This has been a weird year for me. Photographically speaking. It’s nearly the middle of June, and yet, I’ve taken far fewer photographs than I normally do. Months of relentless weather and the mental fog that comes with living through an anxious, uncertain world have all taken their toll. In this post, I look at how distractions, self-doubt, and even a frustrating gear issue gradually chipped away at the simple urge to go out and shoot. Along the way, I get distracted by broader cultural issues, including the uneasy role AI is playing for many of us, but I do bring it back to photography and why it matters now more than ever. It’s quite philosophical, honest. Oh, and there are some photos too!

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.

As many of my long-term followers have probably noted, I haven’t posted nearly as much in this past year as I have previously. While my blogging has been tapering off for a while, 2024 was undoubtedly my least productive. In this post, I wanted to touch on that a little bit as well as cover some of the more positive things from the past year too. I also wanted to share some photos and other tales that I never got to share in 2024. This will probably be a long post, so buckle up, or maybe get some coffee!

Recently, I’ve been on sort of a Landscape and nature photography kick, so on a recent weekend, we headed to one of my favourite places to photograph on the east coast of Ireland, a place called Glendalough.

With the new year already begun I thought I’d take a brief pause to look back on the last year in terms of photography.

When it comes to photography, I have a lot of differing tastes. I don’t just mean photographic genres, bur rather images that appeal to me. I like good composition and storytelling as much as the next person, but I also have an affiliation for colour and texture. And sometimes, Nature provides us with an abundance of both of these.

This time last year, I posted a story on this blog called “Virtual Spring”. We were in the midst of lockdown and I couldn’t get out to get any photos of the changing seasons. While autumn has always been my favourite season to photography, spring is a close second. I love as the bleakness of winter gives way to new life, and it clears out the cupboards of one’s mind, as it were.

We recently decided to head out to the mountains to photography a nice spring day in national park in Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, but when we got there a cloud had descended. Long with the still bare moss covered trees, our jaunt in the sun became a trip into a fantasy story in a mysterious forested land…

While my wife and I have travelled throughout the world, there are large parts of Ireland we haven’t visited. People often ask us about various famous locations around the country and we have to respond that we’ve never been. When Covid struck, and the world turned upside down, we aimed to fix that and began exploring our own little nation that much more. Last year we visited the southeast, and a few weeks ago, we decided to spend a little time exploring part of the west coast, and drove some of the famous “Wild Atlantic Way”.

Near to where I live is what is a rather remarkable place to find in a city. Called “Airfield”, it is a 38 acre site which features a 19th century estate, gardens and a fully working farm. Recently, on an overcast and rainy day, my wife and I paid a visit to the estate for a walk around the gardens, to get away from the outside world for a few hours and I ended up taking a ridiculous number of photos.

This weekend we visited a stately home and gardens in Co. Wicklow (in Ireland) that has opened up to the public. Funnily enough, this was near to where I grew up, but I never even knew it was there. The Kilruddery estate, which has a “Tudor revival” style mansion based on a 17th-century foundation, and is also a working farm, and has beautiful grounds and gardens.

Another virtual exhibit. This time of summer photos, taken over the past ten years, between May and September. Summer is one of my least favourite times to take photos. It’s not that I don’t like taking photos in Summer, it’s just that I prefer Autumn and Spring. But looking back I still have lots of photos of summer, and there’s still lots to enjoy. I love the colours of flowers and the green of the full trees.

It’s been about two months now since the lockdown began here in Ireland. It feels like two years. We’ve slowly gotten used to the new routine, and while frustrating, it’s become par for the course. Everyday, I get up and try and go for a walk to get some exercise, but the government guidelines until recently were to stay within 2km. This has made it seem like the world has collapsed to a much smaller place than it previously was. I guess this is what it was like in olden times when people rarely strayed past their villages.

After a long winter, the days start to get longer, and the weather begins to warm up. Outside, nature begins to return to life, and there’s nothing more liberating for the soul after months of dark and cold days than enjoying the beauty of nature as Spring takes hold. Unfortunately, with the current situation of a global pandemic forcing half of the world to stay indoors, this isn’t something that we can really do this year. So I decided to go back through my old photographs of Spring and create a little virtual spring exhibition! 

I’ve had this idea in the back of my head for a few days and I wanted to act on it. For some reason, Ive had this urge to take out my macro lens and shoot some macro shots. So today I grabbed my camera and the afore mentioned lens and headed out to a local park to see what I could see. 

Autumn is by far my favourite time of year for taking photos, but sometimes I feel like I’ve done it all before. I’m always trying to do something different, to shake things up a bit, and so recently I had an idea. Instead of doing the usual and focus on the autumn colours, I would instead see if I could make some interesting images of autumn textures.

The last time I went to Glendalough to shoot has ended up being the gift that keeps on giving. Every now and then I go back to my collection of images from the day and discover something else, or rediscover a shot that I’d dismissed. In this case, I discovered a series of shots of the tree line that I had previously glossed over. 

Last weekend I went to one of my favourite spots in Ireland, the Glendalough National Park, which is home to some spectacular scenery, and is a glacial valley in the wicklow mountains. Along with the spectacular scenery, there was some spectacular light too. The weather was changeable to say the least, and a continuous series of clouds and showers danced across the scenery.

I was out in the formal gardens in the Powerscourt Estate in co. Wicklow, which is a local tourist attraction. It’s an old stately home in the countryside in the county where I grew up. It’s quite famous in the area, and has been featured in several movies over the years, most notably The Count of Monte Cristo. They have some lovely ornate gardens, and my wife and I were talking a walk through them over the weekend. 

I happened to be in the right place at the right time the other day to capture an amazing sunset. While travelling back on the ferry from Holyhead to Dublin, the sea was calm and the sky was beautiful, and as we reached the middle of the journey the sun set on the horizon, in a beautiful display of reds and golds.