Ireland's fine scenery, as in a recent post looks as good in grey and cloudy weather as in sunshine and blue skies.

A case in point, here in the northwest, in County Donegal this landscape of granite mountains covered in a soft, boggy carpet with just delicate highlights and shadows across the empty scene.

This, a glaciated valley features steep sides hundreds of metres in height.

Join me, Panoramic Ireland, to photograph landscapes like these.

I often get asked about photography and visiting Ireland, one of the most common questions is "What is there to photograph when the weather isn't good?"

Well even in summer, like here in this image, the weather can be grey and often rainy but it's still scenic.

And yet it is how Ireland often is, not the bright sunshine and blue sky of typical postcard images. The landscape is sympathtic to the soft weather of an Irish day.

There's a poetry to the landscape in such conditions as here in Donegal and although I typically head for woodlands in grey weather, I do still enjoy photographing the open landscape with the distant grey of mountains melding in with the grey of the sky.

Join Panoramic Ireland to photograph in the Irish landscape throughout the year.

Are you visiting Ireland out of season? While most head to the Emerald Isle during the longer days of summer when temperatures are higher, the autumn, winter and spring offer much more interest photographically.

Recently I was asked what Ireland is like in October, is it worth coming to for photography and of course my answer was indeed it is worth visiting in October.

Here are some of my favourite images from Octobers over the years, a small selection but waterfalls and woodlands make up a lot of the locations.

National Heritage Week, Ireland: 12/08/2023 - 20/08/2023

National Heritage Week runs from 12th-20th August 2023 and sees events in every county in Ireland. This year’s theme is exploring the traditions and practices, knowledge, and skills passed down through generations.

Here are some of Panoramic Ireland’s picks for the week:

ECO Inishowen: Celebrating locals involved in sustainability as well as the natural heritage of Inishowen

Date & Time: 17 August, 12:30pm - 2:30pm

Location: Colgan Hall, Carndonagh, Chapel St, Gort Glebe, Carndonagh, Co. Donegal

Bat Talk in Roscommon Castle: Join ecologist David Fallon to learn about the bats living in Roscommon Castle and use a bat detector.

Date & Time: 12 August, 9pm - 10pm

Location: Roscommon Castle, Loughnaneane Park, Roscommon Town Centre, Co. Roscommon

Nano Nagle Place Markets: At Cork’s impressive Nano Nagle Place, winner of the Council of Europe’s Museum Prize in 2022, local craftspeople sell and discuss their creations.

Date & Time: 12 - 13 August, 11am - 4pm

Location: Nano Nagle Place, South Presentation Centre Ltd, Douglas Street, Cork City

Whale Watch Ireland 2023: All-Ireland Whale Watch Day. Join the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group to learn more about cetaceans and hopefully spot some off the coast between Ireland and Scotland.

Date & Time: 19 August, 2pm - 4pm

Location: Meeting at RSPB West Light Seabird Centre, Rathlin Island, Co. Antrim

Also On: 19 August, 2pm - 4pm at Car park at Portmuck, Island Magee, Co. Antrim

Carpentry and Joinery: Join Carpenter Martin Wilson, deeply knowledgeable in traditional building and restoration techniques, to explore the tools and methods integral to joinery.

Date & Time: 18 August, 6pm - 8pm

Location: Martin Wilson Workshop, Crockacullion, Beltra, F91 PY83, Co. Sligo

Fort to Fort: Venture with local historian Una Walsh as she takes you through the scenic path between Corliss and Lisleitrim, two noteworthy raths situated in the picturesque, hilly landscapes of South Armagh.

Date & Time: 12 August, 4pm - 6pm

Location: Corliss Fort, Corliss, Crossmaglen, BT35 9AY, Co. Armagh

Clonmel in the Middle Ages: Archaeologist with Ireland’s National Monuments Service, Jean Farrelly, will give a talk on the history of Tipperary’s largest town.

Date & Time: 16 August, 6pm - 7pm

Location: Emmet Street, Clonmel, E91 YW66, Co. Tipperary

Walled Garden at Strokestown Park House Visitor Centre: During Heritage Week, the volunteer gardeners will give advice and show how the gardens are cultivated today compared with 300 years ago.

Date & Time: 14 - 17 August, 12pm - 4pm

Location: Strokestown Park House Visitor Centre, Strokestown Park House, Co. Roscommon

Poetry by the Barrow: Barrow Bards are entertaining on the theme of Water Heritage Day and Town of Books Festival with poetry celebrating the Barrow and Duiske rivers, their importance to the local area.

Date & Time: 20 August, 3:30pm - 4:30pm

Location: Duiske Inn (outside), Main Street, Graignamanagh, Co Kilkenny, R95 DH00

River Barrow Safari: Also on in Graignamanagh is a walk and talk with well-known broadcaster and biologist Éanna Ní Lamhna

Date & Time: 20 August, 2:15pm - 3:15pm

Location: Outdoor Activity Hub, The Docks Graignamanagh, Co Kilkenny, R95 EKN5

The Fair of Muff: An ancient horse fair held annually in August. The Fair of Muff has plenty of traditional activities and characters in the rural County Cavan townland - not to be confused with the Muff in Donegal. Will you be heading for Muff this weekend?

Date & Time: 12 August, 9am - 6pm

Location: Muff Cross, Kingscourt, Co. Cavan

It’s coming up to Electric Picnic time again. Ireland’s largest music festival is set to return to Stradbally from the 1st to 3rd of September 2023 with a big line up featuring Billie Eilish, The Killers, Paolo Nutini, Niall Horan, The Wolfe Tones and Rick Astley among others.

All tickets are sold out but you can still get to head to EP2023. 

Every year for the past 13 years Electric Picnic have run the Tour de Picnic, a charity cycle that gives you, and others like you who have missed out on tickets, the opportunity to fundraise for good causes and challenge yourself.

Entry is still open for the Tour de Picnic but you need to be quick as the cut off date for fundraising is the 18th of August.

This year you can partake in an 80km cycle or, for those of us lucky enough not to have shin splints, a 17km run.

The charities supported in 2023 are Children's Health Foundation, ISPCC, and Jack and Jill Children's Foundation.

Each participant will need to raise €450 and in return will receive a three-day ticket to Electric Picnic that includes camping.

All the information is up on the website at: https://www.tourdepicnic.ie/faqs-info

But before you go rushing out to just sponsor yourself €450, you do need to actually partake in and complete the Tour de Picnic before you get your ticket.

Get stretching and good luck!

Ireland is not short of fantastic coastlines and of course as an Irish landscape photographer seascapes make up an important part of my collecton.

It should come as no surprise too that for the workshops and tours that I organise throughout Ireland, I recommend the coast often and get asked about the coast.

Here, a scene from a cloudy evening. After finishing up photographing some more well-known scenes from the Irish coast we set our sights on a tranquil scene of a calm Atlantic Ocean.

This image is one of my favourites from the evening's workshop.

Join me, Panoramic Ireland, on a photography workshop to Ireland's sometimes wild and sometimes serene coast all year round.

Kildare Town

I visited Kildare Town recently and the grounds of Saint Brigid’s Cathedral and round tower. See more about one of Ireland’s three patron saints, Brigid, here.

Having recently read about a visit to Kildare by a descendent of one of its most famous citizens, William ‘Squires’ Gannon.

Squires Gannon was captain of Kildare’s Gaelic Football team and won two all-Ireland finals, in 1927 against Kerry, and in 1928 against Cavan, becoming the first captain and first team to lift the GAA’s Sam Maguire Cup.

Interestingly Kerry are playing in this year’s final, aiming to retain and lift the Sam Maguire tomorrow, Sunday 30th July 2023. Kerry have won the All-Ireland 38 times, Dublin 30 times. But Kerry have won the Sam Maguire 31 times, and Dublin only 16 times.

That of course means Dublin won the All-Ireland more times before 1928. As a native of neither place but a visitor to both I will be watching the final with interest.

Saint Brigid’s Cathedral

Saint Brigid’s Cathedral is one of the finest buildings in Kildare Town, the building itself dates to 1223 but the site is much older and earlier churches would have existed here. Most of what you see though dates to the 1890s. The round tower though is older, dating to the 1100s is Ireland’s second tallest at 32 metres and is climbable, when open. The crenellations or battlements were added in the 1730s having originally been a conical hat like with most original round tower design.

Kilmacduagh in Galway is the tallest round tower in Ireland which I have visited and photographed so expect an article soon.

Anyway, I found the story of Squires Gannon to be interesting, his place in history recently commemorated by a statue in Kildare Town.

Dublin’s once famous Ormond Hotel featured in the Sirens episode of James Joyce’s famous Ulysses.

Much changed during the 20th century after visits by James Joyce and his famous fictional character Leopold Bloom, the hotel became derelict in the early 21st century, over 100 years after Bloom made his journey across Dublin on 16th June 1904.

The hotel was built in the 1840s and became well-known, enough for Joyce to base part of Ulysses here. But the intervening years have not been kind or sympathetic to either the original layout or the hotel as it was when Joyce visited after it had been enlarged in 1910. Ulysses was published in 1920 although it was set in 1904.

There has, nevertheless, been a campaign to retain the buildings as they are and indeed one of the planning conditions are that the building, after construction must operate as a hotel and retain the name Ormond Hotel.

Numbers 7 to 11 are due to be removed but no. 7 on the right still remains, bedecked in ‘Do Not Remove’ graffiti, which is also referenced in this large piece of street art.

To the right, in this image you can see Number 6 which is a protected structure and dates to 1686 just a decade after Ormond Quay was reclaimed from the river and its marshy edges.

To the left, numbers 12 and 13 are protected structures dating from the early part of the 18th century and will form part of the hotel redevelopment but have to be incorporated into the new development.

There is no doubt that the Ormond Hotel was an important and historic part of Dublin’s old and modern fabric, but there is also no doubt that the building had become an eyesore in recent decades.

The best course of action to prevent urban decay, and there is a lot of decay and degeneration in Ireland, not just in Dublin, is to prevent key buildings such as the Ormond Hotel from becoming disused and dilapidated in the first place.

The redevelopment of the Ormond Hotel was due to be finished in 2020, but it is still nowhere near getting off the ground in what seems like an appropriately epic story.

I have posted about Dublin’s Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary before; it sits now beside modern buildings along the south quays on the city’s River Liffey.

Known as the Dockers’ Church it was built in 1863, opened in 1864 and became a parish church in 1908; its quayside position on the busy River Liffey meant that many of the dockworkers frequented the masses held there and today it has a strong congregation of old and new with many of the new arrivals working in Ireland’s tech sector now attending on a regular basis.

Those new buildings, including the one seen here just beside the church, a workplace for some of the new workers in Ireland’s services industry have contributed to some ill-feeling on account of size, shading and overshadowing the church.

As a result, due to local protests, in 2018 the developer of many of these buildings contributed over €3 million to a fund to repair and restore the church and its surroundings. The City Quay school (jigsaw building) received €1 million and the remainder went to the church.

After some works to the front, most of the €2 million has been transferred to the Archdiocese of Dublin; the Archbishop of Dublin is the parish priest of the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Currently the interior of the church is in bad condition with damp, mould, decay and in much need of repair, but the parish can’t now use the funds it received from the developers.

The exterior view, seen here with reflections in the calm River Liffey at night, is much more pleasant than the peeling-paint interior.

It’s a story that will continue to provide interest, to someone at least.

I took a return to Dublin's famous swimming location, the 40-Foot or Forty Foot on Dublin Bay recently.

Swimmers were braving the not-so-cold, but stormy waters of the Irish Sea south of Ireland's capital on Dublin Bay.

A beautiful place to swim, to visit and to photograph I'm sure you'll agree.

Here, one of my previous visits: https://panoramicireland.com/blog-ireland-guide/forty-40-foot-dublin-irish-sea-swimming