but, for scale, a guillemot flying low over the surging white water helps to illustrate the magnitude of just this one tiny part of the Atlantic.

This ash tree marks a little high point, a prominence at the entrance to a small enclosure, beside the ruins of an old stone thatched cottage.

Only a few of the foundation stones remain here, the cottage long since tumbled but this impressive ash, estimated to be 140 years old, still stands and was probably a young tree when the house was still occupied.

I have written about ash trees, known as fuinseog in Irish, before here on panoramicireland.com especially in reference to the disease that is currently making its way through the Irish countryside to destroy one of the most valued and characterful species on the island.

This poor ash might not see out its natural 300-400 year lifespan and end up like so many, a dendritic dead fossil of a once thriving ecosystem.

Street colour from Cork, known by locals to be the real capital of Ireland. Here, the Kino, a now defunct theatre was as famous for the colour of the events that it hosted and the colour if its distinctive edifice on the city's Washington Street.

Panoramic Ireland really enjoys photographing in Cork and the Kino has always been a colourful place on Washington Street, the main thoroughfare from the city centre towards the university.

The Kino was a cultural hub in the city but unfortunately was finished off by Covid and the lockdowns, now it hosts some Phoenix Nights themed events.

Seen here in better days with fine street art before the pandemic and a lockdown that was the most restrictive in the world.

Join Panoramic Ireland to photograph in Cork, Ireland - book here.

It may have been swelteringly hot throughout the rest of Europe this summer, but here in Ireland the heatwave consisted of a week or so of hot weather. 

For much of July 2022 the weather has been colder, wetter and windier than usual and on this occasion we had lots of trouble photographing the coastline along Ireland's famed Wild Atlantic Way.

In fairness, Dublin's Phoenix Park did see 33C in 2022, the second highest temperature recorded in Ireland after the record 33.3C in Kilkenny set in 1887.

I'm not complaining, the stormy weather was much more interesting for photography than sunny, warm and hazy heatwave conditions would have given; crashing waves showing the power of the Atlantic as it meets the geological landscape of these cliffs.

Indeed these cliffs as you see them rise steeply for 100 to 120m above the deep blue ocean below, the rocks here are amongst Ireland's oldest, dating to the Pre-Cambrian.

Join Panoramic Ireland to photograph in Ireland's majestic, stormy wild west.

Blue hour, especially the morning blue hour, is a special time for photography. At this time of year in Ireland photographing the coast before sunrise to capture that time when all appears blue, before the strength of the summer sun shines from beyond the horizon requires an early start.

It doesn't always look like this, indeed the heavy cloud seen here that adds to this image later became a block to the golden light of sunrise off the Irish coast.

But with this image from 04:15 in July, calm conditions were at least a bonus compared to previous days at Antrim's Giant's Causeway and over in the west in County Mayo.