Ireland XXIV (Moyne Castle, Ireland)

Moyne Castle is a tower house build on the Black River near Ross Errilly Friary sometime in the 16th century. I'd discovered the castle on Google Earth when researching the Friary, and was quite keen the check it out with Ingrid.

The castle is signed from the road, but was located at the end of a large hay field, so took a little walking to get to. By this time, most of the rain had abated, but a space with some cover from inclement weather had distinct advantage.

Entrance into the castle was easy, and opened into a massive two-story high great room, the floor to the second story was long gone, but the holes for the floor joists were easily visible. Ingrid explored as I made some photographs of the ground floor, and found the stairway up; the first four feet had been removed, but she easily scrambled up, and moments later poked her head through the doorway to the second floor. Minutes later, we were working with some beautiful light that fell across the doorway.

As soon as we started, my frustration kicked in; the light was really beautiful, creating lovely definition on Ingrid's figure, but there was no way to overcome the height differential between Ingrid and I; if I had a 20' ladder I could have created something stronger than the above photograph, but instead, I decided to clamber up the stairway, to see what was further up the inside of the wall.  

The venture up the stair way paid off in spades, with the straight stair way turning in to a spiral as it came to the corner of the castle, it provided a lovely space to work with Ingrid in, complete with a lovely matt of dried leaves covering all the stairs. With the image above, I actually used both an explore blend (to capture all the details between the highlights of the window and Ingrid's figure and the shadows in the descending stairwell), and a focus blend, ensuring the step and detritus on the top left were in sharp focus.