Skellig Michael from the North, Kerry

Most people see Skellig Michael from the south or east, where the monastery steps are visible and the beehive huts sit in their sheltered hollow. This is the north face. A completely different animal.

From here you get the full measure of how improbable the place is. Two jagged peaks rising straight out of dark Atlantic water. The left summit holds the monastery, though you'd never know it from this angle. The monks chose that spot deliberately, sheltered from the prevailing westerlies by the ridge itself. Fourteen hundred years ago, someone looked at this rock and worked out which side would keep them alive through winter. The right peak holds the hermitage, an even more exposed site that still baffles me every time I think about it.

I was shooting from a boat on a calm day. Low western light was catching the cliff face, throwing every crack and ledge into sharp relief. Enough cloud to keep things interesting, enough blue to let the light through in patches. A daytime moon was sitting in the upper sky, which I didn't even notice until I checked the frames afterwards. Sometimes the best details arrive without invitation.

This is one of my favourite photographs of the Skelligs precisely because it strips away the familiar. No gentle approach here. Just a jagged fortress of rock, and the remarkable fact that anyone chose to live on it!