In a (New) World of My Own

Day #7: My self-learning of star trail photography continues over Dangan in Galway, Ireland. Taken on January 6, 2010.

Bad – better – best? You tell me. Shot on the grounds of NUIG earlier this afternoon.

If I do the same thing somewhere new, is it something new? Street photography is something that normally holds little interest to me for three reasons:

1. The famous landmarks of the world have already been photographed to death by thousands and thousands of people. I feel I have nothing to add.
2. My personal tastes run to more open vistas. I wander up and down streets but find little in them to personally put my finger on the button as I prefer bleak, open vistas that look like scenes from your last nightmare.
3. There are men and women who specialize in this area and turn out the level of breathtaking work that simply puts my own efforts to shame.

But this afternoon I set up to break from the norm and try to capture a different view of Shop Street in the heart of Galway City. I got looks. I had a chat with a Garda who was endlessly bemused by thirty second exposures. I had catcalls and requests. And for being someone who is so shy, I had no problems sitting out in front of hundreds of strangers and taking photos with my tripod.

I captured my image and I’m broadly happy with the results: Galway as a ghost town.

Other than my stab at the ”Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, this represents my first serious infrared output in the last couple of years. Mike and Kieran of Boards.ie (and Kieran especially – cheers for the ride!) who both crawled out of bed way too early on a Sunday for a morning of photography at Renville forest park just outside of Oranmore. Yes. There. That tree…

Cool breeze off the mountains on my face. Soothing silent shadows surround. No noisome street lights here, only the Big Dipper wheeling ’round Polaris, and Orion rising over my shoulder. A noise? I stop, listen. All I hear is the chorus of ten thousand chirping grasshoppers. What a perfect night.

I start walking again.

I’ve always half-believed in the fae, of a world just a little bit away from ours, and when I go out walking at midnight there are moment’s when it’s around the next corner or past the crossroads. It puts the spring in my step.

No sooner had I left the house last night when someone’s self-confident black cat took it upon herself to flop down in my path and demand thorough attention before she’d let me pass! I scratched her belly until she couldn’t keep in the happy thrills, and then I ran.

She followed! I was faster.

Las Vegas is a seriously pretty city at night. After midnight. I cannot fathom why. Galway…Galway is gorgeous during the day, but just a collection of hard surfaces, florescent lightings and wet tar after the sun sets. Las Vegas softens. The ugly mountain ridges transform into the jagged teeth of fantastical storybook peaks that stand between me and the empty land whose few maps are studies in a neat cursive script that reads ”here be dragons.” The people are all gone on the roads that I tread. Not a sinner in sight. The houses set back in their gardens become ruins, become the broken mausoleums of a culture long since vanished from the face of this not-Earth, anything but four mortar walls and a tile roof hiding two slumbering parents, three sleeping children and a motley variety of small animals!

And the dark? Ah! This isn’t the dark that hides half-felt terrors, but one hints and titillates. Whispers in my ear about what’s down this or that path. That leaves me standing at a blackened crossroad turning in circles with my arms stretched wide while I try to decide which way to go. Which one leads somewhere else? I choose: Follow Polaris. I turn North.

Welcome to my world.

This panorama was tedious to stitch as I had to compile the components seperately and then merge them into the final vista in a process that took four hours, not including the time to post-process the image.

But once again, I’m happy. There are trees, there is grass and there is a fat full moon hanging low in a starry sky. What more could an Irishman want from a nighttime scene?