The first line of advice here is: if you think a memory card is going bad, stop using it! Check out my tips at the bottom for how to keep your memory card working well.

Back in 2010 I was travelling the Irish countryside, much like I do today and I stopped to photograph the little visited Ahenny crosses in County Tipperary. These 8th century sandstone crosses are some of the finest early Christian stone craft in Ireland and the first to be made from stone rather than wood, hence they bear some details that come from the wooden crosses.

Light is important in photography, especially in landscape photography.

I have written about the difference in light and its effects on the look and feel of a landscape image here.

The two images in this post is from one of my favourite places in Ireland, the west coast - taken two nights apart.

Landscape photography is an interesting pursuit, sometimes you end up with blue skies and sunny conditions and sometimes the moody, dramatic image as seen here.

Weather does play a factor, here we had the drama of an Irish sky, a little bit of blue but mostly diffuse light and really quite suitable to the subject matter in this case. Rugged, blocky rocks and a waterfall that cascades into the sea - in fact it's the Atlantic Ocean crashing here upon the shore.

It has been a sad old year, 2019. News broke in 2018 that Google Plus, the much derided social network, would close in April 2019.

January also saw me diagnosed with cancer, have a tumour removed and in March receive chemotherapy.

Both of these things have it seems coincided.

Sunset from one of my favourite vantage points, looking west towards the setting sun.

It has been a difficult year so far, 2019, a diagnosis of cancer in January, an operation to remove a large tumour and this week, at the end of March, chemotherapy.

At each stage as throughout the past 20 years, photography has been a big part of my life.

Polarising filters, also known as polarisers or circular polarisers are essential filters in any photographer's kit.

Usually in the form of a screw-in filter, polarisers block out some polarised light allowing only light travelling in one direction to pass through the filter to reach the sensor.

Simply, we use polarisers for one reason - to reduce glare or reflected light from objects or subjects. 

The West of Ireland - what does it conjure up in your imagination?

For me, the imagination is real, a place I visit and explore and enjoy and live in often. Those wide open spaces, rugged mountains of weathered rock just holding their own against the creeping boglands that cover the region.

This is a scene that conveys that western image, the bogland looking russety and the mountains just as I described above, ancient and just protruding enough to catch low cloud seemingly wisping across the gentle slopes.

Northern Ireland's most photographed road, the Dark Hedges on Bregagh Road known to many Game of Thrones fans around the world as the King's Road needs little introduction.

It is a scenic, leafy avenue of beech trees close to the UNESCO World Heritage Site The Giant's Causeway.

It is also a place that I enjoy photographing in, even with the challenges of overtourism that have blighted this leafily scenic route to the coast.

Sunsets are a strange thing, amazing to watch and enjoy yet many feel that they are not worthy of a place in landscape photography.

It's an interesting idea, the concept of not photographing one of the most spectacular, and common, natural events that you can witness.

Never the same twice, the sunset can give us plenty to think about as photographers of landscapes, as artists and as travellers in a foreign land and opportunities to work on photographic and artistic skills.

Crepuscular rays shining from behind late evening clouds in the west of Ireland

Towards sunset or sunrise as the angle of sunlight is low in the sky, rays shining across the sky illuminating dust in the atmosphere create crepuscular rays, a series of parallel beams of light that appear to converge on or indeed emerge from the sun.

The upper rays seen here, beaming across the sky are crepuscular rays.