coastal

The Donegal coast of Ireland really is a must see. From Malin Head to Fanad Lighthouse to Downings and the Atlantic Drive, and on round to Portnblagh the views are to die for, whether it’s sunny or shady. My personal favourite is the Atlantic Drive starting from Downings. Round every turn of the road another vista opens itself up to the eye. The northern light casts a beauty that envelops beaches, houses, roads with a quality that is hard to capture. You’ve got to be there!

But if you can’t, a photograph catches something of that light, of that beauty, of that atmosphere. One of my favourites from our road trip is this image of a couple of donkeys that came to say hello as we stopped to admire the view.

Sometimes a particular view or style can become an obsession. Perhaps it’s a range of tones, or maybe it’s a minimal point of view, or a particular point of view, or possibly it’s a combination of many things, perhaps not even consciously understood that all come together to produce the one thing that photographers want – a distinctive – something that is recognisably you.

For me the focus on marram, sea and sky has been impressed on me by the nature of the Sefton English coastline. The entire stretch of coast from Liverpool to Preston is straight, flat and featureless. In order to make an interesting shot certain attitudes have developed: a relentless compositional minimalism, removing even more features in order to produce a clean aesthetic; this minimalism extends to reducing the palette to simple blues and greens with a hint of muted yellows in the sand; a low point of view is probably a result of the compositional needs, but in itself produces a distinct viewpoint on the marram and sky of the Southport coast.

The result is simple, clean images with a muted palette of tones. These aren’t dynamic images in the sense that they produce an immediate ‘wow’, but they are the kind of restful, easy on the eye, hang on your wall and enjoy for years to come type of images, timeless in a sense – timeless in the way that the marramscapes of grass, sand, sea and sky will always be.