On Location
Ireland is notorious for rain, but adverse weather conditions can be used to your advantage…
Tom Mackie uses harsh weather conditions to his advantage
Every time I go to Ireland, I go prepared for typical Irish weather: rain. Many photographers consider rain to be a bad thing, but actually some of the best conditions occur on the edge of a weather front. I don’t think Ireland would be the same with blue skies all the time, and besides, blue skies are boring for landscape photography. Ireland was certainly anything but boring, as we had a mix of dramatic skies and sunshine in between the showers on a workshop I led there PRE-COVID. They have a saying in Ireland, “if you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes,” which was actually attributed to the American writer, Mark Twain. Twain may not have visited Ireland in his lifetime, but he was right about the weather.
Donegal is probably my favourite county in Ireland as it has endless gorgeous beaches and stunning rocky coastlines, many virtually undiscovered. Being the fourth-largest county out of 32, photographic locations tend to be spread over a large area, but I had chosen a base for my workshop near several of the major iconic locations and some not so well known.
I had seen a few photographs of this sea arch a couple of years ago, which enticed me to go and further explore. I try not to let photos of locations influence me too much whenever possible, as I want to keep an open mind about what the location can offer.
The prevailing weather will often dictate where the best position will be to photograph, but I try to wander around to discover all possibilities. I scrambled down the cliff-side to find these amazingly colourful rocks. I thought they would provide a wonderful foreground to complement the arch in the background.
It’s always better to have a receding tide when shooting next to the waterline, as you will have wet rocks that help to bring out the colour – and you’re less likely to get wet yourself from approaching waves… The soft overcast light was perfect to enhance the colour and control the contrast. There were rocks everywhere, so it was quite difficult to make order of a chaotic scene when thinking about compositions. I found a subtle line of rocks coming in from the right corner that I could use to lead the viewer towards the arch, placing it in the top third of the frame.
The next consideration was the exposure. The clouds were moving towards me, so I thought about a long exposure to create some movement in the sky that would help to draw the eye into the subject. I didn’t want to end up with a perfectly flat sea with no surface texture, so I lowered the ISO to 64 using an aperture of f/11 with the Lee Big Stopper 10-stop neutral density filter to obtain the ideal exposure of one minute. This gave me enough movement in the clouds to create that explosive effect that you see, yet short enough to retain surface texture in the water.
The emerald isles
After the Donegal workshop, we had an extension for a few days in Northern Ireland where we experienced fantastic conditions at Giant’s Causeway. But, of course, it didn’t happen straight away. As often in landscape photography, the elements have to come together to enable us to create great images.
The first evening was completely overcast and the tide level was far too high for the photograph that I had in mind at the time. However, on the second evening the clouds parted just enough to let some dramatic light pierce through. I actually wanted to use the curved-shaped basalt in the foreground moving around to what looks to me like organ pipes.
The tide level was just right to show the shape of the curve and to facilitate crashing waves against the wall of basalt. The beauty of photographing coastlines is that every image is different with
every wave. That’s why I prefer to settle on one composition, relax and enjoy watching the light as it gradually changes, creating totally different looks by varying the exposure times from one position. I made a long exposure of one minute to create the sense of peacefulness by smoothing out the water, and shorter exposures like this one (right) at 1/4 second to capture the power in the crashing wave.
If you would like to join me in the Emerald Isle, I’ll (hopefully) be going back this year to lead another photography workshop in August.