04.01.2019

Personal Best vol.8 | Eamonn McCarthy

This image, called “Ancient Forest” is one of my favorites from 2018. It was taken on Doohoma beach on the North West coast of County Mayo, Ireland, a landscape that is constantly battered by the Atlantic Ocean . During the storms of the winter of 2017/18 huge quantities of sand were swept away from the beach to reveal a snapshot of a long disappeared landscape. Where is now a beautiful beach was once a great forrest , the shifting sands revealed the roots of trees that are 5000 years old!
I arrived at the beach about half an hour before sunset, the tide was out and the roots were fully revealed, I took several pictures , but really wanted to have the sea water around the roots and so I chose this composition and waited in the freezing cold. Forty Five minutes after the sun had set the Atlantic Ocean began to lap around the roots and I pressed the shutter!

The 20 second exposure was made on my FUJIFILM X-T2 coupled with the XF10-24mmF4 R OIS lens. This is a great lens for landscape, specially in a composition like this , The wide angle allows me to spotlight the large tree root, but still allow the viewer to see the vast landscape of Doohoma Head and Achill Island in the background . On this occasion the lens was zoomed to 14.5mm, I rarely go wider then 14mm.  As you can see, this image was taken from a very low angle, I am nearly 2 meters tall, so was very thankful for the flip screen on the X-T2 !

Equipments used

Camera: X-T2
Lens: XF10-24mmF4 R OIS

Gallery

Read more on “Personal Best”

Vol.1- Flemming Bo Jensen
Vol.2- Pieter D’Hoop
Vol.3- Santiago Escobar-Jarmillo
Vol.4- Stefan Finger
Vol.5- Xyza Cruz Bacani
Vol.6- Christian Bobst
Vol.7- Tomasz Lazar
Vol.8- Eamonn McCarthy