I visited Donegal over the weekend to meet a great group of like-minded people and do a little thing called a Photowalk. Ah what John? This is one of the many reasons I love Social Media, not only are you given the chance to engage with lots and lots of folks you could never hope to in real life, sometimes you are also presented with the opportunity to actually meet them in real live. It’s very cool. And that is exactly what happened over the weekend thanks to Google+. Myself and a good friend packed the car up on Friday morning and headed down to the most north westerly peninsula of Ireland, namely Inishowen. We spent a non-stop three days shooting including a meet-up with a dozen or so other photographers of all walks of life and skill level on a very blustery saturday at Pollan Beach. You can see more of our escapades over on the Google+ Event.
This image was captured on the Friday night after travelling 5 hours straight from Dublin. We had done our research of the area, which neither of us had been too before. Using Google Maps, Google Earth, Ordinance Survey Maps and TPE we had selected some likely locations for Sunrise, Sunset and Day-time shooting. Glenaff Bay, also known as Urris by the locals was our chosen spot for the first Sunset. I was feeling a little underwhelmed when we pulled up the car I must admit. While we were heading quickly towards 8.28pm and sunset the cloud cover was very dense. Undeterred I roamed the area for a likely spot to shoot the hoped for sunset. It’s probably best not to describe how precarious my perch was for this image but lets just say the tripod was offering me as much support as it was the camera. As a waited ever hopeful for the sun to just peak out of those heavy clouds I was rewarded with the briefest of moments. Indeed when I look back at the frames I captured this amazing light lasted just under 2 minutes and 20 seconds, and this was the only frame where everything came together and that beautiful light just kissed the tops of the rocks. So the moral of the story is that sometimes preparedness and patience are paid off in spades.
