Out of the shadows

We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul.

John O Donohue

It wasn't a great summer; grey skies, too much rain, cold seas. But for a couple of days the golden sun lit up our lives and we all came out of the shadows.

Photographers call it the "golden hour".  It's that time of the day, early or late, when light slides in at an angle casting lanky silhouettes and tinting the world with warmth. When you study light and peer endlessly through a lens, you are drawn to this like a moth to a flame.

But the best part? In the gloaming, back doors, front doors, windows and hearts are opened to the light. Glasses of wine and cups of coffee are brought down to the shore. Youngsters are chatting, perched on the low walls, barbecues are set and smoking. Our small community is united by staring into the light show of an evening sky.

This golden life force, our sun, makes us smile, feeds our souls and entices us out of the shadows. And this is even more true for photographers!

Always the people's favourite

The sky is impossible to ignore. Here in rural Ireland we are mesmerised by it. Approaching weather systems come up from the Atlantic south west and we peer into the distance for information, comfort and possible impending doom.

When I began to share my photography on line through the blog and on social media, it became clear that I wasn't alone in this fascination. My statistics would go through the roof when I posted a sunrise/sunset photo, and so I shared lots of them, even though sunsets are renowned as a cliched image to be avoided at all costs!

In reality no sunset is a cliche. Each is a once off, unique, live, light show. It's even easy to think that you are a great photographer when in fact you just show up and Mother Nature does the all work. That's the way it is with sunsets, the magic is just present in the light......

Tonight on the drive home through County Carlow I was seduced yet again by the golden hour. A combine harvester was creating an extra layer of dust and this seemed to act like a filter for the lens.
Standing there under a deep terracotta sky, besotted by the gloaming, I remembered the words of a reader from Brazil,"when the sun rises it is for everyone." 

Sunsets and sunrises will always be the people's favourite.....



PS....

I am taking part in a Group Exhibition called Being Here and you are all invited to the opening on September 12th @7.30 in Aoife's Gallery, Parnell Street, Waterford

Golden photography

Sometimes you just snap what you can, following your photography path and documenting each step. On other days you fall into a flow, visualising the image before you even see it, lost in a reverie and yet connected to every fibre of the present. 

You anticipate certain factors that add up to the right conditions. Still air, soft light, fields of golden daisies, drifts of wildflowers. The sun is going down casting long golden beams across the landscape. Even the birds are singing in harmony with a thousand dancing crickets.

One hour, on one evening as the sun slowly deflates into the sea. 

They call it the golden hour and it's one not to miss. Those last rays of the sun, how the light is low across the land casting longer shadows and warming the sky to an intensity. A lesson learned that is never now forgotten.