July 03, 2016

Ireland XXII (Knockbrack Tomb & Twelve Pines, Ireland)

The last location for the day was a bit of the roll of the dice; while I had GPS co-ordinates, and clear instructions on how to find Knockbrack tomb, I hadn't been able to locate it on a satellite image (it is just too small an item to see from space, apparently, though now that I know where the tomb is, I can identify it on Google Earth with ease). Fortunately, I trusted my research, and the tomb proved to be quite obvious, and indeed, far more accessible than I'd understood it to me.
That accessibility ended up a double-edged sword, as while within minutes of parking the car, Ingrid and I were at the tomb and starting, it was also only minutes after we arrived that Angie let us know there was someone walking our way with intent; Ingrid and I quickly finished the images we'd mapped out, and she managed to get dressed (barely) as the gentleman walked swiftly past us...we still aren't certain if he came over to check out what Ingrid and I were doing at the tomb, or had some totally unrelated reason to be in the area at that particular time, but this session was the closest Ingrid came to being spotted while posing...

As it turned out, because of the angle of the tomb and the landscape around it, the point of view I started with was by far the most pleasing one, so though we only photographed with the tomb for less than ten minutes, Ingrid and I agreed it was done, and time to go...but I did have something else in my mind's eye, as we walked back to the car.

As I'd realised earlier in the day when working with Ballynahinch Bog, one down side of a project like this is the pressure it puts on time, and the reality that I just don't have the freedom to spend a full day working in any location, or to return to a space over and over to get the best image...though in the first week, Ingrid and I had returned to Kilcooley Abbey a second time to work with a specific tree we hadn't had a chance to work with on the first visit.
With all this floating in my mind, I was also conscious of the fact that the route back to our accommodation would take us past Twelve Pines, where Ingrid and I had already worked earlier in the day. One particular set of images from that earlier session was still stuck in my head - Ingrid standing at the edge of the loch, with tall grasses and the Twelve Pines Island behind her. The problem was (confirmed by checking the image on my camera before we left Knockbrack Tomb), the light at the time was flat and overcast...and when we'd be driving past on the way back, it would be close to sunset...which should give both better colour, and more modelling to Ingrid's body.

So, for the second, and last time on the trip, Ingrid and I returned to a space we'd already worked in, and swiftly, by the last light of the sun, as it simultaneously slipped behind clouds and mountains. And it was SO worth the short delay in returning home!

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