Portstewart’s annual ‘Red Sails Festival’ is held each year during the last week of July each year. With entertainers, singers, children’s competitions and amusements, exhibitions and a fireworks display – the festival attracts great crowds into the seaside town each year, filling the cafes, coffee shops and restaurants, and giving plenty of opportunities to meet friends and enjoy the company. this year it was a week of high temperatures, pleasant breezes, and beautiful sunsets, and great opportunities for photography. Here’s a snapshot of the week…
There’s something really intriguing about human silhouettes, – they excite the mind.Perhaps it’s the sense of mystery they evoke.Who are these people?What are they doing,and why are they here?In a moment of time, they have been captured forever against a background of light.It’s evocative, – silhouettes make the brain work, trying to piece together the missing information, stimulating those little grey cells and producing the chemicals that trigger our emotions. Continue reading How to Make Silhouettes→
Ballybeen is a large housing development close to our studio location in Dundonald. The majority of people who live there are the decent Protestant working class people of Ulster – my own background. For centuries July has been a special month for them – the annual celebration of victory of William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne, which ushered in the Glorious Revolution, enshrined the Constitutional Monarchy in the British Isles, dethroned the despotic Stuart kings, and guaranteed civil and religious liberty for all.
Donaghcloney, or Donacloney is a village in Co.Down, – or Co. Armagh (depending on who you ask!). I should know, for I used to live there – back in 1986, for around six months. Situated between Banbridge and Lurgan, and along the bank of the Lagan River, the village was built around the Irish Linen industry. The old linen mill was still working when I lived there, but it’s closed now, and its site is being redeveloped for housing.
In Donacloney to visit a home there, I took a few minutes to make some photographs.
Slemish Mountain is in Co.Antrim, to the east of the town of Ballymena. Traditionally, it is said to be the first Irish home of St Patrick, who tended sheep as a slave boy on its slopes.Slemish (Slieve Mish) is around 1500 feet above the surrounding plain, and is visible for many miles around.
I lead a VERY exciting life. After a wet morning in the open air, doing some commercial photography, I got to stop for packed lunch at a favourite car-park! Oxford Island, just outside Lurgan, Co.Armagh is a nature reserve, perched on the southern shores of Lough Neagh, the largest fresh-water lake in the British Isles. My plan was to have lunch, then go for a stroll with a camera, but that came to nothing, for as soon as I’d finished eating the heavens opened and the rain poured down. Again. Continue reading Lough Neagh→
The north coast of Ireland has a winding coastline with lots of quaint little harbours, many of which are picturesque and great for photography. On a recent visit to Portballentrae, I travelled along the coast to visit two of those harbours.
DUNSEVERICK.
Dunseverick is a Hamlet, just along the coast from the world famous tourist attraction that is the Giant’s Causeway. It’s little harbour lies down a long, narrow winding lane. Be careful – its just about wide enough for two vehicles to pass!
The best way to burn off one or two of those Christmas Day calories is by taking a good walk on Boxing Day, and on this Boxing Day, 2018, the sun was shining in Belfast, and I was visiting a family in Sydenham, and where better for a walk after my visit than Victoria Park, one of Belfast’s legendary green spaces in the industrial landscape.
Portraits2Go.co.uk 