A Soft Day on the North Coast

Home is Armagh, which is not on the sea. The closest proper coast is an hour and a half north-west, in Donegal. So most trips home become two trips at once — a few days of tea and slow conversation in Armagh, then the drive up the A29 to Letterkenny and on to wherever the swell forecast points.

This visit it was Portnoo. A friend's cottage, a borrowed dog, no agenda except to be back by dinner. I shot one camera the whole two weeks, switching between the 50 and the long zoom depending on whether I was walking on the strand or watching from the rocks.

The frames I'm proudest of are the smallest: a hand placing a teapot down, the pattern of light through a kitchen door, an old man asleep on a bench at noon outside the pub in Armagh. Nothing dramatic. Just a place I came from, and a coast I keep going back to.