Lone Tree, Partry Mountains, Co. Mayo

I was supposed to be learning about the workshop trade. A photographer friend had a group out in Co. Mayo that day, and I tagged along for a while before doing what I always do. Wandered off on my own.

Joyce Country has a particular emptiness to it. Rolling bog, rough grassland, not much else. I'd been poking around a nearby oak forest when I spotted this single tree standing out in open moorland with nothing behind it but the Partry hills. No company, no shelter. Just one tree holding its ground against whatever the Atlantic decides to throw at it.

The sky was heavy and brooding, thick cloud with just enough light breaking through to give the scene real drama. I knew immediately I wanted infrared. It renders foliage bright, pushes the sky dark, and pulls out tonal contrast you simply can't get otherwise. The relationship between land and atmosphere becomes something quite different.

Getting the composition meant crossing open bog. Getting back cost me a wellington boot, or very nearly. Up to my hip in a bog hole, wrestling it free while it filled to the brim with dark Mayo water. I squelched around for the rest of the day trying to look like a professional!

Worth it, though. One tree, open moorland, a heavy sky. Nothing competing for attention. Sometimes the best photographs come from the simplest subjects, found by accident while you're supposed to be doing something else entirely.