I’ve spent 28 years working in the relatively small geographic area of the Iveragh and Beara Peninsulas,

to the south of the better-known Dingle Peninsula. For most landscape photographers, that’s the equivalent of choosing to work on the back of a postage stamp. Many of them are flying off to Iceland, Norway or Alaska to look for big, dramatic landscapes. I’ve done that in the past, but I have this little patch of amazing landscape right here on my doorstep and I’ve spent most of my time getting to know it intimately. I see something new every time I go back to a location. Although the locations stay the same, I’m growing as a photographer, and that’s been really important.

When I started off, I spent a lot of time wandering around fields, getting lost, ending up covered in mud and coming home with nothing. But this experience is useful to me now. People think I must be very patient, but actually, I’m not. I already know the locations I choose to visit on any particular day, and if I get there and it’s not working — maybe the light isn’t right — I don’t wait around. I just know at this stage that it’s for another day, so I go elsewhere to make good use of my time.

Everyone’s a photographer today, with a smartphone in their pocket. But the way you distinguish yourself from that, I think, is to produce good, meaningful work that has some truth to it. It’s so much more than just capturing sharp images of places with good light. In my photographs, I really want to show a bit of how I see things, my vision of this place and, maybe, even of how I see the world.