Glenbeg Lough

This is one of my favorite images from the four days down on The Beara Peninsula and it came out of disappointment. Let me explain:

The weeks leading up to the Beara Trip were spent looking over the Discovery Series of Maps from OSi (Ordnance Survey Ireland) to find suitable locations to shoot. One such place was Glenbeg Lough, Ardgroom. We have the lake surrounded by mountains a river flowing into the lake and a bridge over the river. All this looks like an interesting location. Looking at the details on the map and seeing the real life are two different things.

We had finished shooting up on the Healy Pass and Lauragh Forest and started our journey further west for sunset when hunger struck. Stopping at a coffee shop in Ardgroom, Peter noticed a painting on the wall of Glenbeg Lough. Now don't get me wrong but painters have it easy. They start with a blank canvas and add or remove thing at will. Us photographers have a completed canvas and have to use whats in front of the camera lens. What greeted us on the drive up to the lake was nothing like the view in the painting. Missing was the car park, rubbish bins, public signs and the pipes going across the side wall of the bridge. And they say using Photoshop to edit your photos is wrong but.....

What a disappointment. We didn't even get out of the jeep and to top it off low clouds started to roll in and this put a stop to sunset. We did however drive along the shoreline to find a point to turn the jeep around and head home. Oh, but wait. I spotted the view above with the reads in the foreground and Skellig Mt in the background.

Not the images I pictured a week ago looking at the maps but I think a came away with a much better image. Once again a portrait format helps in the composition. The slight blurring or the reads from the strong wind blowing down trough the valley and the dark clouds, helped by the filters, hanging over the tops of the mountains adds the drama of the image.

I have a hard drive full of image to post still from The Beara Peninsula.

Lehanbeg Pier.

Here is one of the first images taken form the Friday's evening shooting location, Lehanbeg Pier, Beara, Co Cork. The bad weather I was talking about in the previous post was clearing eastwards. We didn't get the full intensity of the setting sun due mainly to the low cover mist and fog which was to our benefit as we are shooting directly into the setting sun just out of the photo to the right. Long shutter speeds and a couple of ND Grad filters made for interesting effects on the water as it crashed over the sides of the pier walkway. The composition is helped by the mirroring angles of the foreground rocks and the pier itself. We came back to this location a couple of hours later and the water level had dropped by about 3 meters so it was safe to walk all the way out the the end of the pier.