Doo Lough, Co. Mayo

I've lost count of how many times I've driven south from Louisburgh into this valley. Every visit, different light. Every visit, something pulls me back.

This morning a storm was clearing from the west, the clouds still heavy and low over Mweelrea, but gaps were starting to open. Shafts of diffused light fell across the Sheefry Mountains opposite, and the lake itself had gone completely still. Whatever wind had pushed the storm through had dropped away entirely, leaving the surface calm enough to hold faint reflections of the hills on either side. I was set up at the northern end, looking south towards Ben Gorm, the valley opening like a corridor between the two ranges.

I'd brought the infrared camera specifically for this trip. Infrared pulls texture out of mountainsides that would otherwise read as flat grey-green slopes. The reeds and grasses in the foreground were glowing white, and those clouds, already dramatic to the naked eye, became swirling sculptural forms across the top of the frame.

The reeds along the shoreline are what anchor the whole image. They give you somewhere to stand before your eye travels across that still water and into the gap between the mountains. Foreground detail, mountain texture, extraordinary clouds. Everything in balance, nothing fighting for attention. Of all my photographs from this valley, this is the one I keep coming back to!