I will also be posting regular updates on my Youtube account from now on if you would like to stay up to date with my journey.
I am delighted to announce I have a new Landscape/Seascape photography website www.landscapephotographyireland.com/home please click the link to view it.
I have a few tips and tricks posts below if you want to know more about those aspects of photography.
Click here for my Comprehensive Guide to Seascape photography
Click here for my Complete Guide to Long Exposure Photography
More Tips and tricks coming soon, if you want to be notified on updates then feel free to subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page to get updates as they happen.
As you may have already guessed I am a passionate Landscape and Seascape photographer from Ireland.
I am lucky enough to live by the Irish coast on the South West of the country and this guarantees dramatic weather and changing scenes nearly every few minutes.
These changing conditions can give you blinding rain, wind (we get what is called lazy wind here in West Cork, it would rather go straight through you than go around you) and beautiful sunshine all in just five minutes. That is what gives our coastline such incredible character and of course its stunning views.
This is probably the point now where I should mention I have had my work published hundreds of times in numerous magazines, newspapers and won international awards etc... but all of that truly means very little to me. I am just me and I love taking photographs the fact that people pay me to do that is always going to be more than enough for me.
The crazy part is I only really started taking pictures 7 years ago, my website today is less than 5 years old. It really is scary how quickly this has all happened, I am not going to lie it was an incredibly hard struggle for the first two years holding down two jobs and working crazy long days trying to build this business. It really did help that my job involved repairing cameras so I actually learned photography from the inside out so to speak.
It all slowly kind of snowballed from there though and this year looks to be the same with 4 new exciting partnerships on the way with industry-leading companies. When I sit back and look at it the turn-around over the last 3 years has been truly staggering. I can only thank my wonderful clients for all their support, without them I would never have gotten to this stage.
Earlier today I saw a post that said "hard work puts you in good lucks path" and wow is that accurate. I know I made my own luck a few times and that propelled me forward so I just kept pushing and it got me to where I am today. It was incredibly hard but that makes me appreciate it all the more.
I was unknown 3 years ago and companies never approached me for photoshoots. Today I would be in the top three working commercial photographers in Ireland, the same for newborn photographers and now in 2020 I am focussing my drive back on Landscape and Seascape photography in my spare time while keeping the commercial and portrait aspects of my business working at 100%.
Everyone thinks photography is an easy job, my friends see me working with amazing models and think wow that's a fantastic job to have, yes it's nice to work with different people but the pressure to deliver is crazy high. You could have a company director, stylist, two models, hair and makeup artists and don't forget location costs and my wages all adding up to over €2,000.- for a days shoot. They are expecting really good photographs considering the expense involved, no pressure at all :-)
On the other side of my journey, I consider myself very lucky and proud to be a Brand Ambassador and Featured Artist for Formatt Hitech Filters. Their wonderful products feature strongly in all my work and I love their passion and interest in innovation while still having a very strong customer service support team.
My partnership with them over the last 3 years has proven to be completely invaluable to me as a professional photographer and opened up a host of new possibilities and adventures. I am really excited about a few upcoming announcements in March/April 2020 with more amazing partnerships with some of the best companies and products in the photography business. All to be revealed in the next few months.
So what has all that got to do with landscape photography? Well, a lot... it's all about slowing down and going back to what I truly love.
It's about me getting more time to do the things I love and the commercial work helps give me that space and time now so I can get back to landscapes.
So I am lucky to be living in Ireland as it's a landscape photographers dream. The weather changes so quickly you can get totally different moods only minutes apart. The terrain rapidly transforms from lush green fields to rocky shores or barren rugged mountains or better again steep cliff faces and sublime beaches. They are only all moments away thankfully.
The Wild Atlantic Way truly has it all and with calm soft days drifting into severe storm force conditions often overnight it's never boring either.
My journey as a photographer started with Landscape photography and as I mentioned above it then changed to Fashion, Portraiture and Commercial photography to slowly now swinging back to Landscape photography. 2020 is going to be my landscape photography year and that will bring a lot of challenges with it and I hope to share all of these with you all as I go through them.
I will be posting regular videos on Youtube and blog posts on my experiences and how I overcame them. Or possibly didn't overcome them, which could actually be a lot more interesting :-).
I will obviously be continuing with my Landscape photography workshops, I could never give them up as I love them way too much. Meeting all those kindred spirits eager to improve their photography is great fun and West Cork is littered with amazing locations for them.
So as I have been talking away about my journey I hope you learned a bit more about me and got to see a small bit of my work also, I will be adding a lot more images to my galleries this year I hope.
Thank you so very much for taking the time to read this and I hope you got something from the tips I shared on the links above.
If you are interested in Photography workshops then please click here to see my upcoming dates.
If you would like to stay up to date on my blog posts then please feel free to have sign-up to my mailing list below.
If you are considering buying photography filters then I highly recommend the Formatt Hitech range of filters and I am delighted to be able to offer you 10% off with discount code HAYES10 simply add the discount code at checkout on their website.
My go-to filter kit is the Elia Locardi filter kit and I have a review of it here, it's fantastic value for money and is a great all-rounder kit.
See you out there,
Kieran.
Kieran Hayes
Kieran Hayes Photography
professional Landscape photographer Cork, Kerry and Ireland
Clonakilty
Cork
Co. Cork
Ireland
087-9103794
Kieran Hayes Photography
5.0 Star rating
39 votes
8th of February 2020
https://www.kieranhayesphotography.com/landscape-photographer