Landscape photographer - About me

My name is Declan Lonergan and I’ve been working as a musician, sound engineer and music producer for over 25 years. I am based in Ireland near the Dublin and Kildare border in a townland called Castlewarden.

While working in music throughout the years I frequently found myself being drawn into the imagery that surrounds the industry so I got myself a Panasonic Gh4 camera.  It was an immediate hit with me and my interest in photography kept growing and growing. I spent so much time just learning and researching camera techniques and made all the mistakes you could ever make in photography.

With a few years under my belt, I began to get a handle on it, starting to produce images that were a definite improvement.  My first commercial job was a product shoot for a Truck and Car parts company. The job was to take a few product images for a new catalogue they were launching, maybe 25 - 30 images.  It was a great success and in the following years I ended up taking literally thousands of images for this company which led me into other jobs for other companies’ product shoots.

During all this time I became increasingly interested in landscape photography and any videos I would watch online regarding photography were landscape based. So about three years ago all my photography endeavours were totally focused on landscapes, specifically Irish landscapes.

My landscape photography approach

One thing that I learned very quickly is that, unlike product photography where you largely have control over the conditions because you are typically in a photo shoot setup, landscape photography offers no guarantees. Rain, clouds, winds, fog, sun and moon positions etc. all have to be favourable for the image you are looking for. This is something that I actually really appreciate: getting a photo that works is not an everyday affair, the odds can be stacked against you. When it happens it really is a magical thing.

Genuine vs AI

This is something I feel is important to address for visitors to this website. I don’t want to make a statement on the rights or wrongs of using AI in photography - that is up to each individual.

My position is this - all the images you see on this website are genuine representations of what was there at the scene on the day. This means that I’m not using, for example:

Sky replacement AI
AI to remove/insert any object, person, or thing into the photos
AI content aware fill (filling out unwanted portions of an image with AI generated content)

This is why every image has the Raw image number displayed so that you can verify the authenticity of the photo.

I hope you enjoy going through the photographs on this website. Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about photos or other topics

Many thanks.

Declan