This ruin stands on the land behind my parents house. No one is sure when, why or by who it was built but local legend says it was either a Norman Tower House or church. Most of it is leveled to the ground with just a the base of the walls remaining but base of an old tower still stands in defiance of time, humanity and nature.

We spent many hours and days playing around these ruins as children. It has been in this state since long before I was around. In fact my grandfather who was born in 1903 helped build a barn beside the ruins when he was young and they used some of the stones from around the tower which was already a ruin.

A photo from our trip to Kerry a few weeks ago. We were driving along on the Ring of Kerry and came across this church. There is a little car park in front with cars in it which was ruining the shot but by walking up the path a bit I found this angle which took the cars out of the image. I did kind of freak out my wife who was taking her own photos and turned around to find I had vanished.

The church itself reminds me of churches in Newfoundland, especially with the landscape around it.

A bit late but here is the first of my photos from St Patricks Day in Dublin, 2012.

Another photo from our trip to the west last year, the Cliffs of Moher. At first the weather was so bad it was hard to get any photos but after a bit of time in the visitor center and a late lunch the rain had cleared and we were able to see the cliffs.

Hopefully next weekend I’ll have some new photos to post, it’s St Patricks Day after all. Plus we’re hoping to do a trip to Kerry soon, at this stage I’m pretty tired of taking photos around Dublin.

I haven’t posted any color photos this year so I should stop converting everything to B&W and post another photo from our visit to Doolin last year, the roof of a beautiful thatched cottage.

Ireland returned to the Aviva Stadium this weekend for a 6-Nations rugby match against Italy and while I couldn’t get a ticket I was reminded that I still had this photo half finished on my laptop from a walk around the stadium last year. It was a bit of a wet, showery, cold day but at least I managed to get one photo I liked out of the trip.

Here is another photo from the Clare trip, this time a view of Doonagore Castle near Doolin.

I’ve had a slow January photography wise. It was only last weekend that I got to take my camera out and take some shots around town. While importing them into Lightroom last night I came across some photos from a trip to Doolin late last year that I never got around to posting here. I had posted some to Flickr but I’ve several others that I want to post as well so I thought I’d start with taken late on the afternoon by the sea in Doolin. Very cold and windy with some big waves that seemed to attract the spectators more than drive them away.