Skellig Michael from Above, Kerry

I've photographed Skellig Michael from sea level more times than I can count. From a boat pitching in the swell, from the monastery steps with my knees complaining. But I'd never seen it like this. Straight down. The whole island as a map.

Everything is there if you look. The boat landing on the eastern side, the three staircases switchbacking up through the rock, both lighthouses, the helipad, and right on the peak, the monastery itself. Those beehive huts that have clung to this exposed rock for over a thousand years. From this height you can trace the paths between them, see how the monks organised their lives on a platform barely large enough to hold them.

Hard overhead light threw shadows into every crevice and gully on the cliff faces. Good conditions for detail. A thin haze was creeping in, so the window was narrow, but I had enough time to get what I needed.

The thing about Skellig from above is that you lose the terror and gain the logic. Why they built where they built. How they moved around. Where the rock gave them shelter and where it didn't. Twelve hundred years of human stubbornness on a lump of rock eight miles out in the Atlantic, all in a single frame. I keep coming back to this image and finding things I'd missed. A worn path. A wall half-swallowed by grass. Is there a more remarkable place in Ireland? I haven't found one yet!