Its the weekend , Time to get out and walk and relax if you can …………
Slieve League Coastline
County Donegal
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
Its the weekend so I just wanted to share one of my favorite places in Ireland, the coastal mountains of Slieve-League , County Donegal.
This location is one of the most Beautiful spots in Ireland, looking out directly towards county Sligo and its bay and in land along the coast towards Donegal city itself.
Landscape Locations such as this one are just amazing to visit and all so easy to take for granted, when ever I have to leave a spot like this I make an assumption that I will return one day soon, I know just like us all though , maybe not 🙂 .
So it’s the weekend, if you can get outside , visit your most loved places and don’t rush away back home !!!!!!
Four feet Friday !!! , “Four Feet”, by Rudyard Kipling
Four Feet Friday
Molly our Golden retriever
This is Molly our somewhat aging but much loved Golden Retriever, Aging very well I am happy to say 🙂
I took these images while on a walk with her yesterday in some local woodlands and was reminded of this Kipling Poem.
I think he captured so well the love and loyalty that pets bring to our lives and in the last, the memories that they leave when they are no longer able to be with us on their daily walks, of which I don’t think Molly has every mist a day. Mainly because I only need to go near the back door and there she is looking up and sitting down ready !!
I have enjoyed every walk with her four paws – in front and sometimes behind 🙂
Four Feet
by Rudyard Kipling
I have done mostly what most men do,
And pushed it out of my mind;
But I can’t forget, if I wanted to,
Four-Feet trotting behind.
Day after day, the whole day through —
Wherever my road inclined —
Four-Feet said, “I am coming with you!”
And trotted along behind.
.
Now I must go by some other round, —
Which I shall never find —
Somewhere that does not carry the sound
Of Four-Feet trotting behind.
by Rudyard Kipling
Three Poems all with the title ( Window ), By : Milind Phanse , John David Morris Meriwether and Drew Renquest
Sitting by the Garden Window
Photograhy : Nigel Borrington
Window
By : Milind Phanse
I sit by the window looking out
And see myself reflected,
Outside the glass looking in.
Reality and illusion facing off each other,
Or is the window the only reality ?
Separated by two ghosts,
perhaps imprisoning just the singularity
——————————————————————
Window
By : John David Morris Meriwether
I don’t want to get up from my seat,
because every time I walk around,
and sit back down,
I’m a different person.
——————————————————————
Window
By : Drew Renquest
You see so much yet stand so still
To wonder what is out there while dust gathers on your sill.
Such memories that you’ve witnessed but can speak none
I can maybe only recall one.
Craving to wander
I’d gladly trade,
How I would love to sit and watch the
world fade.
Solo images, Tide and time
Solo images
Tide and Time : Nigel Borrington
“But now in the dusk the tide is turning, Lower the sea gulls soar, And the waves that rose in resistless yearning Are broken forevermore.”
Independent Heart, A poem by : Jodie Moore
Independent Heart
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
Independent Heart
Soft words you spoken
From the heart that is broken
I know deep inside
You have a level of independence
With a mystery of suspense
You are recovering
Waiting for someone
To catch on to the discovering
Of the real you
With a heart so true
Giving of your best
Expecting nothing less
While hurt is making amends
Leaning on loving friends
Accounted for in time you spend
With words you write
Not giving into a broken hearts flight
Staying strong
Carrying others like me along
by Jodie Moore
“When my ship comes in” Robert Jones Burdette (1844–1914)
When my ship comes in
Photography : Nigel Borrington
“When my ship comes in”
Robert Jones Burdette (1844–1914)
Somewhere, out on the blue seas sailing,
Where the winds dance and spin;
Beyond the reach of my eager hailing,
Over the breakers’ din;
Out where the dark storm-clouds are lifting,
Out where the blinding fog is drifting,
Out where the treacherous sand is shifting,
My ship is coming in.
Oh, I have watched till my eyes were aching,
Day after weary day;
Oh, I have hoped till my heart was breaking,
While the long nights ebbed away;
Could I but know where the waves had tossed her,
Could I but know what storms had crossed her,
Could I but know where the winds had lost her,
Out in the twilight gray!
But though the storms her course have altered,
Surely the port she ’ll win;
Never my faith in my ship has faltered,
I know she is coming in.
For through the restless ways of her roaming,
Through the mad rush of the wild waves foaming,
Through the white crest of the billows combing,
My ship is coming in.
.
Breasting the tides where the gulls are flying,
Swiftly she ’s coming in;
Shallows and deeps and rocks defying,
Bravely she ’s coming in;
Precious the love she will bring to bless me,
Snowy the arms she will bring to caress me,
In the proud purple of kings she will dress me,
My ship that is coming in.
White in the sunshine her sails will be gleaming,
See, where my ship comes in;
At mast-head and peak her colors streaming,
Proudly she ’s sailing in;
Love, hope, and joy on her decks are cheering,
Music will welcome her glad appearing,
And my heart will sing at her stately nearing,
When my ship comes in.
“Some think to judge the very sky itself” , A Monday Morning Poem.
Some think to Judge the very sky itself
Callan and Kilkenny Landscape Photography
Nigel Borrington
A Monday Morning Poem
Its been a great weekend here in Ireland, Saturday was blue sky’s all day, while we had rain for all the day Sunday, oh well that’s Ireland – all seasons in one weekend.
While I was inside staying out of the rain, I did some tasks then reading followed with some writing, a couple of poems!
Of which this is one …..
Some think To Judge the very Sky itself
Some think to Judge the very sky itself,
from the rain it brings to the snow that falls,
from the shade and shape of each cloud that rushes by.
Judging its flowing expressions, as the very stars,
that rise at night and fall into the day.
Some think to judge the very sky itself,
as if this act will make them fly !
Yet the Sky looks back and never see’s,
the Stars shine down and never hear.
To Judge the sky, is as pointless a Human act as can be !!
Some think to judge the very sky itself,
but the Sky never hears their words.
They are like black grains of sand, lost along the ebb and the flow of Tide and Time !!!
A Poem for the weekend – The Road Not Taken By : Robert Frost
The road not taken Robert frost.
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
“The Road Not Taken” by : Robert Frost is a favorite poem of his, I often re-read it and sometimes think of it when out in our local woods here in County Kilkenny.
This weekend I hope you can find time to walk your own path and roads, enjoy yourself and get to relax and put the last week behind you .
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Images of County Kilkenny. Ireland – Tales from the river bank .
Irish Landscape Photography
Tales from the River bank
Nigel Borrington
A Gallery for Friday, images from the many river banks of county Kilkenny, Ireland .
Tales from the river bank, a Gallery
If I could choose the life I please, Then I would be a boatman !
Canal boats and the Boat man
Photography : Nigel Borrington
Way back in the 1990’s the Levellers an English rock band, founded in 1988 and based in Brighton, England released this song “The boats man” from their album “Levelling the Land”.
Some songs stay with you all your life and for me this is definitely one that has 🙂
It screams out to “Personal Freedoms” , being free to live your life that way you want !! “Free as the rivers breeze”
The fact it centers on the lives of boat people is perfect, for some reason the people who’s lives where lived on the canals and river banks always felt more free, free to move and travel making a living from transporting goods (Coal, timber and foods ), from boat repairs and from music played in the many pub’s along the river banks.
The levellers
If I could choose the life I please
Then I would be a boatman
On the canals and the rivers free
No hasty words are spoken
My only law is the river breeze
That takes me to the open seas
If I could choose the life I please
Then I would be a boatman
If I could choose the life I please
Then I would be a rover
And if the road was not for me
Then I MIGHT choose another
Cross mountains and the valleys deep
Where I WILL take these weary feet
If I could choose the life I please
Then I would be a rover
.
But these things they’re so hard for me
I cannot choose my own destiny
And all the things that I want to see
Are so unclean
Well I wish I could choose the life I please
But I am not a free man
Others rule my destiny
But my will’s never broken
I know someday I will be
Everything that I dreamed I’d be
And when I live the life I please
Then I will be a freeman.
I know someday I will be
Everything that I dreamed I’d be
And when I live the life I please
Then I will be a freeman.
And when I live the life I please
Then I will be a freeman.
The Lighthouse , By, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
St John’s Point Lighthouse,
Donegal
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
Its been a little time since I last got to visit county Donegal, having spent most of my time recently exploring counties Kerry and Cork. This year however I hope to visit again and the lighthouse at St Johns point will be very high on my list. This is a wonderful location at any time of year, stunning on a sunny day and spectacular in a winters storm!
Here I have matched some of my last photographs of the point and its lighthouse with one of my most loved lighthouse poems …….
The Lighthouse By, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
The rocky ledge runs far into the sea,
And on its outer point, some miles away,
The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.
.
Even at this distance I can see the tides,
Upheaving, break unheard along its base,
A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides
In the white lip and tremor of the face.
And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright,
Through the deep purple of the twilight air,
Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light
With strange, unearthly splendor in the glare!
.
Not one alone; from each projecting cape
And perilous reef along the ocean’s verge,
Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape,
Holding its lantern o’er the restless surge.
Like the great giant Christopher it stands
Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave,
Wading far out among the rocks and sands,
The night-o’ertaken mariner to save.
.
And the great ships sail outward and return,
Bending and bowing o’er the billowy swells,
And ever joyful, as they see it burn,
They wave their silent welcomes and farewells.
They come forth from the darkness, and their sails
Gleam for a moment only in the blaze,
And eager faces, as the light unveils,
Gaze at the tower, and vanish while they gaze.
The River, a Poem By : Sara Teasdale
Irish rivers
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
The River
I came from the sunny valleys
And sought for the open sea,
For I thought in its gray expanses
My peace would come to me.
I came at last to the ocean
And found it wild and black,
And I cried to the windless valleys,
“Be kind and take me back!”
.
But the thirsty tide ran inland,
And the salt waves drank of me,
And I who was fresh as the rainfall
Am bitter as the sea.
Sara Teasdale :
Derryvilla bog, Littleton, County Tipperary
Derryvilla lake
Littleton bogs
County Tipperary
Irish landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
One of my favorite weekend places to visit is Littleton Bogs, near Thurles, County Tipperary, the bogs here are harvested for the fuel they provide in the form of Peat. The entire area is effected by this process as you can see in the pictures below. It is however an amazing location to take photographs as even though its scared by the peat production that takes place its one of the few truly remote and wilderness feeling locations that we have locally, when you walk through this landscape at the weekends the only sounds you can hear are the birds and the breeze in the few trees that survive along the foot-path sides.
Derryvilla lake is near Littleton (Irish: An Baile Dháith) county Tipperary. The village in County Tipperary is within the townlands of Ballybeg and Ballydavid, about 18 km (11 mi) northeast of Cashel and to the southeast of Thurles.
A basic description is as follows :
Littleton lies at a crossroads on the R639, its population was 463 at the 2006 census. As well as being a familiar name to travellers between Dublin and Cork, Littleton is closely associated with Bord na Móna, a semi-state company that harvests peat in the nearby complex of raised bogs. Littleton is also home to the long-established ‘Moycarkey Band’, the Seán Treacy Pipe Band.[3]
Gallery of Derryvilla bog and lake, Littleton, County Tipperary
Its the weekend , so get outside and relax if you can – Have a great weekend !!
Images for the weekend
Muckross House
County Kerry
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
Its the weekend – so get outside if you can and walk , relax and take in some views, its good for your mental health !!!!
I hope you can and that you have a great weekend 🙂 🙂 🙂
Irish Landscape Photography , the Killarney National Park – an image Gallery
Killarney National Park
Irish Landscape Photography
Nigel Borrington
The National park Killarney , county Kerry, is one of Ireland treasures as far as landscape photography is concerned.
The basic details of the park are as follows :
“Killarney National Park (Irish: Páirc Náisiúnta Chill Airne) is located beside the town of Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland. It was the first national park established in Ireland, created when Muckross Estate was donated to the Irish state in 1932. The park has since been substantially expanded and encompasses over 102.89 km2 (25,425 acres) of diverse ecology, including the Lakes of Killarney, oak and yew woodlands of international importance and mountain peaks. It has Ireland’s only native herd of red deer and the most extensive covering of native forest remaining in Ireland. The park is of high ecological value because of the quality, diversity, and extensiveness of many of its habitats and the wide variety of species that they accommodate, some of which are rare. The park was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1981.
The park forms part of a Special Area of Conservation.
The National Parks and Wildlife Service is responsible for the management and administration of the park.Nature conservation is the main objective of the park, and ecosystems in their natural state are highly valued. The park is also known for its beautiful scenery. Recreation and tourism amenities are also provided for.”
I have visited many times here over the last few years and hope to return for many more landscape images in the coming months.
On my last visit I did a full image study of Muckross Abbey – of which there is one image in the Gallery below. I will upload a full post next week on this fantastic place 🙂
Killarney National Park – Landscape image Gallery
Landscape Images of County Kilkenny , a winters day on the sheep farm.
Images of County Kilkenny
Sheep farm in the winter
Nigel Borrington
These late winters day have been full of early morning mist and fog, many of the farmers keep their animals enclosed in barns or walled yards at this time of year.
I came across this great scene last weekend while out walking in the mist , an old farm house and its yard used these days for this very function.
The crows will only grow louder, by Laura Breidenthal. “Outward self-expression is a personal right , your right !!”
The crows will only grow louder.
Irish Landscape and nature photography
Nigel Borrington
I first came across Laura Breidenthal poem some two years ago and posted it the very day after, Its a great poem full of feeling and motivation !
I think we have all face these feeling at some point in our life’s and anyone who is outwardly expressive will have most of all.
I feel this poem relates to those moments we all have when other people, usually through negative and insecure motives try to put you and your creativity down in order to better themselves.!
I want to share this poem because I want it to act as a powerful motivation to keep going despite anyone Else’s opinion, if you do get someone putting you down know this its usually because they feel your creations are better than theirs if they have any and that they don’t have an idea how you do what you do.
Self expression is how your learn and how you get better at what you love !!!!!
If you read this post my advice is not to let anyone affect your personal rights to self expression, instead CROW Loader and BLOG more than ever 🙂 🙂 🙂
Outward self-expression is a personal right , your right !!
You may see a post using this Poem again and again during the year, I love this poem so much !!!!
The crows will only grow louder
By : Laura Breidenthal
There is no celestial place for you to guide my thoughts
Can you not see that I am free from you?
I am a crow perched high in the treetops
You will hear my crowing and you may hate it
But, you cannot take away my voice!
Yet still, as fire oppresses forests of life,
You can abuse my freedom to find your glory
You may discard these words for your love of gods,
And in so doing you may simply ignore
All the cries that I so passionately utter
But my infectious species will guide your mind straight back
To that once so lonely treetop where you merely glanced
And there will be multitudinous, oppressing thoughts
That shall enslave you and bind you unwillingly
The crows will only grow louder when you turn away—
When you pretend to ignore with your remaining, strangling pride
For my voice is a production sent from above
Dispatched to judge you pitilessly for your swelling lies!
And the choirs of ferocious beaks shall open forever
Harmony and dissonance as one
A closer look !!!: The old wood that frames the door.
A closer look,
The old wood that Frames the door.
Irish landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
I just want to share a study of an old door way I found on a local farm, what I found interesting about this door was was the old wood that’s been bolted together a long time ago in order to help keep the surrounding stone in place. Its almost as old as the stone and I wonder which is keeping each other from falling down ?
Gallery
Kilkenny Landscape Photography : Kells Priory on a Foggy Sunday into Monday Morning.
Kells Priory
County Kilkenny
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
I took these images late yesterday afternoon at Kells Priory , County Kilkenny. Sunday was a foggy day here with the mist on the ground all day into this morning but the old remains of the priory looked so gray and haunted in the fog.
Last night I found this poem, it relates more to a castle in Scotland but fits so well how kells cal look on a foggy winters day.
A Castle Old And Grey
By : Alexander Anderson
I never see a castle
That is gaunt and grey and grim,
But my thoughts at once go backward
To the past so misty and dim.
To the time when tower and turret,
Kept watch far over the vale;
And along the sounding draw-bridge
Rode knights in their suits of mail.
I see the sunshine glancing
On helmet, pennon, and spear;
And hear from the depth of the forest,
A bugle calling clear.
I fill the hall with visions
Of ladies rich in their bloom;
And stately knights in armour,
And waving with feather and plume.
If I climb the broken stairway,
Where the stone is smooth and fine,
I hear a rustle and whisper,
And footsteps in front of mine.
Whisper of youth and maiden,
As they met in the long ago;
His deep and strong and manly,
Hers tender and sweet and low.
But maiden and youth have vanished,
Away from the scene and the light;
Gone, too, the high-born lady,
And the plumed and armoured knight.
Only the grey old castle,
Of crumbling stone and lime,
Still stands to speak of the ages,
And the iron footsteps of Time.
Kells Priory , county Kilkenny on a foggy day
At the River Awbeg edge, Image Gallery
River Awbeg,
Doneraile , county Cork
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
Today I just want to share some images take at the banks of one of my favorite irish rivers the Awbeg River (Irish: An Abhainn Bheag, meaning “the small river”). This river is a river in the southern part of Ireland. It is a tributary of the Blackwater River and flows into that larger river at a point in County Cork. Its name comes from the Irish Abha Bheag (“small river”, a slightly older form than the modern Irish name).
As its a Friday Afternoon, I wish everyone a great weekend ahead. I hope you get sometime off and have a chance to spend time in a place just like this one 🙂
At the River Awbeg edge, Image Gallery
A sense of Place : Doneraile country park , Co. Cork, Ireland
Doneraile country house
County Cork
Fujifilm X100
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
Doneraile country park is one of my favorite places to visit and take landscape images, with an open green park-land that has the house, flowing rivers and woodlands it is one of the best kept parks in the country.
You can find out more details here : Doneraile country park , Co. Cork, Ireland
These images taken during this last weekend I feel give a small sense of this great place, I will post again on this location and give a little more history about the park and the local town but for now I just want to share these black and white images.
Doneraile country park : Black and white Photography Gallery
Panoramic views of Muckross lake, Killarney National park, County Kerry
Muckross lake,
Killarney National park
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
I have just returned from a trip to Killarney National Park, County Kerry, getting lots of Landscape images during the four days away.
The Killarney national park was looking just fantastic at this time of the year with Snow on all the mountains that surround the Killarney lakes, these two images are taken with a fuji film x100 in portrait format and then jouned to create panoramic images.
The Unnamed Lake, Poem by : Frederick George Scott (1861-1944)
Irish Landscape Photography
Nigel Borrington
A Monday Morning Poem
The Unnamed Lake
By : Frederick George Scott (1861-1944)
IT sleeps among the thousand hills
Where no man ever trod,
And only nature’s music fills
The silences of God.
Great mountains tower above its shore,
Green rushes fringe its brim,
And o’er its breast for evermore
The wanton breezes skim.
Dark clouds that intercept the sun
Go there in Spring to weep,
And there, when Autumn days are done,
White mists lie down to sleep.
Sunrise and sunset crown with gold
The peaks of ageless stone,
Where winds have thundered from of old
And storms have set their throne.
No echoes of the world afar
Disturb it night or day,
The sun and shadow, moon and star
Pass and repass for aye.
‘Twas in the grey of early dawn,
When first the lake we spied,
And fragments of a cloud were drawn
Half down the mountain side.
Along the shore a heron flew,
And from a speck on high,
That hovered in the deepening blue,
We heard the fish-hawk’s cry.
Among the cloud-capt solitudes,
No sound the silence broke,
Save when, in whispers down the woods,
The guardian mountains spoke.
Through tangled brush and dewy brake,
Returning whence we came,
We passed in silence, and the lake
We left without a name.
Nigel Borrington 
How do people see Photography, Commercial or Creative?
Commercial or Creative Photography ?
How do people see Photography and creativity?
During my time here, in the WordPress blogging community the one thing I have loved the most is to see images and posts from around the planet. It is an amazing thing, how quickly you can take this for granted but this is a very recent ability!!
Before the internet with its blogs, you had to visit a book shop and look for international photography publications in order to to see images from other places around the world. These images however as a standard were highly processed and you only got to see a hand full of photographers images.
Personally I have been taking photographs for most of my life and I feel I have a reasonably good idea how this medium can be used, yet its only in recent times that I have attempted to earn some money from images, working with weddings, commercial agencies with landscape images for commercial purposes. I think the oddest job I have been asked to do is to be working in the castle at Enniscorthy, taking pictures of some 7000 historic Irish items from photographs to physical items that go back many years.
As an outsider, attempting to make a living in a small Irish town has not been the most simple of tasks, I have ever taken on in my life, I could tell a story or two for sure ( Things said and done!! ) but I move on very quickly – simple as that !!! 🙂
I think that the factors I have found to be the most limiting are in the way that local people see the subject of photography itself , photography as a medium locally here is mainly viewed as being for Weddings or for Family pictures , yet I know this not to be the case in many other parts of the world. To myself photography is a socially creative medium, one that can be used for much more than (Babies and Weddings,or is it Weddings and Babies ?) and even more so in current times with digital photography offering so many more options.
Digital photography at the same-time however has created some new problems and it does not relate to the problems that some long standing professional photographers have, in that they would love to be back in the days when they were viewed as something special, with skills that actually anyone could do but just did not want to – Sorry old pro’s but maybe its time to face facts Hay !! , anyone could do what you did and since they all went out and purchased a digital camera they have proved it , filling the world around them with wonderful images !!!
To me the problems that digital photography has created is with the drive for pure image perfection, this is the world of the photography purists who would spend a lifetime trying to achieve the unobtainable so that they can die happy ?
It is not that you should not care how good your image is , its that its not the main factor in taking images at all !!!
Personally I feel that photography as a medium is as artistic as any other art form, to make it artistic however you have to let go of pixel peeking just to check how much detail you have, along with as many areas as you can think of that drive for perfection. Where digital cameras truly come to life is in the hand of a creative mind not a perfectionists one , after all some of the best and most creative photographs in history were taken using cameras from the 1900’s that few today would even dream of using , yet the images they created still standup today!!
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February 25, 2015 | Categories: Comment, photography | Tags: comments on photography, Commercial or creative photography, Digital images, international images, Nigel Borrington, personal comment, Photography | 20 Comments