The Fastnet at Dawn, Cork

I was actually on the rock when this was made. Not passing by in a boat, not shooting from Cape Clear or the County Cork mainland on a rare clear day. I was standing on the Fastnet itself, wrapped in a jacket, squinting at a drone controller while the Atlantic tried to rearrange the landing below me.

Through a few visits with Irish Lights, I've slept seven or eight nights out there. You come in by helicopter, land on the helipad if the wind allows it, and then you're committed. The ocean decides when you leave. That particular morning, the wind had been building all night. You could feel it in the walls. Four feet of granite, and you understand why.

I sent the drone up at dawn. Low eastern light catching the face of the rock, warming the tower while the sea was still dark and angry. Waves breaking hard around the base, throwing white water across the landing. Fast-moving cloud with just enough breaks to let the early gold through. On the controller screen, the Fastnet looked impossibly dramatic from above. This jagged tooth of rock with a lighthouse perched on top, surrounded by nothing but open ocean.

The funny thing is, I'm somewhere in this photograph. Down there on the rock. You could nearly call it a selfie.

Photographing a place you've slept in is different. You know its sounds at three in the morning. You know the smell of salt and old stone. Of all the Fastnet landscape photographs I've made over the years, this one feels the most honest. I was home for the night!