Sunday 30 April 2017

Boatographs



I'm in the window of the Tara Hotel in Killybegs, looking out over the harbour. I'm eating sea bass, which was probably swimming yesterday, and potatoes, which were probably growing then too.

That actually makes me feel a bit bad now on behalf of both the sea bass and the potatoes, though not bad enough to stop eating.



My dinner makes me pretty happy, but better still are the fishing boats in the harbour. It'll not be news to readers of this blog that I like a nice fishing boat. Rarely does a fortnight go by when I'm not wandering round a harbour at Portavogie, Ardglass or Kilkeel. 



Killybegs is new to me, and it's like my regular harbours on steroids. Most of these boats are enormous.



They're also very well kept, which is splendid for their owners and sailors but, in my opinion, a bit less exciting for photographers. Not so many beautiful weathered textures and rusty little details.



But they're so elegant, so bright and bold in the golden western evening. And there are fantastic reflections all around them. I get some nice shots.








Sunday 23 April 2017

Following Frances


South Donegal was basking in spring sunshine earlier this week. I was spending a few days staying on St John's Point, researching a new photography/writing/family history project, trying to see if it's feasible and setting some parameters for how it might work. 

I suspect that bad weather would have put me off the whole thing, but the lovely light and warmth (well, comparative warmth - I took off my puffa jacket but kept my Aran jumper on), and the way that everything seemed to come together as I travelled, convinced me that this is going to be a good thing to do.



So I got back home all fired up and sorted out the domain name for the website where I plan to keep my work. I'll share the start of it with you here too.

My project is called Following Frances.


Frances McCrea was my great-grandmother, born in north Fermanagh in 1869. In many ways she was an ordinary woman of her time and place, but what makes her life particularly interesting is the extent to which she moved around the north of Ireland, because of her husband's work as a Methodist minister. She lived in eighteen different towns during her seventy-seven years, from Ardara in the west to Glastry in the east, north to Magherafelt and south to Ballybay.



I know quite a lot about much of this time because of the memoir written by her eldest daughter, my granny, Nora. As Nora tells the story of her own life, Frances is always there too, a figure taken for granted at first and later, as Nora becomes older, acquiring a clearer character of her own.



There's also a document written by one of Frances's own brothers, Alexander McCrea, which includes a description of their childhood in Gortnagullion, County Fermanagh. They lived, with their parents and fourteen (yes!) siblings, in a house which my cousin Janet and I located a couple of years ago, derelict but still standing.

What I plan to do is to follow the route of Frances's life. I will visit, in the correct order, each of the places in which she lived. I'll try to find her house. If there's a church to which she was connected, I'll visit that too. I'll take photographs of the place, trying to explore it through her eyes. I'll collect a few small items that come across my path and have relevance to her story. I'll make sound recordings. I'll also try to travel the route she would have taken to her next home.



This is a big project. The geographical area to be covered is manageable, but there will be a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, and I'll be taking small, country roads where I can. That will be slow, but more interesting than just speeding down the M1. It'll take months to complete the whole journey.

It's also quite vague at this point. I don't know where all the houses are. I don't know if it will be possible to visit the ones which I can locate. I don't know if I'll find interesting things to collect. I'd like to write, but I'm not sure yet exactly what - perhaps poetry, perhaps tiny stories, about the places and memories I come across. Perhaps I can create videos or AVs reflecting what I find. I'll work it out as I travel.

But there's plenty of beautiful potential here.



I chose to visit south Donegal for my exploratory trip because Frances lived in both Ardara and Dunkineely, and Nora wrote a considerable amount about this time. I started in Dunkineely, visiting the old Methodist manse, which is now a community centre. The guys working there kindly let me wander the house and garden, taking in all that has changed, but also finding some things that were there a hundred years ago.



Nora writes about the lords of the manor who lived next door. The father of this family was Hamilton Frederick Stuart Goold-Verschoyle, JP. Frances's children played with his daughters Sheila (read more about her fascinating life here, and I've just ordered Dermot Bolger's novel) and Eileen. The family is long gone, but the house was saved from dereliction by the current owner. I met him stepping across the road to buy his paper and we had a long chat about times gone by and the Dunkineely of today.



I went on to Ardara and out along Loughros Point, which plays a big role in Nora's memories of that time. I walked beaches which Frances knew, enjoyed views with which she must have been familiar, watched the lambs jumping about in the fields just as they did then. Homemade bread and a cup of tea in Charlie's West End Cafe were all I needed to keep me going after my massive breakfast fry-up.



I drove back over the hill to Dunkineely, following the route Frances's family took - me in my elderly Micra (and it strikes me how much cooler the project would be if I owned some unique vintage vehicle in which to follow the route), the family in two borrowed carriages, with the luggage behind in a convoy of carts. A light rain began to fall. I imagined how it must have felt, keeping the five children in order, wondering what the next home would hold, hoping everything in the carts had been packed carefully enough, missing friends already, looking ahead with a mixture of optimism and stoicism.



It was an exhilarating couple of days. A blend of detective work, open-minded wandering, meeting interesting people, landscape and detail photography, fresh air, western sunshine and drizzle, it made me think, Yeah. Do this.

You can follow my project, if you like, at www.followingfrances.co.uk - there's only a homepage there so far, and it won't look right on your phone yet, but I'll build it up gradually. 

And so it begins.



Saturday 15 April 2017

Back in the Burgh


It's the midpoint of my Easter holidays, and so far I have achieved an impressive number of hours sprawling on my parents' really very trendy Ercol sofa, the completion of several young adult novels on my Kindle, a successful attempt at selling some antique boots back to the shop in which I bought them, and a slight reduction in the dark greyness of the bags under my eyes.



This is all good. By the end of last term I had been at the stage of watching my pupils' bemused faces as I attempted vainly to explain concepts to them while words and sentences and general common sense escaped me entirely. My only consolation was that if this was confusing them, then there must have been times in days gone by when I was able to talk in an intelligible fashion.



So getting on a plane and spending a few days doing very little in the cleanest house I ever visit has been the perfect break. I don't feel terribly articulate as yet, but I certainly feel relaxed.



Our day out in Aldeburgh helped with that. It's a place where the beach walking is so refreshing, the old boats are so cool, and the fish and chips are so good - and I speak as an ex-professional fish-and-chip worker - that you always come away with a spring in your step.








I fly home tomorrow and head straight for Donegal, where I'll be making plans for what could be the most exciting photo project ever, or else an abject failure. More of that anon.....

Sunday 9 April 2017

Giant country


We've had a few weeks now of clouds custom-designed for photography. My perception of a nice day has shifted slightly - my heart beats a bit faster when I see "partly cloudy" on my weather app. If that happens at the weekend - bliss. 


These images, as many of you will recognise, are from the foothills of the Mournes, up above Kilkeel, where I'd been seeking accidental sculptures in the harbour. 

I spent a while just sitting on the wall and watching the clouds scudding by. It's a peaceful thing to do. I took a couple of dozen shots before my stomach required me to drive on to Dundrum and eat mussels at the Mourne Seafood Restaurant.


I've processed these ones using a new workflow that I stumbled upon accidentally - I think it works well for the colours of an Irish landscape. For each of these, I've used Lightroom, first converting to black and white, then editing them in mono, adjusting the black and white colour balance, managing the levels, adding plenty of graduated and radial filters, especially amongst the clouds. When I'm happy with the strong, contrasty black and white image, I copy it and convert it back into colour. Then I desaturate the colours that are now too strong, leaving a nice, slightly muted, vintage-style palette which still benefits from the strength of the black and white edit. 












Sunday 2 April 2017

Change the lens

Sometimes you have to stop looking at things in too much detail and give some thought to the big picture. That is all.