Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Song for Ireland.

Living on your western shore, saw the summer sunset, I asked for more, I stood by your Atlantic sea & sang a song for Ireland. These are some words from the song "song for Ireland." How often I have stood on our Atlantic shores waiting for the sunset & could hear these words in my head as I appreciated the beauty of this mystical country. A country for it's size that has an incredibly diverse landscape, a landscape that has captured the hearts & minds of artists, writers etc. for millennial.As a photographer standing on our shores watching the waves crashing on to shore, seeing the light dance across the water,or a distant boat heading out to sea all you can do is try your best to bring the beauty of the scene as it unfolds in front of you to the people who will view your image.  You make the decisions how to compose the image, do I wait for the sun to drop a little further in the sky, will I silhouette the boat  against the light or include those rocks in the foreground.Then when you have made all the decisions set your aperture & shutter speed, perhaps double checking your meter readings you press the shutter & create a moment in history. The reason I double check everything is simple I am still using film cameras, I do not have the luxury of looking at my image on the LCD screen & deciding to make changes by re-shooting. It is my personal opinion that this is a good thing, it slows you down, it makes you aware of what can go wrong. I often in fact urge my photography class who use digital to pretend they have only 24 or 36 exposures. To pretend they are using film so that they to will slow down & try to go home with 24 great shots rather than 124 shots with only a few great ones in it. Going back to the song, Ireland really needs to sing at the moment, to lift peoples spirits, to get people to listen, but most of all to get people to come here, to see & appreciate this beautiful country for themselves.

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