Ireland XXXI (Faher North, Ireland)

The last day of photographing Ingrid in Ireland dawned overcast and bright, with only an occasional shower forecast for the entire island. After the travel-intensive schedule of the day before, we opted to stay "a little closer" today, and headed back to the Burren; I felt our earlier session at Cappaghkennedy didn't capture all the location had to offer.

The first location Ingrid and I set out to work in was directly opposite Cappaghkennedy; we parked in the same place, but this time headed east, following a ragged field-stone wall across the landscape, until we were out of sight of the road. The day was a little warmer than most have been (pushing to a balmy high of 18 Celsius), and when the sun came out from between the clouds, it became positively pleasant...a nice change for Ingrid after almost twelve days of temperatures in the mid teens.

Photographing on the hillside of Faher North was a real pleasure; with the isolation of the location came the freedom to work as we prefer, and for the couple of hours we spent exploring the beauty of the Burren, we didn't have a single interruption.

My favourite images from this session were made of Ingrid posing on a small shelf of the limestone pavement (apparently called a "clint") that rose up above the rest of the rock landscape...it was a natural formation that echoed the form of the ancient tombs that littered the landscape. This was the only time during this session that I worked with my infrared camera, and while I am happy with those results, I find the colour, with the rich greens between stone, and the sky echoing the stone in both colour and texture, even more pleasing.

As we explored the hillside, I was constantly drawn to including the distant rocky hills in my compositions, but vacillated between using a large or small aperture, unsure if I liked the background being distinct, or preferred it to be more atmospheric (the advantages of working with large aperture lenses like the 85mm f/1.2 shone here). In the end, as I already had numerous wide-angle images of the landscape with everything in focus, I opted to use the shallow depth of field images, enjoying the silky-smooth blur to the distant hills.

Ingrid and I brought this session to a close when we began to feel like we were producing more of the same; I have no doubt if we'd walked for another couple of hours, we would have discovered other wondrous settings, but having only half-a-day of photography left in the Ireland portfolio project, I felt it would be best to call this location to a close, and head to the coast for a final set of photos.