The Irish Light (Preview)

On my Photography For as long as I can remember, I’ve enjoyed the landscape. I can remember Sunday drives with my father in the Wicklow Mountains, near our home in Dublin. Those memories are very fond ones, not just for the enjoyment of his company, but the impression the stark beauty of the landscape made on me.

I had played with cameras as a child, but never in a particularly serious way. I seemed to have a natural ability for photography as comments were often made about the quality of the images. However, I had no interest in learning the craft, nor of thinking about composition. It was point-and-shoot all the time.

I’ve always had a strong interest in computers and all things technical, and that’s the direction my first career took - I was a computer systems engineer. With the advent of digital, my interest was rekindled in photography, and I bought a Sony DSC-S70 3 megapixel camera in 2000. This was replaced with the 5 megapixel Sony DSC-F717 in 2002 and then by the 6 megapixel Canon EOS Digital Rebel (or 300D as it was known in Europe) in 2003.

This last marked the beginning of my serious interest in photography. It was my first SLR, and the flexibility of interchangeable lenses and a reflex viewfinder sparked a real passion in me. For the first time I began trying to understand the mechanics of how photographs are made. Shutter speeds, apertures, ISO - all these were mythical and intimidating concepts. I was completely at sea, and I loved it.

Aside from the technical side of things, composition and the proper use of light were new ideas for which I had no time. In my head, I was pretty good at taking photos, so why should I pay attention to these things that would only get in the way of my enjoyment?

The realization that a proper understanding of both the technical and artistic aspects of photography was necessary to make consistently great images was a long time coming. I remember feeling overloaded on many occasions as there was too much to take in. One day, I came across the saying “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time,” and resolved to focus my attention on one specific aspect of photography at a time, understand that and then move on.

Before too much time had elapsed, I was becoming more and more proficient, but the photographs were still lacking.

Ansel Adams once said “There’s nothing worse than a sharp picture of a fuzzy concept,” and he was right. The technician 8