Just returned from my trip of the East Coast.  I was really amazed last week at how late the arrival of Spring was.  The trees were still bare and winter-like.  I was keeping an eye out for a tree with really nice shape and came across these two that grow close together.  The sun was setting behind them in the clouds and the light was unreal too.  Hope you like it as much as I do!

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There are so many things that have to come together at the same time to make the image right. I have lost count of the times I felt I had a good shot only to be disappointed when I put it up on the screen. However, thankfully, sometimes it all comes together. I regularly have to remind myself that things do go right and what you need is not just gear but patience and persistence. Here are a selection of some of my favourite images from the coastline of Ireland.

Dun Bristé. Sea stack, Co Mayo.

Curragh, Aran Islands.

Tra Buí(Yellow beach) Co Sligo.

Dublin Bay.

Giants Causeway, Co Antrim. Incidentally I am running a photo tour here in May. Click HERE to see the details. There are still a couple of places left. Also sign up for my free monthly newsletter now to keep up with what I am doing, be in with a chance to win free stuff and more. Click HERE.

Starlings bursting into the sky.  Co Sligo.  Ireland.

Brrrrrrrrr!

Languedoc, 2012.

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Finally I would like to say thank you to all you great people out there who read this blog, like my posts, and comment on them, you keep me sane!

I have been reading and looking at the work of the New Topographic’s a lot lately and I’m really attracted to their stripped down style where they choose to show the everyday world for what it is and include the traces of modernity such as cars, telegraph poles and such. The vernacular is a powerful photographic genre, the straight, authentic, grainy style, the call it like it is feeling of the images with no frills attached, no beautification and its funny how that in itself can be so beautiful. I always wonder why sometimes we, as photographers (and I include myself in this!) seek to exclude so much of the everyday, the seemingly mundane in pursuit of perceived ideas of beauty.

Among my favorites are Stephen Shore one of the pioneers of the use of colour (at the time all art photography was expected to be in B&W) as well as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz.

I went up to the Ox mountains near where I live on Saturday because they were covered in a late snow fall.  I stopped by Easkey Lough to say hello to our Icelandic visitors; 3 beautiful Hooper Swans all the who come all the way here for winter!

Check out more of my images of Ireland, Iceland and more HERE!

No 1:  Practice.

No 2.  Practice some more.

No 3.  Yes you guessed it:  Practice some more!