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.

Shadows

This week I visited one of my favourite photo locations, Old Car City in White, Georgia. It's always a harsh day out, with high temperatures and mean biting insects, but I was really looking forward to adding to my portfolio of fabulous paint and chrome textures on abandoned vintage cars.

I spent most of the morning focusing on one particular car, a 1940s Buick Special sitting in perfect leaf-dappled light, hoping for a nice set or even a panel of images.

In fact, it's always a challenge to shoot in this light - very bright in the sun, quite dark everywhere else. I was working with a tripod and a shutter release, using live view to save bending over to peer through the viewfinder for every single shot. It took a while to make this combination work, but after a while I thought I had it sorted.

We went for a well deserved lunch break in the diner across the road, and I checked my images more carefully. They were all slightly out of focus. I had totally not handled things in live view.

I was really frustrated to have spent so much time and effort on some well framed shots which were completely useless.

The afternoon light wasn't working on my Special. But I did, sort of, get my tripod/shutter release/live view/focus combination to work. It was a useful reminder of how much I don't know, to try to be positive.

I wasn't loving my tripod much, though, by this point, so I switched to hand-held and concentrated instead on some darker shots, with shadows and suggestions, a little bit Gothic. A slight salvage of a painful day.

Belfast noir

Belfast suits black and white, I think. That might be partly because I can't shake off the belief that the late nineteenth century, when Belfast was at its most bustling, actually happened in black and white. I know, that's ridiculous, but the more photographs I look at, the more it feels as though it's the case.

More logically, the architectural shapes, the stone carvings, the steeples, the statues, the cloudy grey skies can be seen at their graphic best in mono. It's a moody city, and taking out the colour enhances this.

I've spent the last couple of months working on black and white images of Belfast for my Instagram account. It's been a great challenge and discipline. I'm including some of my favourites here, with location details at the end of the post.

PS: I just read an article on the Belfast Telegraph website that said that 611 households in Northern Ireland are still watching television on black and white sets. I love this.

Locations: ceiling, St George's Church, High Street; best roof in Belfast, Bradbury Place; wounded angel, City Cemetery; lady, Crown Entry; ironwork, Clifton House; mural and fencers, Hill Street; motto for life, Dundela Avenue; accidental angel, Donegall Road; artist's model, Carlisle Memorial Church; City Hall from Donegall Place; Bank of Ireland, Royal Avenue; Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker, near Eliza Street; greenhouse, Botanic Gardens; marble hand, Harbour Commissioner's Office; Titanic Memorial, City Hall; St Malachy's Church, Alfred Street; Jaffe Fountain, Victoria Street; St Anne's Cathedral, Donegall Street; Queen Victoria monument, City Hall.

Following Frances 5: Aughnacloy

I

Frances, William and their two little boys arrived in Aughnacloy in July 1903. The manse, attached to the church, stands towards the southern end of the town, on the corner of the Monaghan road. It's an attractive grey stone building with what must have been a substantial garden behind it.

Frances had already set up manses in Ballybay and Swanlinbar. She was becoming used to taking stock of a new house and placing their own modest possessions in it to make it feel like home. But this time, it was harder work, more of a chore. Two-year-old Fred and baby Donald didn't make her task easier, and her pregnancy, too recent to be shared with anyone but William, left her tired and sometimes dispirited. Soon, the whole family was ill with summer colds, and Frances found herself thinking too often of their lovely house in Swanlinbar and their friends there, a time which seemed in retrospect sunnier and simpler.

And Aughnacloy had something of a reputation in Methodist circles. Several previous ministers had died there. Nora describes it as "a most unhealthy manse". Frances was not superstitious. But she knew the stories, and she worried a little.

II

Baby Nora was born in December, safe and sound. The congregation, now becoming friends, celebrated with them, and Christmas was especially joyful.

Later that year, however, Fred started complaining about a sore throat. Within hours, he was feverish and nauseous. Then an itchy, bumpy red rash appeared. It was scarlatina, one of the most feared of childhood diseases. Frances knew that Fred had to be isolated to protect the rest of the family, but it was too late. Within a week everyone was ill, even little Nora. 

Some of the ladies from the congregation helped with nursing them, and Dr Phillips called regularly. William and Nora recovered quite quickly. The two boys caused greater worry, their symptoms lingering much longer. The doctor was most concerned about Frances herself, who was suffering terrible headaches and stomach pains. Scarlatina was a frequent killer, and he began to fear the worst for her. He had been attending illnesses in the manse for years and now, looking at her feverish face and the listless little Fred and Donald, he decided that drastic action was needed.

Dr Phillips told William that, unless Frances was moved, he could not be responsible for her life. Horrified, William arranged for his wife to be taken by carriage to her sister's house in Fermanagh.

III

The two practical men, the doctor and the decorator-turned-minister, set to working out what was wrong in the house. With the help of another member of the congregation, they began to investigate pipes and tanks, the attics and chimneys, even lifting the corners of floors. They found an answer in the dining room. Lifting a flagstone under the rug, they found an open sewer directly underneath. Appalled by the sight, their friend left. William and Dr Phillips grimly replaced the stone over the awful sight and began the complicated process of arranging to have the house's plumbing rerouted.

IV

How do I know all this? A little is speculative, some is careful research, but most is clear from Nora's brief and rather grim account of her parents' life in Aughnacloy.

"After three years work in Co Cavan Father & Mother moved to Aughnacloy where I was born. It was a most unhealthy manse & several ministers had died there. And when our family had Scarletina & Mother was very ill the Doctor said she must move or he would not be responsible for her life. Father attempted to get things righted & got a man to lift the floor in a room. When the floor was up sewers were discovered with only a flag for covering, and the man refused to do any more! No wonder the family was ill."

When I visited, I wasn't expecting to like the town. Frances didn't remember it fondly - the horrible illness coloured her memory of her two years there very strongly.

In fact, I found it quiet and pretty. A lovely broad high street, ideal for a weekly market, with attractive houses just waiting to be beautifully restored. An appealing town pump, set where water carriers could enjoy the view over the bright green Tyrone and Monaghan countryside. Two other churches on the main street, well cared for and busy.

The Methodist church itself is plain, painted pink, with pleasing arched windows. I was given a very warm welcome. There were eighteen of us there the morning I attended, and almost everybody stopped to talk to me, interested in my quest. The service was simple and moving. The singing was three times as impressive as you'd expect from eighteen people. I was glad to have my expectations so thoroughly contradicted.

Just one small thing jolted me. Beside me on the wall was a marble plaque, engraved with the name of Henry N Kevin, William's colleague from his time in Cootehill and Ballybay. Henry Kevin died at the manse in Aughnacloy in 1912.

I'd found out enough about Mr Kevin previously that this was actually upsetting. His obituary says that he had become weak after repeated bouts of flu and had been about to ask for a year's leave from his work. I hope his final illness was nothing to do with the conditions in the manse.

V

I traced the rest of his family. His daughter Helen married a man from Aughnacloy, Samuel Hanse, a few years later, and they emigrated to New Jersey, part of the flood of people leaving Ireland at this time. Henry's widow Annie followed, living with Helen and Samuel in New Jersey until her death in 1939. Little Helen, the child Frances played with on the floor of the manse in Cootehill in 1899, lived until 1997 and the astonishing age of 106, reigning as the matriarch of a large extended family. That made me happy.

In harbour

Nothing makes me happier than an evening visit to a fishing harbour with my 100mm lens. I have hundreds of images to prove it.

It's maybe a bit of a niche interest, a detail shot of the beautiful rust on a fifty-year-old prawn trawler. But this weekend I've been trying to go a bit more mainstream with some colour-themed grids of my harbour close-ups. I'll put them in my Etsy shop and hope that someone else in the world shares my love.