Irish landscape photography: chasing light in a country with none

People assume landscape photography here is about scenery. It is not — the scenery is always there. It is about being outdoors during the twenty minutes when the light is doing something.

The three windows

Golden hour. The hour after sunrise and before sunset. Low sun rakes across the fields, hedges throw long shadows and everything picks up a warm cast. In Irish summer that means being up at half four; in December it is a civilised half three in the afternoon. Most of the warm-toned images in the landscape collection are from this window.

The twenty minutes after rain. This is the one that is specific to here, and the one people miss because they are inside waiting for it to stop. When a shower clears, the air is washed clean, the grass is saturated, and the sky behind the departing cloud is usually dramatic. Rainbows only exist in this window.

Blue hour. The half hour after the sun has gone. Cool, quiet, low contrast. It is unforgiving on a small screen and it prints beautifully — the tonal range is gentle, so a big print looks calm rather than busy.

Flat grey days

Eight months of the year you get flat white cloud, which is a giant softbox and useless for grand vistas. Use it differently:

• Get closer. Detail beats vista in dull light — gorse, a gate, a single tree, an animal.
• Look for colour instead of contrast. Wet tarmac, yellow whin, orange bracken in autumn.
• Shoot for black and white. Flat light with a strong shape in it converts very well. All prints here can be made in black and white at no extra cost.

Settings that matter

• f/8–f/11 for landscape depth. Wider than f/5.6 and the far hedge goes soft.
• Lowest usable ISO. Noise is very visible in large flat skies once you print at 16×24″.
• Bracket exposures in a bright sky over a dark field. You cannot recover a blown sky.
• Shoot RAW if you intend to print. JPEG throws away the sky detail you will want later.

Which frames actually print

Not all of them. An image that reads well on a phone can fall apart at 16×24″. What survives:

• A clear subject — a road, a tree, a horse — rather than a general view
• Clean skies with real gradient in them
• A colour palette that will sit in a room: warm gold, muted green, grey-blue

If you are choosing a landscape for a wall rather than shooting one, the print size guide covers what size suits each room, and the living room guide covers sizing against furniture.

Prints

Every landscape here is available from €10 unframed, or +€15 framed in oak, in four sizes, excluding postage. Half of every order goes to Forever Home Sanctuary.

See the landscape prints or the full shop.