In Photos dot Org

  • When a Building Came Down

    A silver Peugeot 206 with Irish registration "00-SO-599" crushed flat from above, its roof caved in and a large lorry tyre resting on the wreckage, parked on a pavement in front of a blue-fronted shop displaying mannequins in dresses with an "OPEN" sign on the door and a toppled red-and-white "INFO" sign lying beside it.

    Castle Street in Cork with a black-and-white "CASTLE STREET" street sign on the wall, showing the "irish cancer society" shopfront, "Satellite Dry Cleaners", a "Suits & Leather Jackets From €49.95" sign further down, the crushed silver Peugeot with a tyre on its roof on the pavement, a man in a white hard hat and dark jacket walking towards the camera, rubble across the road, and a second tyre in the foreground.

    August 2009, Castle Street in Cork. A building that had been under renovation gave up and came down, taking a chunk of the terrace with it and flattening a silver Peugeot 206 that had the misfortune of
    being parked on the pavement. The roof is caved in like a tin can someone stood on, with a lorry tyre perched on top for good measure.

    The wider shots tell the rest of the story: a clean gap in the row of shops, the neighbour’s render suddenly exposed to the weather, rubble spilling into the street, workers on a Manitou telehandler assessing the damage while the rest of Castle Street, Satellite Dry Cleaners, the Irish Cancer Society charity shop and everyone else carried on as best it could. Miraculously, nobody was hurt. The Peugeot was less lucky.


    Apertureƒ/9
    CameraCanon EOS 40D
    Focal length18mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/200s

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  • Elvis the Taxi Driver

    A man in a dark blazer and blue checked shirt gesturing mid-stride on a cobbled pedestrian crossing on St Patrick's Street in Cork, with Penneys behind him, a purple banner reading "Rembrandt" on a lamppost, a parked blue Ford Focus, pedestrians on the pavement, and a sheep-patterned shopping bag held by a seated figure in the bottom-left corner.

    Derry “Elvis” Coughlan is a local taxi driver in Cork. Here he was on St. Patrick’s Street in 2021. He was walking towards an older man with bags of shopping who would probably need a lift home.

    I don’t think I’ve seen Derry around since then. Not someone who appears to have an online presence either.


    Apertureƒ/4
    CameraILCE-7M3
    Focal length16mm
    ISO800
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • Barefoot on the Dunes

    A woman in a grey jumper and pale blue shorts walking barefoot across a sunlit sand dune, sandals in hand, hair blown sideways by the wind, with a moody grey sky above and a thin strip of sea visible on the right.

    We’d climbed up onto the dunes just as the weather turned. One minute it was postcard Fuerteventura. Bright sand, blue sea, the whole thing was beautiful and the next a slab of grey had slid in off the Atlantic and parked itself overhead. Suddenly we were running for our cars as rain pelted down.

    But that was 5 minutes into the future. For now people were enjoying the dunes in Fuerteventura.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length230mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/1000s

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  • An Emerald at Fota

    This handsome iguana was lounging on a branch in the hothouse at Fota Wildlife Park this morning. He didn’t seem bothered by the passing crowds: kids, parents and inquisitive photographers with the wrong lenses.

    A bit of cropping and I had the frame I wanted. That red-rimmed stare never left me though, watching from the log, belying the relaxed sprawl.


    Apertureƒ/5
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length150mm
    ISO4000
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • Lá Fhéile Pádraig in Fire and Light

    We were standing across from Cobh in the park on Haulbowline Island to photograph the fireworks display over Cobh on St. Patrick’s Day this year. With a camera on a tripod, timing a fireworks display is basically an exercise in optimistic guesswork. When I see the firework launch, I press the shutter button, hope a burst lands in frame, and try not to jostle the camera and tripod as the photo is taken. Sometimes if the burst is impressive I’ll forget to take my finger off the shutter button to stop the exposure which I think happened here. Luckily, this one landed well.

    The main burst came out in rich gold and blue, with a lower white chrysanthemum bloom adding a second layer of detail, and the town lights of Cobh strung out across the bottom of the frame giving the whole thing a sense of place. The harbour itself picks up just a faint glimmer of the reflection.

    Ten minutes of intense concentration and then it’s over. Phew.

    I shared a photo from this night shortly after the fireworks display but I think it’s nice to post a fireworks shot every now and again. They’re so pretty and get lost if too many are posted in one go!


    Apertureƒ/5.6
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO320
    Shutter speed4s

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  • Where the Dingle Coast Meets the Swell

    Clogher Beach in early March is not what you’d call hospitable. This little cove on the Dingle Peninsula opens straight onto the Atlantic, and the swell hits the slate head-on; the spray goes up twice as high as the wave itself. I was there with Blarney Photography Club, all of us strung out along the beach in heavy coats, pretending we weren’t freezing.

    I kept the shutter short enough to freeze the break but long enough to let the water show some texture and pulled the exposure down a touch to protect the foam. You have to use burst mode in situations like this and going through the images in Lightroom makes a timelapse movie of the waves enveloping the rocks in a very dramatic way.


    Apertureƒ/6.3
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length160mm
    ISO160
    Shutter speed1/2000s

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  • A chance match in Catalonia

    I spotted her first, then the bush, then the coincidence. Walking through Palafrugell one July afternoon, I saw this lady carrying her shopping bag back from the market. I kept the frame cropped tight: no face, just arm, fabric, and the tanned, weathered hand holding a shopping bag off to the side.

    This is probably a journey she has made many times before. This is a small snapshot of her daily life. How many times have you carried a shopping bag home? I’m sure she’d scoff if she saw this photo of ordinary life.


    Apertureƒ/4
    CameraILCE-7M3
    Focal length35mm
    ISO2000
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • Forty on the Way Down

    We pulled in at the Mirador de Guise y Ayose and after photographing the statues there like everyone else (I have yet to post those photos, stay tuned) I pointed the camera at this little red-ringed 40 sign keeping watch by the road. Which is funny, because the view behind it is the whole reason anyone stops here: the central spine of Fuerteventura folding down into the Atlantic, lit up like someone had turned up the contrast knob on the hills while leaving the sea a flat, hazy blue.

    The sign made me laugh though. Forty kilometres an hour on a road where every bend hands you a new postcard? You’d be lucky to manage twenty. You know the Conor Pass in Kerry? The road surface is better in Fuerteventura, but all that separates you from the cliff beyond are small white blocks or thin guardrails. Take a look on Google Maps and switch to street view to see.

    I shot the photo at f/8 but the hills are so far away they go soft behind the sign, and I rather like how the red ring anchors all that orange and ochre. A reminder, I suppose, that the best landscapes are the ones you slow right down for, sign or no sign.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length240mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • Moya Brennan at Cork Opera House

    The news broke this morning that Moya Brennan passed away yesterday, and this photo has been on my mind ever since I heard. I took it at Cork Opera House on the 2nd of March 2020, during Clannad’s Farewell Tour. What a strange, loaded date that turned out to be. Barely a fortnight later the country shut down, venues went dark, and the idea of standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a theatre listening to a voice like hers felt like something from another era.

    They put on a fabulous performance that night, and I’m so glad we got to see them.

    Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam.


    Apertureƒ/6.3
    CameraILCE-7M3
    Focal length300mm
    ISO25600
    Shutter speed1/320s

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  • Dome with a View

    St Paul's Cathedral dome rising above Victorian and modern buildings, viewed from the Millennium Bridge, with a crowd of pedestrians in the foreground under an overcast sky; the nearest figures include a young man in glasses with a dark T-shirt showing a Norwegian flag and partial text "PROGR", a bespectacled man in a pale blue shirt, and a woman in sunglasses and a light blue top.

    I stopped halfway across the Millennium Bridge and pointed the camera north, which turned out to be the same thing roughly nine thousand other people were doing that afternoon. I looked behind me and there was another group of tourists with their phones raised taking much the same photo I have here.

    St. Paul’s Cathedral was in the background but I was interested in the people, contrasting the ever-present building with the steady stream of humanity flowing past me.


    Apertureƒ/9
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length89mm
    ISO160
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • Sant Martí from the Side Street

    Several years ago I’d been wandering around the narrow streets of Palafrugell’s old town when I came across the Sant Martí de Palafrugell and I loved to see it in the early morning light.

    The sky was perfectly clear which isn’t great but the surrounding streets were quiet and it seemed appropriate. Everything was still. The unfinished tower of the church caught my eye, making me think of the cathedral in Málaga.

    The original church on this site dates from around 1019, but the present building was constructed at the end of the 15th century. There’s a Wikipedia article about it here, but you may need to ask your browser for a translation if you don’t speak Catalan.


    Apertureƒ/4
    CameraILCE-7M3
    Focal length35mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/800s

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  • Gold on the Mountain at Gougane Barra

    The cloud had been sitting on the mountains all morning like a hat pulled down over its eyes, and then for about fifteen minutes the sun broke through low and side-on and set the entire rock face above Gougane Barra on fire.

    The golds and ambers were almost absurd. It was the kind of light you’d dial back in post because nobody would believe it was real. Mist was still threading through the peaks, which gave the valley that layered depth you only get when the weather can’t make up its mind. Down at the lake, the reeds had turned the colour of tea and the water was calm enough to throw back a passable reflection of the whole show.

    Gougane Barra is one of those places that photographs well on a grey day, but when it decides to perform, it properly performs.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7M3
    Focal length50mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/640s

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