Our home is somewhere in this photo, Home from Howth. I can see the gable wall peering out at me but I won’t share the exact location in such a public forum. I can also see the house where my parents raised my brother and me over some twenty five years. It’s quite something to resolve such detail across eleven kilometres of sea.
You will also see Bulloch Castle at the bottom, about a fifth of the way in from the right (or west). I also think it’s quite something to look back in time to the fortified building style needed by Cistercian Monks during the 12th century in order to protect their fishing rights.
This photo was taken across Dublin Bay with a 150-600 mm lens steadied on a tripod. at 600 mm. And it was taken this day four years ago.
Honestly, I wasn’t happy to have travelled across to Howth only to be disappointed by the haze. And while I knew this haze would be a problem as I took the photo, I had seen opportunity in my regret.
That’s because I know a bit about colour wheels and negatives, so I knew that the dominant negative colour would be a kind of yellow. I didn’t know that it would be a harvest gold hue. I didn’t foresee it would be the same colour we’ve chosen for our back fences, chosen very specifically, in the case of the fencing, to add some contrast under a vigorously spreading Cupressus × leylandii that our neighbour has worked hard to keep in check. Leylandii, a short term screening solution to urban blight that becomes a blight itself. The long term nightmare that, unchecked will grow a metre every year for decades. The blight of anti-blights.
You’ve probably guessed that I really like the picture. It says home to me twice. There’s a Chinoiserie look to it, a compliment by imitation of elegant eastern Asian artistic traditions. It could be a Shoji screen either.
Or a scarf. It can be made available as an image printed on a scarf that I can sell via FabHappy.
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