It's a time of the year for mulling things over.
Today, in a lull, between rain storms, I stand on the shore in Annestown and feel the power of the sea overwhelm the questions I have queuing up from 2015. Like fragments of flotsam and jetsam they end up in flithers on the high tide line.
With New Year resolutions being made all around me, my vague musings on 2016 are blown away on the wind, evaporating into white foamy bubbles.
The cold saltiness is an ice bucket challenge. The eyes are focusing on the horizon, capturing the constant changes; the head full of the roar of waves. Don't stumble, don't drop the camera, don't fall in.
Under her spell, hanging in there, mulling......
Happy New Year and great mulling dear friends!
PS Speaking about the sea, this moving piece by Ruth Fitzmaurice blew me away.....
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
Images can be a combination of reality and reflection. In this case the inside and the outside of my house, through a window.
The window glass interacts with the main protagonists; me, the lens and mother nature. And light, the secret ingredient, does it's own thing.....
Mysterious moments like this come and go, recorded and observed from all kinds of angles. Instagramed, blogged and tweeted.
But when you are there in that moment, the evening sky enfolds the land. Even small birds sit and stare in wonder, and you just have to succumb. Light becomes the only reality, reflected or otherwise.........and then suddenly it is gone again......
This is a guest post I wrote for Vision and verb shortly after the very sad murder of Jill Meagher in Melbourne. By coincidence Tom Meagher, Jill's widower has this month become an advocate for the Irish White Ribbon Campaign. Tom has been writing about his experiences here on the White Ribbon Blog, it is both a chilling story and a powerful piece of writing. To support their work I am reposting this today.
It's October and the evenings are drawing in. Like thousands of other Irish parents my sons are surfing under Australian blue skies, drinking coffee in the street cafes of Berlin or taking classes in a New York film school. Spreading their wings while I follow their adventures from my perch on the hill.
Tonight the random rape and murder of Jill Meagher in Melbourne, 12,000 miles from home weighs heavily on me. The fragility of life and the grief of others has stopped me in my tracks. My sorrow now is for her husband Tom, her father and mother, for the friends out there. How could any man be so isolated and cut-off from any sense of reality or care, to inflict such pain?
Most days in the grassy wetlands I head out alone with my camera to meet up with one of my best teachers and collaborators, Mother Nature. It's late now but still I pound up the hill towards the forest, muttering to myself about the world, about the fear. I don't pray but I carry all the young emigrants in my heart as I walk the land. I carry their questions and their anger.....
To the west the sun is setting and to the east the moon is rising. I am reminded of other nights when I travelled the world myself. When I slept under the stars in the Black Forest in Germany and a moon just like this one hung over it like a Max Ernst painting. When I wept with frustration at having no where to sleep in Paris until a kind Jesuit found me a room. When I travelled by subway in NY chewing gum as a strategy to look tough, the most innocent looking pale faced girl on that train.
Vulnerable.
And here, with one foot in a rural haven and one foot in the global chaotic melting pot, with questions, confusion and anger whirring.......this moon soothes and distracts. Before long I am reaching for the camera, besotted by the sky, engrossed in the tranquility.
As I walk home thinking about them all wherever they are tonight. I imagine them under this clear sky with the chubby clouds. And then I close my eyes and with all my heart I give them the moon............
It's 10 years ago, our first night in the new house and I can't sleep for excitement.
It is such a quiet spot and all I can hear is the sound of the endless silence ringing in my ears. I can't stop myself listening and trying to hear something I can recognise. But in no time I am hearing things that are not there at all.
Almost dawn, still tossing and turning I jump up to see my new surroundings in the morning light. The tall summer grasses are waving in unison, the Comeragh Mountains to the west are slightly misted over and just beneath my window a doe Hare and three leverets are sitting on the gravel path, utterly peaceful and unaware of my gaze.
The stillness of a meditating Hare was something I had never seen. Usually they are loping through the fields, and they can run very fast with their long hind legs. Now I often observe them staring into space for long periods especially in the evening or early morning.
Whenever I get close, as with this youngster nibbling in the garden, I am reminded of my first night here. How in the early misty morning, the Hare family introduced me to the meditative stillness that would soon become home. The way that Mother Nature again made her presence felt in my life, and that moment when I began to re-learn how to stare into space........
Something happens in between the photographs being taken and this page being published which has created a magnetic pull on my imagination.
A hawk settles on a rock outside my window, a flock of starlings swoop down over the lake, the sun appears through a grey letter box in the sky. Sometimes I am supposed to be working and so I type on, (such discipline!) Sometimes I run with the camera, wanting another fix of those little hairs which stand up on the back of the neck, at a new view on the world, a simple moment of happiness which I know I can share later.
As I pull on the wellies yet again, I feel a warm glow. I suppose I have taken thousands of photographs in these little fields, but never too many! I cannot believe that every outing although just 5 minutes from the backdoor will yield a new crop of images. No I can't believe it........ I am challenged every day to believe it. The more I see..... the more I see.......
Nature presents her treasures, and I just go along with the plan. Today it was these little borage flowers. I have seen them all summer and photographed them many times but as they survive through the winter they draw me in again. Strange mild weather, surprising flowerings, so far so good....... we are still here.
As another grey day reveals itself this morning, I am still looking at the same view, the same fields, the same 5 minutes of space between me and the rest of the world. Doubt creeps in..... but then I remember that something will happen again between me the camera and mother nature....... the next images will somehow be revealed.......
P.S. #thankyouday (Irish Hospice Foundation) warmest thank you to all the bloggers, commenters, tweeters and other supporters out there. Every little bit of your encouragement and contribution has been so important, and it continues to be lovely to share with ye, that's all........
