Landscaping – with Trish Punch

Brow Head silhouetted against the setting sun*

In our quest to bring you the best West Cork has to offer, we pepper our posts and our Facebook Page with photographs. After a great day-long course with Celia Bartlett (last year, highly recommended!) I managed to wean myself from the auto mode on my camera and have been taking pictures using the manual setting for more than a year now.

Rock Island and Crookhaven Inlet

And I’m hitting the wall again – knowing my camera is able to deliver so much more and that there’s a lot I need to learn about composition. So I signed up for a one-on-one workshop with Trish Punch and boy, am I glad I did!

This is Trish – she’s a professional landscape photographer who supplies images to Lonely Planet (Lonely Planet!) among other prestigious publishers and travel sites. She specialises in the Wild Atlantic Way and is currently pursuing a project to capture the islands along the Way. Take a look at her website and be prepared to do some serious drooling.

We started at dawn and watched the light appear over Ballydehob Bay

But Trish is also an inspiring, encouraging, and organised teacher – and a lot of fun to be with. We had a great day together, starting at dawn and ending when the sun set. Throughout the day she encouraged me constantly to slow down, think about my shots, use the principles of good composition, really examine where the eye was being led in the frame and check the light. 

This was taken on Schull Pier – the mooring bollard takes on a sculptural quality in the right lighting

I’ve been making all the classic mistakes, chief of which is to plonk the main subject right in the middle of the frame. I have also struggled with sharp focus, especially in low light, and Trish insisted on me using my tripod (something I have been reluctant to do – I don’t want to lug it around) and showed me how to use my timer to take the shot, since my camera won’t accommodate a cable or remote shutter release.

Watching where the light comes from – these marsh grasses at Barley Cove glow golden in the low evening light

We were fortunate to have a really great day in December, with a long Golden Hour at each end. I’ve been practising what she taught me since then and I feel a little more confident each day. I hope you, our dear readers, will see a difference too, over time.

The River Lee near Inchigeelagh

We took a trip to Macroom the other day and I used the opportunity to practise what I learned with Trish. Mostly I just tried to slow down and think more about the composition of the shot. It was another amazing day with clear blue skies – but this time very cold with lots of frost where the sun hadn’t managed to penetrate.

Sunshine and shadow on a frosty day in West Cork

If you’ve been thinking you’d like to improve your photography skills, give Trish a call or drop her an email. You can take one of her planned workshops or she can customise a day, or a weekend, for you no matter what level you’re at.

House in the Shehy Mountains

Don’t be intimidated if you’re operating on the automatic settings or if you don’t know the difference between shooting in RAW or JPEG (I didn’t) – you’ll come away knowing a lot more about how to move forward in your skills. And you’ll have time in the open with lots of laughter and surrounded by incredible landscape – now what could be better than that?

Heading up to the Pass of Keimaneigh

*I took the first five photographs above on the day of the workshop (Dec 16) and the next five in the last two weeks.