27th Apr 2021
Last weekend, I took advantage of the recent easing of travel restrictions in the country, to make a trip to the Clare Glens Waterfalls, situated on the Annagh River, on the border between the counties of Tipperary and Limerick. This is located near the town on Newport, and off the R503 Thurles – Limerick road.
As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one who had that idea; the warm weather brought everyone out, judging by how quickly the car parks filled up.
This isn’t my first time visiting this area, so I have an idea of what it looks like, and the salient hazards along the river banks.
From a photographer’s perspective, I guess it’s the fact that there are many points along the river that present themselves as potential for an image that a photographer would be proud to show off, rather than just one or two big waterfalls.
There are two things new that I had in my bag this time, that I didn’t have on my previous visits – a Nikon D5600 (I had the D3000 during my previous visits), and a polarising filter. What the latter does is it removes a lot of the glare from the water surface, however, for best results, you should be pointing the camera at approximately right-angles to the sun, although clearly that isn’t always possible or realistic.
It’s been nearly seven months since I last made a video for YouTube, so I decided to make one during this visit. Because I can make videos with the D5600, I decided to use that for the clips involving me talking into the camera, thus making the camcorder that I got nearly two years ago, redundant. Because I have a wide angle (10-24mm) lens, I was able to get closer to the camera, a little bit more than arm’s length, and my face wouldn’t be taking up too much of the picture. It also means I could put the smartphone on a mounting set-up on top of the camera, run a teleprompter app, and be able to read aloud the text comfortably.
Previously, I used a camcorder, which had a narrower angle of view, which necessitated me being at least 2-3 metres away from the camera, using a tablet instead of the smartphone, saying the lines from the teleprompter app on the tablet.
The other camera I had was a GoPro, which I used for POV / BTS (point of view / behind the scenes). This include having the GoPro mounted on a headband or a chest strap, for scenes including setting up the SLR camera for a shoot, and taking some pictures, showing what is on the SLR camera’s display. I also brought a brush handle with me, which I used for getting shots from over the river. It may not be the most hi-tech of things I had with me, but it’s lightweight, and did the job. I mounted the GoPro on the end of the brush handle, and held it out over the water, for some really cool shots, while I stayed dry on the rocks!
One thing I, sort of, worried about was if the paths were going to be mucky or if the rocks on the river banks were going to be slimy and slippery, and even my hiking boots would not be able to prevent me from sliding into the drink. Fortunately this didn’t turn out to be the case. In fact, due to the recent warm weather, the paths were quite dry, as were the rock areas along the river banks for the most part. That said, it was still necessary to take the usual precautions regarding going up or down steep inclines, or on areas with limited points to put your feet for moving forward. And of course to protect your equipment. And because the area proved popular that weekend, there were many points on the riverbanks that could only accommodate “one-way traffic”, meaning I often had to wait for people going in the opposite direction to pass certain pinch points before I could proceed.
And it turned out that I wasn’t the only one who had an SLR camera and tripod.