On Castles and Walks

Dromore Castle
Dromore Woods, County Clare Ireland
September 4, 2022
ISO 200, 20mm, F/50 1/800 sec

I actually have two stories to tell about this picture – the first relating how I came to take it and the second about the experience of sharing it for the first time.

In September of 2022, we spent a week with my parents in Ireland at the Dangan Lodge Cottages. These are a remote series of cottages surrounded by cow pastures and hedgerows. One of my goals for the trip was to work on my photography, so I began researching sites and locations that were relatively convenient to get to from our location. Dromore Castle came up in several searches, so I added it to the list of places to visit.

What I didn’t realize is there are actually two Dromore Castles in Ireland – one in County Kerry and one in County Clare. Google searches normally display the castle in County Kerry first. It is a beautiful old manor, abandoned but still fairly intact. Dromore in County Clare is essentially a ruin, as you can tell from the picture above. Upon finding pictures of Dromore Castle (County Kerry), I went to Google Maps to see where it was. Imagine my surprise when I found it was only 25 minutes away in Dromore Woods (County Clare).

At this point I wasn’t paying attention to the fact my search results were in two counties. Coming from the US, counties mean very little to me. I can’t recall a time in my life where I ever navigated by county or county name. That's just not what we do in the US.

You can probably see where this story is going now. I had a vision of the County Kerry Dromore Castle in my head, and I believed it was located just up the road from where we were staying.

We arrived at the parking lot and immediately set out to find Dromore Castle. Within probably 200 yds we came across an old building. Given the grandeur of the castle I was expecting to find, I assumed this was likely an old guard tower or some other defense designed to protect the main building. I don’t even think I took a picture of it as it was very nondescript. Confident that the real castle was just up the trail, we continued on.

It is important to point out at this time that while the trail is very well maintained, I don’t recall there being much signage. Certainly nothing that stated the ruin I just walked past was, in fact, Dromore Castle. If I recall correctly the Dromore trail loop is about 4km. This isn’t a huge distance - and the walk is certainly worth it. But if your goal is to take pictures of the castle - this is about 3.8km further than you need to go.

I remained confident that around the next corner we would finally come across the castle I was seeking. Until the trail eventually took us back to the first ruin we had walked past. I couldn’t believe that I had somehow missed the huge structure I had researched. It just wasn’t possible that we had all walked right past it or had somehow missed it. Finally, I asked some locals where Dromore Castle was and how close we were to it. To my surprise (and embarrassment) they said I was already looking at it. Dromore was the ruin I had initially dismissed.

Determined to salvage something from this trip, I back-tracked up the trail until I came to a branch that took me close to the water. I took a few shots from this spot and the result is the picture you see above. Certainly not what I was expecting from this trip, but I am happy with the result. I also learned a valuable lesson about properly researching potential photography locations.

The second story about this photo concerns sharing your work with others. Shortly after we returned from Ireland we attended a basic photography course. At the end of the course we were asked to print out several of our favorite pictures and show them to our classmates.

I am not the most confident person when it comes to my photography. In my opinion every other picture taken by my classmates was better than what I had taken. When my turn came I actually said, “Well here are pictures I thought I liked until I saw yours.” I didn’t even give them a chance to form an opinion before I assumed they would think my work was shit. There was a short pause, which I imagined meant the group was collectively trying to think of a way to politely tell me to find a different hobby.

However, the actual response was very different. The instructor, who happens to be a portrait photographer, pulled two photos aside - this one and another taken from the Cliffs of Moher that you can find on this site. She looked at them a moment longer and then said something to the effect of “While I would prefer to see a person in the shot, you should keep doing this.” The group thought the photos had a cinematographic quality to them, and they all encouraged me to keep working on landscape photography.

Needless to say, I came away from that class with a new sense of confidence and desire for additional feedback. Perhaps not negative feedback, but certainly constructive feedback. I think part of the reason this site exists now is as a result of that class. Without that experience, I doubt I would have found the confidence to talk about any of my hobbies at all, and you certainly wouldn’t find my photos online where anyone can view them