Small Skellig, Kerry

Thirty thousand pairs of gannets live on this rock. You'd never know it from this photograph. The evening stripped everything back to bare geology, two jagged peaks rising from water so flat it looked wrong. The Atlantic off Kerry doesn't do calm. Not like this.

I've photographed the Small Skellig more times than I can count, from boats, from Valentia, from the cliffs above Portmagee. Familiar ground. But the sea that evening had gone completely still, and without the usual white water breaking around the base, the island looked different. You could see every layer of sedimentary rock, the sheer scale of the thing just sitting there in open ocean. The sun was dropping fast behind it, throwing orange and pink across the horizon while the sky overhead had already gone to a deep blue-grey. That whole transition lasted maybe fifteen minutes.

From this higher vantage point, the gannets were invisible. No white cap, no chaos. Just rock and water and the last light of the day. Sometimes the simplest conditions are the ones that catch you off guard, and this evening proved me completely wrong about having nothing new to find out there!