Pictures of Ireland: A Photographer's View
I've been photographing Ireland for twenty years. Rain-soaked headlands, frozen winter mornings on mountain lakes, Atlantic storms that arrive without warning. This page brings together my favourite photographs from across the country. Every photograph on this page is available as a print. Click any image to see it.
The Wild Atlantic Way
I live in West Cork, so the southwest coast is where most of my work begins. Fastnet Rock sits out in the Atlantic beyond Cape Clear, and I've photographed it from the sea, from the air, and from the rock itself. The Fastnet Sunburst image is black and white, made standing at the base of the tower, looking straight up with the sun directly behind the granite.
Kerry has more of my work in it than any other county. The Skelligs sit twelve kilometres off the coast, and the photograph at the top of this page was made at dawn beside the monastery on Skellig Michael, six hundred feet above the sea. Dunmore Head on the Dingle Peninsula faces directly west across the Blasket Sound. You can browse the full Kerry collection here.
Further north, the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare are one of the most photographed locations in Ireland, which is precisely why I prefer to photograph them from the air. The aerial image strips away the visitor centre and the crowds and shows the raw geology, two hundred metres of layered sandstone and shale dropping vertically into white water.
Connemara is granite, bog, and small lakes that reflect whatever the sky is doing. The Road to Leenaun is one of my favourite photographs from there, the road disappearing into the Maam Valley with the mountains closing in on both sides.
Mayo's Croagh Patrick is Ireland's holy mountain, and from the right angle on the right evening it's one of the most dramatic shapes on the west coast. Sligo's Ox Mountains and Donegal's rivers and empty beaches are quieter than the famous stretches of coast, and you'll often have them entirely to yourself.
Croagh Patrick and the moon, Co. Mayo
The Gweebarra River, Co. Donegal
Mountains and lakes
Killarney's lakes are where I first started making landscape photographs in Ireland, and Ross Castle on Lough Leane remains one of my most popular images.
Carrauntoohil above the Hag's Glen
Carrauntoohil is Ireland's highest point at just over a thousand metres. It doesn't sound like much until you're standing on the ridge in January with ice on the rocks and the cloud below you. The Gap of Dunloe, a few kilometres east, is a glacial valley between Purple Mountain and the Reeks.
Ireland's interior is quieter than the coast. Mountain lakes that barely see a visitor from one month to the next, corrie lakes left by glaciers ten thousand years ago, dark and ringed by steep ground. I've spent more cold mornings beside these lakes than I can count.
Islands
Skellig Michael is the obvious one, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with a sixth-century monastery perched on a rock pyramid in the North Atlantic. Getting out there requires calm seas and a willing boatman, and the weather window can be narrow. I've made the crossing many times, and each visit reveals something different.
Dun Aengus on Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands, sits at the edge of a 100-metre cliff. A prehistoric stone fort that just stops at the drop. Limestone pavement running straight into the sea, dry stone walls dividing fields that have been farmed for thousands of years.
The Blasket Islands, abandoned since 1953, sit off the tip of the Dingle Peninsula. The Great Blasket's village is still visible from the mainland on a clear day, the roofless houses slowly returning to the hillside.
Dun Aengus at sunset, Inis Mór
Cottage on the Great Blasket
The light
People ask me why Ireland, and the answer is always the light. We sit at 51 to 55 degrees north, with three thousand miles of open Atlantic to the west. Weather systems arrive constantly, and the sky is rarely the same for more than twenty minutes. The sun stays low for much of the year, which means long golden hours in winter and late evenings in summer where the light barely fades.
It's not reliable light. You can wait three days for the cloud to break, and get five minutes of clear light before it closes in again. Persistence matters more than luck, though luck helps.
You can browse the full Ireland collection here, or go straight to a county: Kerry, Cork, Clare, Galway, Mayo, Donegal. If you'd like help choosing a print, get in touch.
More wall art: Irish Wall Art · Canvas Prints of Ireland · Acrylic Prints of Ireland · Framed Prints of Ireland
Cheers,
Peter