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Beach and rope #1

Beach with decaying rope at Achill Island, Ireland

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The story behind this image

So you're at the seaside. The 'Places to Visit' guide showed tantalising photos of sun drenched beaches and azure seas but you find the reality is somewhat different. As a dedicated landscape photographer, what do you do?

This was my dilemma during a visit to Achill Island, an unspoilt paradise on the west coast of Ireland, according to the brochure.

What Liz and I actually found when we got there was that while the 'unspoilt' description was accurate enough, the 'paradise' adjective left a lot to be desired. I would expect a place described in such terms to be not quite so cold, windy and wet. I should have known better I guess. This is Ireland after all!

So what to do? Photographing the grand scene of beach, mountains and sky was out (I couldn't even see the mountains through the drizzle) so instead I turned my gaze downwards and found a couple of quite interesting and strangely photogenic artifacts on the beach right at my feet.

The first was a tangle of different coloured bits of old fishing net half buried in the sand, which made quite a striking composition based on contrasting colour.

The second was a very strange skeleton. Check it out.

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Image data


Filename - beach rope 01.jpg

Camera - Canon 5D

Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 105mm

Exposure - 1/100sec @ f8, ISO100

Location - Achill Island, Ireland

This image - 800x640px JPEG

Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2

Comments - Polariser used to enrich colours.