Peter McCabe (www.photoimagery.net)
Sometimes for reasons known to wiser men than me, something comes along in your life that takes over and becomes all consuming. It could be painting or paragliding; but many of us out there have that certain something that we are passionate about.
Photography, and, in particular landscape photography does that to me. I am not sure why but ever since I got my hands on an old Olympus OM10 and started shooting and developing black and white film, photography has become an obsession with me. Maybe all that time trapped in the darkroom mixing chemicals affected me!
Sometimes when I am not out creating images a kind of darkness descends on me. My wife has christened this with a rather American term – creative depression! I wonder if the Betty Ford clinic has a treatment for it. Her cure is to kick me out the door with a camera in hand.
This itch as I call it has meant many a day being spent from dawn to dusk practicing the art of photography. The urge to be out snapping, escaping the rat race has taken me to many parts of Europe and Ireland in search of images that appeal to something deep inside.
Urban plunge
This time last year I was in Sicily, enjoying fine wine and pasta, watching the world pass by under warm summer skies. Photographically days were spent exploring the narrow streets of the towns of Taormina and Castelmola. Street photography is a skill in itself. You have got to open your eyes and observe and appreciate the little things that are going on all around you. That’s one of the joys of photography; your eye learns to appreciate detail that may have gone unnoticed before. From colourful shopfronts to photographing the locals in their own environment, there is an endless world of possibilities.
When I work in an urban environment I usually work with one camera and a small zoom lens. This has a number of benefits. First, it means you have less heavy gear to carry around and secondly it makes you less noticeable to the local petty thief.
Taking photographs in the narrow streets that are found all over Europe can often mean working in low light. This scenario isn’t ideal for handheld photography, and a tripod isn’t always practical. A few years ago this would require a change to faster films. This however, is where the modern digital camera comes into its own. The ability to change film speed between each shot is a godsend.
Faster speeds gain you an increase in shutter speed or aperture. This ability means I can take a shot with the camera set to 100ISO and in the next shot set the ISO to 800 or higher, gaining the photographer a large increase in shutter speed, helping to ensure you don’t have any images suffering from the dreaded camera shake.
Picture 1
In the first photo, I increased the ISO slightly to 160 from its default 100ISO setting. This small increase in speed was just enough to give me a shutter speed of 1/30 of a second which when combined with a focal length of 17m was enough to allow me to capture this street scene in the Sicilian town of Taormina without camera shake being a factor.
Picture 2
Picture 2 features a view of a church hidden among the narrow streets of the Italian hill town of Castelmola. In this situation a tripod was essential. Upgrading the ISO just would not have gained a sufficient increase in shutter speed to allow me to handhold the camera.
This year I persuaded my wife to forsake the sun of Italy with promises of the delights of the sunny south of Ireland. As many people who know me know, I have never been to County Kerry. Well, a few Saturdays ago, the inevitable happened and I made it to the small village of Ballyferriter in the Gaeltacht region of the Dingle Peninsula. The sun beamed down on arrival. Great stuff, I thought. The sunny south does exist.
Picture 3
However, that feeling didn’t last long. Sunday morning came and I rose at 4am to shoot sunrise over Smerwick harbour. With an image that I was happy with, I decided to head for a higher vantage point that I had come across the evening before. By the time I got there, I only got to take one image (Picture 4) as by 6.30am the rain had come in from the Atlantic and the sun wasn’t to be seen until the following Wednesday.
In the following days so much rain poured down that I think in my next life I am destined to be a shaman performing rain dances enticing rain to the driest places on earth. I am a patient person at the best of times, but three days with dull grey skies was enough to drive me to the pub and bring on a bout of creative depression. Meanwhile my wife took every opportunity to get a sarcastic dig in about the wonderful sunshine in the sunny south.
Numerous times I questioned my sanity and the reasons why I rise before dawn, ever hopeful, only to be frustrated by dull grey wet skies. So much so that I seriously contemplated packing in photography and taking up painting. I don’t mind wet weather as long as it’s dispersed with some good quality light. I don’t ask for much do I?
In the end Kerry left me both exhilarated and frustrated. The beauty of this county through did manage to shine through despite the deluge. The scenery really is stunning, the potential for photography is endless and I am sure now that I’ve been bitten by the Kingdom, I will be a frequent visitor. There is even a possibility that I may run a photography workshop down there.
