Barley Cove, Co. Cork

I lost my wedding ring at Barley Cove. Went swimming on a family trip, didn't feel it slip off my finger, and only noticed when I walked back up the sand. Gone. Somewhere in the Atlantic, tumbled smooth by the tide or buried under a few feet of shell and grit. A small, ridiculous offering to the sea.

So when I flew over the same beach a couple of years later, there was a bittersweet quality to seeing it from above. That water looks impossibly clear from a few hundred feet up. Emerald and teal shifting with the sand beneath, no filter, no trickery. Just the Atlantic on a good October day in West Cork. The clouds were big and puffy, the light dappled, bright sun one moment then soft shadow rolling across the dunes. The kind of Co. Cork landscape that keeps changing every thirty seconds.

What I love most about this Barley Cove photograph is the river. You can see it meandering through green fields behind the beach, winding across sand flats before it finally meets the sea. Fresh water finding salt water. That pattern is remarkable from the air. The whole landscape here was shaped by a tidal wave in the 18th century, which created those characteristic dunes. There's a wildness to the place that even a calm afternoon can't disguise.

My wife was more forgiving than I deserved! And having that personal connection to a place, however daft the story, makes this image mean more to me than it otherwise might.