THE WONDERS OF MEGALITHIC IRELAND

Ireland, beside its wonderful landscapes (see part 1: IRELAND: A WONDERFUL LANDSCAPE), is - for those interested in history - one of the richest countries in Europe; from megalithic monuments to medieval churches, abbeys and castles, Ireland has it all. Of course, most of them are in very photogenic locations as well; however, what is even more appealing to me is that the majority of the sites are very little visited, and most of them are freely open to visitors day and night. Some are very organised, featuring visitor centres and such, but the majority lies in the middle of nowhere; these are very hard to find, but no matter how remote they are, once you get there you'll find an informative panel telling you (unobtrusively) about the place and its history. Bravo!

This post is dedicated to the megalithic remains that are prominent all around the island; between their beauty and the beauty of their settings, besides their historic interest they often make wonderful subjects for fine arts photography. Let's start with this "dolmen on fire":

Prehistoric fires, Ireland 2012

The photo above shows the Poulnabrone dolmen, probably one of the best known dolmen in Ireland and all over the world. Just to share a little about my working process, here it is in daylight during my preliminary exploration of the site; in daytime it looks like this:

Poulnabrone Dolmen, Ireland 2012

During the day, the sun kept playing hide and seek with the clouds, making me hopeful for some interesting configuration of clouds and sun at sunset. When possible, I like to make time and exploring the sites I want to photograph in daytime; here at Poulnabrone, I spent some time walked around, taking a few photographs to get ideas about angles and compositions and to decide how to set up. Then, I came back to the site a while before sunset; having set my camera up for the shot I wanted, I waited and hoped for a moment when the sun stroke just the clouds above the dolmen, and not the sky around; very often, when waiting in such a way for natural phenomena to collide for a shot, it might not happen for days or - well - sometimes even forever. However, in this instance I was lucky and the sun & clouds gave me the "Prehistoric fire" light over the dolmen: despite looking very still in the photograph above, in the real world that combination of light & clouds lasted for about 30 seconds. After that, the sky offered what was a peacefully beautiful sunset still, but with much much less drama; after a change of lens, I got this last image for the day:

Poulnabrone, Ireland 2012

As you probably know, dolmen & other megalithic monuments are present all over Europe; after seeing a lot of the ones in Italy, England and France, I can say that the Irish dolmen - while not always the biggest or the largest - are among the most elegant I have seen:

Dolmen at Killclooney, Ireland 2012

But also some of the strongest looking:

Old giant, Ireland 2012

Browne's Hill sunset, Ireland 2012

Browne's Hill dolmen, above, has a very large capstone: it is the largest & heaviest in Europe at about 150 tons! As you can see, it is now half toppled over (probably because of its own weight), and to me it looks like an old giant kneeling...

The site at Carrowmore offers a high concentration of monuments, out of which I choose this one, a portal tomb (dolmen) enclosed in a stone circle:

Carrowmore Dolmen, I, Ireland 2012

On a funnier note, very often you can see sheep grazing between the monuments as well:

Sheep at Carrowmore, Ireland 2012

Besides dolmen, there are various megalithic monuments, the stone circle and the tumulus being among the most commonly found. Stone circles aren't unfortunately all as impressive as the huge one at Stonehenge in England (see HERE and HERE); the Irish ones often are large in diameter (even larger than Stonehenge) but the stones that make the enclosure aren't as tall - therefore, photographing them is not easy when at ground level, from where they lose much of their visual impact:

Drombeg's Stone Circle, Ireland 2012

However, light, clouds, the sky, they all can help us in creating some drama:

Beltany at sunset, Ireland 2012

Beltany at dusk, Ireland 2012

Other prehistoric remains in Ireland include forts such as Dunbeag fort, sitting on a beautiful spot on a cliff side on the Dingle peninsula:

Last, I would strongly recommend to visit the monuments at Loughcrew: while much less impressive in size and in worse conservation that the one at Newgrange, the Loughcrew tombs are definitely less crowded (actually, there was just two other people the whole time I was there), not so easy to reach but once you are there you can stay all the time you want and take all the photographs you want of the beautiful petroglyphs inside the tombs:

Loughcrew, before history, Ireland 2012

Despite the absence of warnings against the use of flash, in order both to help preserving the monument and to get a softer, less harsh light on the graffiti, this last two images have been shot with the camera on a tripod and painted with light using a LED flashlight.

OK, this second instalment has come to an end as well - I hope you enjoyed it!

Click here to see part 1: IRELAND: A WONDERFUL LANDSCAPE, part 3: IRELAND'S HISTORICAL CHRISTIAN REMAINS and part 4: IRELAND'S MAN MADE LANDSCAPE

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Now for the technical stuff (click to go to the related product page): all images shown here have been shot with a Nikon D800E equipped with the Nikon 24mm f/1.4 AF-S, Nikon 35mm f/1.4G AF-S, Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AF-S, Nikon 85mm f/1.4 AF-S and the Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 AF-S VR; a SB-910 Speedlight controlled via the D800E commander has been used at times as well. For support I used a Gitzo tripod equipped with an Arca Swiss Cube head; last, but certainly not least, I also used Singh-Ray filters, including a polarizer & various ND filters. Photos have been developed in Nikon Capture NX 2 and finished in Adobe Photoshop CS6.

Thank you for reading this far, and stay tuned for more!

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