Happy New Year (plus a week!) & Bonus Sunrise Photos!
Crow Gathering at Sunrise Over the Slaney Estuary, Co. Wexford, Ireland, January 2026
As I was sitting down to write a happy new year post, I realised that it was already a week old. Mind you, if you watch or read the news at all, it feels more like six months old. Anyway, my wife and I spent the first few days on a little break in one of our favourite places in Co. Wexford, which is about two hours south of us here in Dublin. We stayed in our favourite hotel, which has amazing views out over the estuary of the river Slaney.
While we had gone here this time last year too, this trip was shorter and the primary purpose was just to relax for a few days. However, the hotel does have one cool feature for photographers. Well, ok, it’s not designed for photographers, but it is a benefit! All the rooms have balconies and all the rooms face out into the estuary. Not only that, but the sun rises directly in front of you this time of the year, So you can get incredible sunrise images directly out of your hotel room without having to go trekking out in the cold!
But wait, there’s more! The estuary itself is something of a wildlife sanctuary, and there’s a colony of crows that roost on the far bank! In the mornings they fly over to the hotel and back again as they start their day, and it leads to some spectacular scenes. One of them was so surreal, I was almost afraid to post it because I thought people might think it was AI.
Overall, we had a nice relaxing time, and it was a nice start to the year. Looking back over this blog, I realise that I didn’t post very often here last year at all, with a measly eight posts. That's not even one a month! Part of this was that I had been frustrated with my website (which I have since upgraded, but it’s still frustrating) and the rest of it is just down to a really bad case of imposter syndrome. But I really do hope to change it this year.
I spent an hour earlier this week writing out my new year’s goals, and one of them was to post more regularly. I want to try to post on this at least once a week, and hopefully that's not too ambitious. In case you’re wondering, the reason I have two separate blogs / websites is because Squarespace doesn’t let you toggle the sidebar on and off for individual posts. I wanted to be able to have the sidebar on for more news like posts and off for purely photo related posts. Anyway, that’s why I have two separate blogs. It’s messy, but the only way I could figure out how to do it.
Anyway, I’m getting off-topic! I just wanted to say a quick Happy New Year and share some of my photos that I took over the new year’s break! More to come soon! Hopefully.