Gap of Dunloe Panoramic, Co. Kerry

I nearly didn't stop. I'd been driving back to Killarney after a day shooting further west, and November evenings don't give you much time to second-guess. But the sky over the Gap was turning pink and I could see the lake from the road. Dead flat. No ripple at all. So I pulled in, grabbed the tripod, and half-jogged down to the water's edge like a man who'd forgotten something important.

The Gap of Dunloe is perhaps the most iconic valley in Kerry. Steep glacial sides, a narrow road winding through, and these small lakes sitting in the valley floor. I've photographed it dozens of times and most of those photographs are mediocre. The light was wrong, or the wind was up, or I'd composed it badly. This evening, though, I could tell before I'd even opened the tripod legs.

The water had gone to perfect glass. Every ridge, every brown slope of heather and dead grass, doubled in the reflection so precisely that the valley seemed to extend downward as much as upward. Lavender cloud building to the west, pink underneath where the sun had dropped below the ridge, the rest of the sky holding that clean late-autumn blue you get when the air is cold and dry. I had to go panoramic. A standard frame just clips this valley at both edges and you lose the sense of how wide the glacial carving actually is. Several exposures, left to right, working quickly because colour like that doesn't wait around for you.

Every time I come back here, it holds up!