I’ve just found out today that, thanks to the team at Millennium Images, an image from my Bull Island series has been used as the cover of Tim Parks’ book, Teach Us to Sit Still. I have not read the book, or held a copy in my hand, but every review I’ve looked at today suggests that like my other recent book cover, Rebecca Solnit’s The Book of Migrations, I will be proud to have my photograph associated with Parks’ work.
Continue reading “Book Cover: Teach Us to Sit Still by Tim Parks” »
Niall O’Leary and the team at Millennium Images in London, have created an online portfolio of my Arctic and Antarctic images under the banner of “The Cold Edge“. You can see the selection of images here, or read on for more:
Continue reading “The Cold Edge: Millennium Images Portfolio” »
A portfolio of five of my photographs has been featured in issue four of the excellent Irish photography magazine The Shot. A big thanks to editors Karl and John who are masterminding the project; each issue showcases five photographers with five images each, and five hundred words to talk about themselves and their photography. The current issue includes an interview with Anthony Haughey
Continue reading “My work featured in The Shot” »
In all my years as a writer, I’ve written many book reviews. But I’ve never before reviewed a book that uses one of my photographs as its cover. I’m talking about The Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland, by Rebecca Solnit, which has been a joy to read, and an honour to become connected with. I was unaware of Solnit’s work until May 24th of this year, when I read her insightful article the Strauss-Kahn affair, colonisation and the IMF: Worlds Collide in a Luxury Suite. That afternoon, I received an email from Bob Bhamra, of Verso Books, asking me if he could use my image of the Burren for a new editon of The Book of Migrations. Serendipity. We cut a deal.
Continue reading “Book Cover: A Book of Migrations” »
Two Arctic Terns fight off a Long Tailed Skua by a blue iceberg in Kongsfjord, near the Arctic scientific research base of Ny-Alesund, Svalbard. Another picture that’s evaded discovery for over a year – I love how the battle between the birds lends scale to the improbable blue of the iceberg. You can view more of my iceberg images here »
© 2010 Dave Walsh – All Rights Reserved
Arctic Tern, sterna paradisea, hovering near the dog yard Ny Alesund, Svalbard. Arctic terns migrate more than any other species bird – up to 35,000km per year for some birds, as the travel to Antarctica and back, and can enjoy two polar summers. The terns nest in the tundra in the scientific research centre of Ny Alesund, where they lay eggs, and tend to attack passersby in self-defence.
Continue reading “Arctic Tern, Angelic” »
Woman in blue jeans photographing flowers at the Keukenhof
Photographing flowers and undwear at the Keukenhof
Photographing People, Photographing flowers. An ugly, and probably mildly tasteless set of images, where I photograph people photographing flowers, and often show off their backsides along the way. Images made on April 2011 at the Keukenhof tulip show at Lisse, Netherlands.
Continue reading “Tulip Mania: Photographing People Photographing Flowers” »
Transocean Development Driller rigs in squall at Deepwater Horizon disaster site.
It has taken not much more than half a century to turn the Gulf of Mexico into an Urban Ocean, dotted with 27,000 abandoned wells, and nearly 4,000 active platforms, interconnected by an incredible 40,000km of pipelines. At sea, no matter where you are in the northern Gulf of Mexico, you can see the blinking lights of an oil platform, a small steel city unto itself, or perhaps a rusting ghost town. The Deepwater Horizon disaster, in April 2010 drew attention to this industrialisation of the Gulf, and hinted to the public the existence a scarred landscape that exists just over the horizon from the shorelines of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. In September 2010, I worked on board a Greenpeace ship carrying out research to measure the impact of the oil spill, from where I got to observe the oil rigs drafted into the Deepwater Horizon site dwarfed by powerful rainstorms, and the wildlife that still prevails – the hummingbirds, the sperm whales, the flying fish and the powerful rainstorms.
I’m pleased to see that one of my Tasmanian Devil pictures has shown up in May/June edition of Sierra Club magazine, in an article called Sympathy for the Devils. UPDATE June 28th: This image has also been used by New Scientist article, “Tasmanian devils were sitting ducks for deadly cancer”.
Continue reading “Tasmanian Devils in Sierra Magazine & New Scientist” »
My friend, distant cousin and co-conspirator Barry Kavanagh has seen fit to use my portrait of him – made on the fly one night in Dublin’s Long Hall pub, on the cover of the new Dacianos album, Fables for Another Time.
Continue reading “Album cover for Dacianos: Fables for Another Time” »
A recent addition to Dublin’s low-rise skyline and spanning the Irish capital’s River Liffey, the harp-like silhouette of Santiago Caletrava’s Samuel Beckett Bridge is a technical marvel bordering in Celtic Kitsch. These qualities attracted me and my camera – even to the point of doing long picture exposures on cold snowy nights. It’s paid off, with several of my images of the bridge now being used by Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE, for a Lyric FM CD compilation of Irish harp music.
Age and youth - walker and graffiti door on Sloterkade, Amsterdam.
Age and youth – walking aid and graffiti door on Sloterkade, Amsterdam. This scene has been fascinating me for months. The stairs, with the hint of a white rail, an elderly person’s walking aid locked to the wall, a garage door covered in unintelligible graffiti, the growth of the green plant. The blue of some of the spraypaint matches the walker, while the word ‘suicide’ appears on the glass above. The word again, again and again.
Herbs in the window of abandoned Herbalist Shop
An abandoned herbalist’s shop in Rethymno, Crete. It was owned, apparently, by Panajiotis and or Dimitrios Kontogianis – at least that’s what it says on the packets of dried herbs in the window. Other fragments of clues – a faded, stained photograph of the proprieter, leftover belongings. What happened here? Where did they go?
This imag of a “Ribbed Iceberg”, in Kangerdlussuaq Fjord, East Greenland, from on board the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise in 2009, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Extreme Environment competition, run by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, in Hobart, Australia.
The Extreme Environment Photographic Exhibition brings together some of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring images from the Arctic and the Antarctic, as professional and amateur photographers compete for one of the richest prizes in Australian photography.
Click here to see the shortlisted images – mine is 9th from the end of the slideshow. You can also login and vote for it, in the People’s Choice Award, before May 13th.
Bust of Lenin in Barentsburg, Svalbard
I am staring at a forest, a painting of a forest. A door opens in the forest, and two men climb out. They close the door, then walk away.
The forest, or rather the painting of a forest, is in the Russian coal-mining town of Barentsburg, about 1200km from the North Pole, one of three inhabited settlements in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
There are no trees in Svalbard. But there are pictures of trees, billboard size, to remind the miners of the forests back home.
My visit to Barentsburg was short, far too short. I only stayed 97 minutes. I am not proud of this. I arrived as a tourist, and didn’t want to leave. At least not soon.
I took no time to make new friends, gained no valuable insights into what it is like to live there. I didn’t hit the bar, like some of the other visitors, to sample the vodka. I didn’t even buy a Putin, Yeltsin, or Gorbachev matryoshka doll.
I did see a metal sunflower, a homemade spaceship, an awful lot of kittiwakes and two men walking out of a painting of a forest.
For a couple of years now, actress and filmmaker Martha Van Der Bly and myself have been threatening to team up and work on a photographic project together. Great idea, but hindered by our never being in the same location for more than five minutes. Back in April, we spent two Sunday afternoons developing some ideas…
I don’t doubt that I often make pictures of strange objects – but it’s a little bizarre to see one’s image turn up in a book like Christopher Salyers’ Vending Machines: Coined Consumerism, published by Mark Batty.
Bull Island is a new world, less than 200 years old. Grown from a mere sandback after Captain William Bligh (of the Bounty) made his 1801 proposal to stop the silting of the Liffey by constructing of the Bull Wall, the island is today a UNESCO biosphere reserve – a protected area that by definition is supposed to demonstrate a balanced relationship between man and nature.
Continue reading “The Things I Found On Bull Island” »
This story was first posted as a blog on the Greenpeace Climate blog in August 2009 – while I was on board the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, off the coast of Greenland as part of a four month expedition investigating climate impacts in the Arctic.
Continue reading “Polar Bear Encounter: Late Night With Nanuk” »
There is something unnerving about watching reality bend before
one’s eyes. There is what one “knows” to be true, and that which
one can see through a telephoto lens or binoculars – with Fata Morgana,
the two are difficult to reconcile. Something is happening on the
horizon. Icebergs twist and change shape, move, disappear, elongate.
Islands rise from the sea. The earth warps.
