Bliain - Part 26

Part twenty-six of my project to make a photograph every day for a full year, or bliain in Irish. Find Part 25 here.

7th December



The storm came in the night. When I woke in the morning it felt like the wind was pulling and tugging on the corners of the house. A sliding sound caught my attention and I looked to the window just in time to see something freefall past the glass. A long stretch of garden fence had toppled over. What I’d seen falling out my bedroom window turned out to be part of a ridge tile from the roof. Another leak for the house. The western end of a neighbour’s barn roof was peeled off like the lid on a tin of fish and was swaying in the stronger gusts. The power went out around two in the afternoon, and phone signal died soon after. Being outside in my hobbling, post-operation state felt nearly dangerous. The wind was forecast to swing around to the northwest in the afternoon and get stronger. If it did increase it didn’t feel like it. The direction the wind comes from makes all the difference in this place. I went out to heat my dinner and make a pot of tea on the campervan’s gas cooker, the one in the house being electric. I had no timber for the stove as I probably shouldn’t be carrying it around or stooping regularly so soon after surgery. The house was chilly and dark. It struck me that the rush to electrify our homes in a bid to reduce carbon emissions will leave many people without options for cooking or heating at times like this. As night fell I lit the living room with candles and noted how strange it was to look out this window and not see the many lights in the distant houses. My little world was made new – for all I knew it could have been remote Siberia outside the walls of the house. The sound of the wind howling in the dark outside certainly added to the feeling.

8th December



A passing shower illuminated by the low sun over towards Mount Eagle. It pleases me that the intersection of the distant lower ridges lines up with the top of the mountain. This moment of light, with dark shadows reducing most of the landscape to its basic shapes, brought that symmetry into relief as I happened to be stood in the right spot. If I made the short walk from home to here every day it could be quite a long time before such a scene presents itself again. Such simple moments feel like little lottery wins where you’re there to see them.

9th December



The wintry bones of sycamore limbs against a brief opening in a dark sky. The short days are starting to melt into one another, with little to distinguish one from the next apart from the book I happen to be reading. I’m still sore and unable for much, and while it’s nice to delve into the worlds made real by good writing I miss being more able and active. Not that I didn’t appreciate it before, but your health is your wealth. Still, this is as good a time of year as any to be in a type of torpor. Much like the trees.

10th December



Very dull and dreary today. The sky was flat and I feel like for now I’ve exhausted all the other photo opportunities from somewhere in the garden. Before I knew it night had fallen and I was left shuffling about the house wondering what I could photograph. It’s a bit meta, but here it is; a photo of a printed photo. Can you spot the woman’s body and the heads of a gannet and a kingfisher? I might get around to putting a few of these together to sell some day. I quite like the concept, perhaps because I have a mild obsession with driftwood. It’s a pretty simple but interesting way to frame a photograph I think. And you don’t need to be particularly handy to get one made. Make sure the print is on the heaviest paper you can find, leave plenty of border to allow room to rip the edges and use glue initially to hold the sticks to the paper so they’re easier to work with while making a more permanent fix (using thumbtacks in this case.) Happy crafting.

11th December



It felt like dusk for almost all of the daylight hours, such was the weight of cloud smothering the world today. I took a drive around the peninsula for a change of scenery after being cooped up at home since the start of the month. The roads were very quiet. Low mist came and went and it never really stopped raining. From the southern end of Coumeenole the opposite headland of Dunmore was visible only as a faint outline. The usually stunning views from the houses of this remote townland were reduced to a grey-green sea below a murky horizon line. It was a day to be indoors.

12th December



Strong southerly winds all day today. I could see from home that the white horses on the shores of Smerwick had huge white manes, so I drove down for a look, and then out to Clogher where the waves would be even bigger. The wind was so strong and so perfectly offshore to the incoming swell that the blown crests of the breakers looked like smoke from some enormous fire filling the air above the sea. A steady stream of cars came and went from the carpark to take in the spectacle. Even the gulls seemed to be enjoying it – now and then they would fly across the face of an unbroken wave and rise up out of harm’s way into the salt spray when the rolling lump of water finally collapsed on itself. I'm pretty sure that's a herring gull, meaning that wingspan is about 1.3m, give or take. By the looks of things the wave spray must be close to twenty metres tall. I'm jealous of gulls for being able to get so near to so much energy.

13th December



At last a break in the weather. As amazing as it is to watch a huge sea in a storm a bit of sunshine probably has a better overall affect on the mood. These rich colours look a little saturated on my screen now but the sunset was surprisingly vibrant. That high purple glow seemed to colour the air as I walked back up the road to the house, while a waxing moon rose over the hill. The weather is a constant source of amazement when you live in West Kerry.

14th December



Blue tit in the back garden on a lovely bright winter’s day. It’s nice to get this run of easy weather after all the damp and cold and wind of late. I’m sure the birds are pretty happy with it too.

15th December



A mostly grey but benign weather day again today. That clifftop ruin is the schoolhouse from the Ryan’s Daughter film set. I tried watching that once-famous movie years ago but couldn’t get through it. Maybe I’d appreciate it better now I’m a bit older. At the time I found it to be painfully slow and, apart from the beautiful scenery, very, very boring. Away in the distance is the westernmost point of mainland Ireland, Dunmore Head, with two more historic monuments near its broad summit; an ancient Ogham stone (though if you’re looking at this on a phone screen I doubt you’ll be able to make that out), and a watchtower from World War Two. Identical replicas of that little building were built all around the coast of Ireland during “The Emergency”, as it was dubbed here at the time. Whoever was manning this particular concrete hut on the 25th of November 1940 wasn’t doing a great job. That day a German seaplane landed to make repairs in the shelter of Inis Mhic Aoibhleáin, only to be damaged by the heavy waves. The crew of five got into two rubber dinghies and made for The Inis, where they spent three days sheltering in the abandoned house there. Despite lighting fires on the hill they drew no attention, and made the decision to get back into their little boats and try for the Great Blasket. It was a dangerous crossing for such small crafts on the rough winter seas, but they all made it ashore, though at different ends of that long, rugged island. One of the men was hurt by a falling rock while climbing the steep western cliffs, and had to be carried back to the village. The islanders looked after them well. Eventually the Gardaí came and the Germans were taken to a POW camp in The Curragh. One of them, still eager to fight, escaped on a boat to England, but was captured as soon as he landed. All five men survived to the end of the war, and returned to the Great Blasket to thank the islanders and pay for the door of the house they’d broken into on Inis Mhic Aoibhleáin, as well as the sheep and tins of food they’d eaten while marooned there. One of the three made a third visit in his old age when former Taoiseach Charles Haughey (who eventually bought The Inis) heard of the story and sought out its main characters to invite them back. It feels a little foolish to have written so much of this caption on that little hut, which is only a tiny speck in this photograph, but that’s where the image took me. Maybe if Ryan’s Daughter had grabbed my attention I could have written about that instead, but I find the real history is far more interesting than that work of fiction.

16th December



Near the very end of an overcast day the cloud parted suddenly to reveal late light on the summit of Mount Brandon. It’s been quite awhile since I was up there, probably one of my longest stints away from the hills since coming to live among them. I’m glad to have this hernia surgery out of the way now. With a bit of luck there’ll be some snowy days to be had up there in the new year.

17th December



Another fine day in Paradise. I mean, West Kerry.

18th December



All this calm weather has me on a bit of a drone buzz (not even sorry for the pun) and the otherwise inaccessible sights it can open up. This zig-zagging stream immediately caught my eye when it came into view. I like how this image shows the contrast between the man-made and the natural – the flat green of the fields is very much at odds with the rich variety of the wilder ground. Biodiversity is a hot topic these days, having finally made it into the common parlance at a time when human activity threatens to remove it from actuality and leave it as a remembered academic theory. Biodiversity is simply the diversity of life on Earth. The many millions of different species currently in existence have come about over unimaginable spans of time, and through a bewildering number of different factors acting upon those species’ ancestors, to shape how they evolved and diversified. And this process is continuous; our senses just aren’t slow enough to perceive it. One of those many factors is habitat. A variety of different habitats mean more room for a variety of different life forms. The trouble with much of our human activity is that it dumbs down the natural variety found in wild ecosystems. Look at most of Ireland from the air and all you see is green fields. Compared to a wild landscape made up of a mosaic of meadows and woods, scrubland and bog, curling rivers and fractal wetland, acres and acres of green fields are an ecological desert. Obviously we all need food – I’m not having a go at farmers here. But we need to start making room for the lives we share this planet with too. For the past two hundred years we’ve been very efficiently eliminating the non-human world. We strip away trees and burn the bogs and straighten rivers and streams, and then cry foul when the towns and cities down the line get flooded. But with no woods or bogs to absorb the rainfall and no bends to slow the rushing water what can we expect? We import firewood and lumber because we’ve cut down most of our own, and see more value in livestock for export than in trees for our own good. We’ve lost the sound of woodpeckers from the few remaining native woods (though thankfully they’re making a comeback), among other birds, and less conspicuous lifeforms. Our waterways are heavily polluted from artificial additives we’re beholden to buy from big corporations because our (arbitrarily invented) economic systems won’t allow most small-scale farmers to make a living in a more a natural way. We are stripping away the complexity of the surface of the Earth, and with it go the many different species that depend on those varied topographies for their homes. And if we carry on in that way we’ll strip away our own means of survival too. There are great opportunities for positive change than can benefit us all. I get great hope from the fact that all the solutions to our problems already exist – all we need is to change how we look at the world and what we value most. A task easier said than done, but it’s entirely within our own control.

19th December



It’s a rare thing to get clear skies around the time of the moonrise (or any time) in this part of the world. I’m sick of seeing the social media feeds of photographers from Cork and Dublin every other month plastered with some new, perfectly aligned lunar masterpiece while we here at the western edge of the country are surrounded by an almost eternal ring of heavy cloud on the horizon. So it was nice to watch the moon come up through the cold, clear air this evening for a change. This ain’t no lunar photography masterpiece, but it was enough to be there to see it, and share the rare moment with my brother who was down for a visit. Almost every other car that came around the bend at Clogher Head pulled in to take a look too. Between the views and the moon it's easy to see why.

20th December



Dingle is getting a little busier as people arrive back to spend Christmas here. Even a curmudgeonly crank like me has been enjoying the displays in the shop windows and seeing the town lit up at night. As we head into other uncertain yuletide season I wish you all the best, and hope you have a safe one.

21st December



Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day and the longest night of the year. It’s also the last day of this project. It was hard to not attach a weight of meaning to whatever image I was going to make today. I had no plan, apart from thinking that it would be fitting to finish with an image from the end of the daylight hours, since I started the project in the dawn. I left home in the early afternoon, and as has been the case for most of my life up to now I found myself drawn west (I dislike how rereading that makes me sound like a pretentious wanker, but it’s true – the part about always being drawn west that is.) On the way out to Slea Head the sun and cloud competed to set the tone above the wide open sea. It felt like I’d been drawn to be there at the right time – a heavy bank of cloud on the horizon made it clear that this was the last direct light of the day, and what better way to represent the winter solstice than as a brief window of light in the darkest time of the year. Darkness generally gets a bad press in today’s society, and it seems as though we’re trying to drown it out with artificial lights and hyper-consumerism and all the other frantic madnesses of Christmas time. But we need the darkness as much as we need the light. These wise words by Brigit Anna McNeill express this idea in far better terms than I ever could, and are well worth reading and reflecting on at this time of year. Same goes for the caption on this post (and that winter solstice drawing by Tijana Lukovic is absolutely gorgeous too.) I have never more fully embraced the idea of hunkering down for winter as I have in 2021. I’m lucky to be in a position where I’m able to indulge in what many would see as an unnecessary luxury. I hope that those of you who feel pressure to be here, there and everywhere in the midst of the winter darkness, can find the time for the rest and relaxation our animal bodies naturally need. Happy solstice, and all the best for the next trip around the sun.

* * * *

As I was driving home from making that last image my mind was already filling with ideas for the next project (I struggle to make images that I can’t see being useful for some kind of bigger assignment.) But it would be terrible to not sit and reflect on some of the lessons from the past year of keeping a daily photo diary. Though I expect most of the lessons will only become clear after more time has passed.

Ultimately I’m very glad the whole thing is finished. The sense of freedom I have today, knowing that the task of heading out and having to make a passable photograph isn’t hanging over me, is delicious. That’s not to say that it was all misery. I’m glad I didn’t ever stop, and even though it feels foolish, I do have a sense of satisfaction from completing a task I set out on. But it certainly started to become a chore too, and the pressure to not miss a day actually ended up being quite constraining. Not being able to skip a day meant I couldn’t take risks. As soon as I went out with the camera coming home without a photo wasn’t an option. On lots of days this was no trouble – conditions were kind, or I had a good idea of what I was after, or at the very least lots of time to work with. Oftentimes though, when the routine of normal life left me with few free hours, I had to play it safe. This usually meant going back to a composition I know already worked for me, or photographing something I knew I could write a few words about even if the image itself wasn’t interesting, or just making a very dull photo for no other reason than to keep this whole enterprise going. There seemed to be little room for learning in times like that. Rather than taking a chance on somewhere new, or an idea for an image that might not have worked out, there was this constant clock ticking down to midnight, distracting me and often pushing me into something I usually wouldn’t bother with or didn’t even really like. The results of that limitation are a whole heap of very unremarkable photographs that leave me feeling like a crap photographer. Not that I ever thought I was very good. But then again that’s another thing about keeping this thing going every day.

It’s impossible to maintain a high standard in anything over a prolonged period of time. Outdoor photography, which often leans very heavily on good light to have impact, is no exception. Good light is fickle, and entirely outside of anybody’s control. It isn’t always needed of course - the best photographers are those who can make the most from the least - but it certainly makes things much easier. But such is life isn’t it? So many things are outside of our control, and not every day can be a good one. I don’t want to get into any details here but this past twelve months have been consistently difficult for me for various reasons, and the weight of that heaviness made this whole project feel far more difficult than it might have been at another time in my life. But so it goes. All any of us can do is try to make the most of what we’re dealing with at the time. The carefully curated social media feeds that nearly serve as a proxy for real life at this stage would have us convinced that every day is amazing and special and full of meaningful moments. As a creative person who sometimes wants to share nice photographs on these platforms I began to resent having to include the mundane and less than mediocre images from days when things didn’t go to plan or I just couldn’t be bothered. But again, that’s just life. It’s so important to never forget that social media isn’t representative of real life, and that things can’t be good all the time, and that that’s ok. Our best moments, just like our best photographs, or songs, or drawings, or writing, are rare. They are the best because they’re rare, and partly because they contrast with the worst and most mundane of our experiences.

All of which is to remind myself that it’s alright that most of my photographs from this project are entirely unexceptional. That was always going to be the way, and collecting the images was never really the point of the exercise anyway. Ultimately I wanted to be reminded that it’s always possible to go out and find some beauty in the world, even on the days when the full force of that wonder can’t get through the fog of depression or sadness or distractedness that we all experience from time to time. It needn’t be a sky-spanning sunset of colourful cloud, or a close encounter with a giant whale. Some of the most memorable moments of the year for me have been noticing the everyday little things – the pattern of lichens on a tree limb I walked past countless times without seeing, a close inspection of a dew-jeweled spider’s web, the colours and shapes of a particular stone. The big and little wonders are all around us all the time. We just have to try to always remember to take the time to stop and take them in.