Cottage, the Burren, Co. Clare

The red roof is what made me stop the car. I was driving through the Burren, and that splash of rusting zinc against all the grey limestone and green fields caught my eye. I put the drone up, not very high. Maybe fifty or sixty feet. That was enough.

From the road, it was a nice enough scene. From that slight elevation, the whole landscape opened up. The dry stone walls became leading lines, converging across the fields toward an enormous dark squall building on the horizon. The cottage sat right in the centre of it all, perfectly placed. And there, at the base of the storm, a fragment of rainbow. Just a piece of one, barely there, but enough.

I was lucky to get the drone back before the rain hit. I could see it striking the ground maybe a mile away, moving fast. No trees out here, nothing to slow the weather down. Within two minutes of landing, it was absolutely pelting!

Those abandoned cottages scattered across the limestone tell you so much about how people lived here, farming thin soils inside hand-built walls. The walls are still standing. The roof is holding on, for now. I'm delighted I stopped the car that day, because this has become one of my favourite images from the whole Atlantic Light collection.