Botany Bay Beach

At the end of the Botany Bay road is the plantation. Through the plantation grounds and across a boardwalk is one of the most amazing beaches I've ever seen.

On a sunny day, the colours were a bleached palette of sky and bone. The beach is shallow, but strewn across it are the skeletons of ancient coastal trees, like a dinosaur graveyard. The storms of the last few years have shifted and destroyed some of these - I'd seen some amazing older images of branches reaching up from the water against the sunrise - but it's still very atmospheric.

I'd planned this as a location for my good friend Silas Fretwell, and the noble J obliged in his modelling duties, as pelicans wheeled overhead, fluffy white clouds floated southwards and the sun beat down with beautiful cruelty.

The road to Botany Bay

This was one of the most atmospheric places we visited in South Carolina.

If you live in Northern Ireland or you're a Game of Thrones fan, you might be put in mind of the Dark Hedges, near Armoy in County Antrim. This is the road to Botany Bay Plantation, near Edisto Beach, 3798 miles away.

It's the same idea - an avenue of trees lending grandeur to the approach to a stately house. But these are southern live oaks rather than beeches. And the road is surfaced with sand. And only two other people passed by in the half hour that we spent there.

The quiet, the quality of the late afternoon southern light, and the sense of history all around made travelling the road a special, almost spiritual experience. I'm sure I'm not the only one to have imagined stories and films rising from every bend in the road.

In a place like this, stories start romantic, but it doesn't take long before painful historical facts intrude and you see the reality of the lovingly tended plantation grounds. It's a landscape built up to grandeur on slavery, fading into decline ever since, but still beautiful.

When you come from Ireland, you're used to finding that your history has a traumatic flip side and beauty is troubled. Maybe that's always the way.

(Looking backwards from the more elegant angle of the shoot...)

Low Country squares

A holiday within a holiday - at the end of July, we spent a few days staying in a lovely house belonging to generous friends in Green Pond, South Carolina.

Relaxation-wise, it was fabulous: a morning spent strolling round Beaufort; buying shrimp directly from Elijah at his trawler at Bennett's Point (turned out a pound of shrimp apiece was really quite a lot, but we ate it all no problem); driving the sandy roads overhung with live oak and Spanish moss; walking in the grounds of the derelict Old Sheldon Church at Yemassee; visiting the beautiful Wildlife Management Areas nearby; getting very sandy in the lively waves at Edisto Beach and, best of all, spending a day amongst the skeleton trees of Botany Bay Beach. 

Photography-wise, it was a gift too. The colours of the landscapes, distinctly southern, and the quality of the light, especially after a rainstorm, were inspiring. And since Silas Fretwell was driving me about in his Jeep, he made an appearance in a couple of shoots - more from those later, perhaps.

Really, we only scratched the surface of what this beautiful Low Country area has to offer. I left full of ideas for future work and so thankful for the kindness of the friends who enabled us to visit so easily and happily.

A view of grass and sky, the sound of waves

Sometimes, what you need to make things right is to lie on your back in the grass, in the sun. 

It's best if all you can hear is birdsong and waves.

You should close your eyes for a while. Fall asleep if you need to.

Later, look more carefully at the grass, the weeds, the insects.

Contemplate the sky.

Breathe.

Blackberries and manna

It's a fabulous late summer afternoon. The sun is warm and the clouds are dramatic, so I race out to practise my landscape photography and see if there are enough blackberries ripe to be worth gathering.

Ballymorran Road, near Killinchy, is always a good place for both these endeavours, and it's certainly on form today. I stop everywhere that I can fit the Micra (triumphant from its recent MOT success) onto a verge. It's nice to have a car that won't look noticeably different after it's been scratched up in a hedge (a couple of years ago the police came to my door, having been alerted by neighbours to the likelihood that my car had been damaged by passing vandals, but the officers and myself circled the car carefully and I didn't see anything particularly different from usual...).

I compose my landscapes carefully, trying to find foreground interest, shooting with more sky and then more sea to work out which is best, looking for good reflections. I'm reasonably pleased with what I'm doing. But I'm half aware the whole time that I need plenty of good images for my Instagram feed - I'm nearly at the end of my current series and I'm under pressure to plan the next one. 

The pressure is entirely of my own creation. Nobody else cares at all. But I have my self-imposed schedule of one new shot a day. I alternate landscape and portrait formats. They're properly edited. That's quite a lot, when for most of the year I can only shoot on fine weekends.

Then I catch a grip. Even if I never stray far from home, Northern Ireland has more than enough beautiful places and things to keep me going on this plan for ever. There'll always be something lovely or poignant to show. It's not going to run out.

Thus philosophising, I head for the blackberry hedges. I find a fantastic bank of them, where the top few berries on each stem are perfectly ripe, juicy and sweet. I gather enough for the next three days - they'll be superb for breakfast with Greek yoghurt and toasted flaked almonds. 

But I don't want to stop at three days - I want go gather enough for a week. For two weeks! Which is ridiculous. They wouldn't be fresh. And there are thousands more right here, and there will be some more ripe in three days. And the three days after that. I'll return, and they'll be ready for me.

Clearly, I have an attitude problem. It makes me think of the Israelites in the wilderness, scooping up their lovely fresh manna, but determined to gather more than they need for today. But manna doesn't keep - it's mouldy by the morning. I would have fit right in with them.

I catch another, firmer grip and feel happy with my current blackberries. The words "sufficient unto the day" float into my head. It's a totally inappropriate motto, because it actually continues "is the evil thereof", but perhaps, taken out of context, it's the way to go.

Fair day

One of the regular highlights of my North Georgia summer is a visit to the Georgia Mountain Fair at Hiawassee. 

If you're looking for pig races, bluegrass played by elderly gentlemen in dungarees, handmade bowed psalteries, shingle-splitting demonstrations, a superhero costume for your cat, exquisite turned bowls, frisbee-catching rescue dogs and a decent-sized midway - and, really, who isn't? - then this is the place for you.

J was a gentleman, carrying my camera bag, throwing darts at balloons so that I could make friends with the photogenic Warren, and winning some goldfish with pingpong balls.

The sky was perfect, the colours harmonised, and I was quite excited about some of the shots I'd taken. But when I got home and looked at them more carefully on my computer, I was gutted to see that in my favourites, the ones of Warren and the people on the Yoyo ride, my shutter speed had been too slow, and they're not quite in focus.

Gentleman J suggested that we should return later in the week and I should run in and redo my shots in a more professional manner. It was a kind thought, but the fair is an hour's drive away, and it was unlikely that I'd get the same lovely evening light as I did the first time. Lesson learned. I'll take it on the chin.