Places minus people

Like most of you, we have been trying to latch onto every positive that we can find in order to get us through a global pandemic and its many lockdowns. As photographers, often the biggest hurdle to capturing a popular landscape photograph are tourists. Not that we begrudge them - we’re tourists wherever we go and feel they have as much right to be there as any photographer.

We have often visited the Giant’s Causeway in Bushmills. Usually it’s to photograph an engagement or elopement. In normal times, the sheer number of tourists means you have to get really creative with your angles or spend a week in photoshop afterwards, getting rid of people in fluorescent raincoats.

This year, however, when we visited the Causeway on a gorgeous spring evening, it was empty. There was no bus operating, no tourists gathering, and very few people seemed prepared to make the half mile walk from the car park. To all intents and purposes, it felt like we had it all to ourselves.

Not only were we able to photograph this crazy, ancient rock formation from any angle we wished, we got to experience the quiet and peacefulness of it on a glorious spring day. That’s something that we might never get the chance to do again.