Beneath Irish Seas
PHOTOSPECIAL
A diver descends the wall of Skellig Michael, which is adorned with anemones and dead man’ s fingers
Book review
Beneath Irish Seas
By Nigel Motyer PURCHASE FROM: Merrion Press COST: £ 24.99 ISBN: 9781785375705
This long awaited first book by Ireland’ s leading underwater photographer does not disappoint. Nigel Motyer has been taking photographs all over the world for 40 years, but his overriding passion is for the cool, nutrient packed waters of his home.
The book is a visual journey across Ireland’ s marine habitats, from the shallow bays of Connemara to the dramatic walls of Rathlin. There is accompanying text to explain the shifts in seascape and fauna, but its heart lies in the unfolding story of the imagery.
The chapters are organised by geography, with sections devoted to the West; North; Dublin and the South East, and the South West. There is the megafauna, with the standout section on basking shark aggregations off County Clare. The reader also encounters blue sharks, friendly dolphins and humpback whales off the cliffs of Moher.
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Nigel is a versatile, instinctive photographer, as fascinated by diminutive gobies as he is with the opulent reef scenes at Rathlin, or the anemone-coated walls of the Skellig Islands. While he is known for big animal photography, the finesse of the close-up work is first rate. Most of all, the pages are bursting with colour, speaking truth to the misconception that temperate seas are less vibrant than the tropics.
Still, it’ s not all about the eye-candy. I enjoyed the thoughtful sections on complex inshore habitats such as Kilkieran Bay, an inlet on the West Coast with a range of habitats and incredible biodiversity.
Ultimately, this is a photo book, and as such must stand or fall on the quality of its images. In that regard, Beneath Irish Seas is possibly the finest collection of temperate water photography I have ever seen. Nigel photographs the same subjects as the rest of us, but his talent and determination to keep improving yields highly refined results. Many of us, for example, have photos of jellies... a few of us have photos of them with juvenile fish in and around them. Nigel has a perfectly exposed photo of a lion’ s mane jelly bristling with a silvery retinue of dozens of fish, which he casually breaks out in a late chapter.
Photography is of course a matter of subjective taste. I wasn’ t entirely convinced by the double exposures, a technique that merges two photographs to marry diver silhouettes with macro foreground subjects. Nevertheless, they do help contextualise some of the smaller creatures.
This book will make you fall in love with underwater Ireland. I’ d recommend it to any enthusiastic diver, whether your focus be tropical or temperate, photography or simply being there. Pour yourself a glass of something dark and creamy, take a seat in a comfortable armchair and enjoy a wonderful journey. Simon Rogerson