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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Dome with a View
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…
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….
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…
The Lone Boat at O’Sullivan’s Cascade
There was a single boat on our little corner of the Lakes of Killarney. I’d walked down from O’Sullivan’s Cascade to join other photographers from Blarney Photography Club. They were busy photographing the same scene you see here and everything around them. We were enjoying the afternoon sunlight on a calm October day last year.
The Most British Office in London
Someone chose to put two Union Jack armchairs and an exercise ball in their office window for all of London to see. I spotted this walking past an office block and the arrangement stopped me mid-stride. The chairs are proper wingbacks, upholstered in full flag regalia, flanking a slightly deflated-looking exercise ball that’s doing its…
Shandon Above the Shopfronts
Cork’s Pope Quay packs more character into two hundred metres than most cities manage in a mile. I was standing on the south bank with the River Lee between us, drawn initially by the sweep of that pedestrian footbridge. It’s a clean, modern arc that sits surprisingly well against the jumble of modern, Georgian and…












