The Irish coastline is full of variation with long sandy beaches, rocky inlets and geological formations in a compact area.

And that makes Ireland a perfect place for coastal landscape photography.

Here the rocks are carboniferous limestone, in layers that have been long eroded by the wave action of the Atlantic.

We set up our cameras and tripods on the cold winter afternoon, hoping for some sunlight but actually in this case the overcast weather worked better.

I was at this point only a few weeks away from having an operation to remove a cancerous tumour, and during that time it was scenes like this that kept me motivated in my treatment and recovery.

I'm almost a year post-cancer; I'm still photographing, I'm still leading photography workshops and tours in Ireland and you can book a private photography session with me through the site here at Panoramic Ireland.

Send me an email to ask about photo workshops in your area of Ireland.

Some snow in the Irish mountains, I knew that winter wasn't over yet back in January.

After quite an adventure where the roads were snowbound today, having to reverse down a mountain side as progress was non-grippy, slippy and, in the end, impossible.

In fact the car ahead of me had already run into troubles on the steep incline, there were patches of compacted snow and ice across the road, particularly where sunlight hadn't reached over the past few days, after all I was climbing up the northern slopes of the mountains.

Ah, the notoriously bad weather in Ireland. Well there's a reputation that the Irish climate is unsuitable for photography. But it's not all true.

Sure there are stormy days, rainy days and grey sky days. But there are plenty of blue sky days, sunny days, calm days and even on those bad days there is always something to photograph.

It has been a foggy few days here and I have been photographing in some new locations, while I'm working on the images here is one, the picture above, of a fabulously foggy day in the Irish countryside taken during summer.

This post marks Panoramic Ireland's 500th blog post here on panoramicirelanc.com.

A year after treatment for cancer and I am still posting of photographic adventures throughout Ireland.

The image above is of Cork, the River Lee at night and Saint Finbarre's Cathedral. I photographed this fine scene for Eater, the world's most popular food website as part of their Where to eat in 2020 and Cork was one of the few cities in Europe to be on the list. Have a look at the images and Cork article here.

The sun sets on another day, another solar year passes, the days get longer from now on - Ireland and the northern hemisphere pass the the winter solstice.

In Ireland the winter solstice has long been an important point of the year, Ireland's most famous monument at Newgrange is aligned with sunrise on the winter solstice (December 21/22) - read more here.

Reflected in the western beach Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way greets the colourful sunset, beaming from sheeny sands.

What to photograph in Ireland when the weather isn't good? 

That's a question I get asked a lot, and it isn't difficult to answer. There is always a fine scene to photograph in any locality on any day.

On this occasion as the rain began to fall, it was this lake in the west of Ireland, the soft and rugged contours of the region and its conifer forest reflecting in the calm lake waters.

We've had snow so far this winter in Ireland, here's a post from earlier this month at the start of December 2019 of snow in the Irish mountains.

But it looks like it will be a snow-free Christmas on the Emerald Isle.

So, here's an image from this week, a few days before Christmas from the west of Ireland.

Ireland doesn't get a lot of snow but when it does it is a sight for sore eyes. Here the mountains of the west of Ireland sit icy white above the golden colours of the bogland landscape.

I have written about snow a lot before here on Panoramic Ireland, here are some more articles.

Dublin's Samuel Beckett Bridge was installed in 2009, it celebrates 10 years this year of spanning the River Liffey and is dedicated to the Nobel Prize for Literature winning writer and playwright, Samuel Beckett.

Interestingly the architect of the Samuel Beckett Bridge Santiago Calatrava has already designed a bridge for Dublin dedicated to another of the city's famous writers, James Joyce.

Despite assurances from all of the self-proclaimed experts on long range weather forecasting in Ireland, summer 2019 has not been as good as 2018 and is on par with 2017 as having been grey, windy, rainy, grey, windy, rainy...

It has at least been warm, but for photography it has been challenging. The winds, while not hurricane strength have nonetheless been constant in their presence and changeable in their direction and speed.

In other words, tripod-toppling weather.

Here is one from a tour in the west of Ireland, as the sun's rays shone through the thick, fast-moving cloud onto the choppy harbour waters of the Atlantic. The greens of the fields aglow with stormy light.