Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography.
All in Ireland
I haven’t really been taking that many photos over the past few months for various reasons, which has been a bit frustrating for me. I do have a little collection that has been slowly gathering over the past few months, and so it’s time to resurrect a long-running series, that I used to do ages ago: “Random Acts of Photography”.
The giants causeway is probably one of the most famous natural attractions on the island of Ireland. Located on the northern coast of Northern Ireland, the famous landmark is a series of volcanic rocks that formed into hexagonal columns. It’s somewhere I always wanted to see in person, with the formation being featured in geography text books when I was younger, not to mention practically every tourist board promotion for the region. Finally this past weekend, I got to see it in person.
My first reaction: “Is that it?”
When you watch a travel show or even a YouTube video from a far off place, it’s easy to get envy for the exotic locations and fantastic scenery. It’s also easy to overlook some of the magnificent sights in your own back yard. And here in Ireland, we have a truly magnificent back yard. Ever since the pandemic hit, we’ve been travelling abroad less, and are slowly exploring more of our own country. A little while ago, we travelled through the mountains and valleys of the beautiful Connemara countryside, and I was blown away by what we saw there.
On my recent photo essay from Hook lighthouse in Ireland, I was editing the images, and wanted something a little special for the cover photo. I had tried lots of different things, and in the end, the image I used went through several steps to get it to where it was for the final use of it. In this video I talk you through the steps I took from the starting raw photo to the finished image.
On the last day of our recent trip around the southwest of Ireland, we stopped at a Lavender farm in Co. Wexford. My wife and I have always been a fan of Lavender, and it featured in the flowers at our wedding, so it was nice to see where it comes from. It also always makes for good photos.
Like many people, while I’ve been lucky enough to travel abroad quite a bit, I haven’t actually spent much time exploring my own country of Ireland, and I’ve actually been to surprisingly little of the island. With Covid making international travel complicated and not something I particularly want to partake in right now, we recently decided to take a few days holiday in the southeast of Ireland. One of the most interesting places we visited was to the Hook peninsula to visit the famous Hook Lighthouse
I was returning home from a week in a sweltering London last Friday, and we had taken the boat home. I was never so happy to see cloudy skies after the month plus long heatwave. As we approached the shore of Ireland, the moody sky and sea made for some great images. From my Streets of Dublin Blog…
Last week I was approached for an interview about one of my photography projects by a fairly prominent online newspaper here in Ireland. The piece they were interested in was a project I did charting the progress of the cross-city tram construction that took place in Dublin over the past few years. The request came out of the blue and took me a little by surprises, but they did a good article following the interview.
Last year I got up early with the aim of capturing the sunrise for the first day of the year. I took some nice shots of the light before dawn but it clouded over too much before the actual sun rose. Still, I wanted to make it a tradition, and so, once again, I headed to the same spot in order to catch the first rays of sun for 2018.
Last week in Dublin a major engineering project was finished. The “Luas” cross-city tram project was finally completed. When the tram network was originally built there were two lines, which severed different parts of the city, but they weren’t connected, and there was no way to cross the city on the tram. Recently the city undertook a major civil engineering project to join the two lines. Over the past four years, I've been documenting the construction progress.
There is a pretty amazing exhibit on in Dublin Zoo at the moment. The “Wild Lights” experience, is an art show of sorts, featuring animal shaped lanterns which are all around the zoo, mimicking a real zoo experience, only in lights. The artwork was created by a group of china artists, and is really something to behold. My wife and I recently paid a visit to see the exhibit and it was amazing.
Autumn is now in full flow and it really is my favourite time of the year for photography. The Autumn light in Ireland is beautiful. The slow change of the seasons starts to bring a warm and golden light to the country as the sun is lower and lower in the sky. Throughout the season this effect becomes more and more profound. Combined with the colours this can make for some great Photography.
I was in Galway yesterday, which was the longest day of the year, and I wanted to capture the sunset over Galway bay looking out to the Atlantic. As it was the longest day, it was kind of a special sunset, marking the end of the lengthening evenings and the start of the long march back to winter. Unfortunately it was cloudy, but there was still some nice light, and the beach at Salthill in Galway is dramatic in and of itself.
Every year, at this time, the city of Dublin get’s a little greener. I’m not talking about some environmental initiative though. It’s not a sudden growth of trees or grass either. No, instead I’m talking about the annual build up to St. Patricks Day. Where every shop, pub and restaurant does it’s patriotic duty and adorns their premises in the requisite amount of green trappings, from Shamrocks to Leprechauns. If you didn’t know what was going on you’d think there was some kind of plastic outbreak.
I recently published a new photo essay over on my Streets of Dublin website, and I thought that I would share the story behind it here, as well as some behind the scenes information. The Idea came about by accident really. I was in the area taking pictures for something else, and I realised that this amazing looking building was nearing completion, and my wife and co-editor on the Streets of Dublin thought it would make an interesting story.
I was walking through a nearby forested park the other day, and I caught an interesting sequence of images. There is a large lake in the middle of the park and there’s always lots of ducks and seagulls there. At this time of the year it’s especially beautiful, as the autumn colours on the leaves give the waters of the lake a patchwork of green and gold.
I’ve always been quite fond of textures and patterns. I find that, even in the seemingly harsh and cold medium of concrete and glass there can be beauty. I spent a few hours the other day in one of the newest parts of Dublin City, where there are lots of modern buildings as well as ongoing construction, and the light was just right to really emphasis the aesthetics of these elements.
I recently had the opportunity to borrow a friend’s Sony A7II and I was keen to try some Canon lenses on it via a Metabones adaptor. I had borrowed the camera off him before, but that was using an older firmware. Since then Sony has added the same autofocus update for adapted lenses via a firmware upgrade (v.2 I think) from the A7RII and A7SII, and I wanted to see how good it was. I had read lots of reports about the performance on the A7RII, but not many on the upgraded A7II, and I was really pleasantly surprised by the results.
