December 2009

Last winter was an exception when compared to previous years. Snowfall occurred throughout many parts of Ireland, and with some very heavy falls predicted I found myself driving up the M1 to a snow covered Cooley peninsula in County Louth.

Parking near the Long Woman’s grave, the heavens opened and I was was quickly engulfed by the biggest snowflakes I had ever seen. In their millions they tumbled from the sky, quickly transforming me into something resembling an Irish Yeti.

Amidst the freezing temperatures and in spite of having fallen three or four times, I could not have been happier. The silence was stunning and the surroundings beautiful. Days like this are few and far between. When they occur you have got to be there.

Cooley Snow

The Cooleys in winter are a regular haunt of mine and over the years I have captured many moody and commercially successful images. The image of the lone tree being an example of this.

On this trip  my goal was to create a set of images that depicted the subtle beauty and drama of the winter landscape by using the monochromatic appearance of the snowy landscape.

The results you see below.

image3

Attracted by the tree line disappearing into the falling snow. I wanted to capture the scene while recording the falling snow as an active part of the scene. To do this I had to be slightly careful.

Too slow a shutter speed and the snow flakes would end up recording as white streaks. Use an on camera flash and I would end up with strange looking white blobs in the image.

To get round this and  to capture the falling snow I set an aperture of F11 and a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second.  In order to get a shutter speed that fast, I upped the ISO settings on the camera to ISO 1600.

What do you think of the results? Photography is all about experimenting, exploring the light and most importantly it is all about taking images you like.