We arrive at Hook Head, it’s close to midnight now, dark with stormy gale force winds and none of us know how far in the tide comes and where is the best place to park our cars safely. But that doesn’t stop us from getting the cameras out to try and shoot some night shots of the lighthouse. With the winds being so heavy this led to some unique tripod setup styles. Some of the lads opted for hanging their bag off the tripod, others looked like they were doing a press up on the tripod to weigh them down and one of the lads had the tripod legs spread out as far they could go to widen the centre of balance to counter the wind. From memory I think the tripod doing the splits won in that battle against the wind. Failing to get any real decent photo and the realisation that sunrise was in 4.5 hours, we each went to our cars to try and get some sleep. Here lies the problem with me, I struggle to get to sleep on a given night and over the years from playing drums as a freelancer while holding down a full time job, I’ve learned to survive on as little as 3 hours sleep. So I lie in my car, wide awake staring out the sunroof. 2am rolls by and the clouds clear, the wind dies down and I’m not getting to sleep. I get my bag and tripod and away to find a spot to shoot. Now I did try to wake the lads, I stood outside Ritchie’s car shining a light in his face, but he was out for the count. So I went and shot an astro photo of the lighthouse and it ended up being one of my favourite nightscapes in my collection. Sunrise comes close, the lads wake up, we have the craic and I show Ritchie the photo I got, “You W$%&er” is uttered and all the lads come over to see the photo. Turns out, I should’ve knocked their doors til I woke everyone up. But within 30 minutes the lads had forgotten to be annoyed at me as the sky put on a performance and we were all ready to capture it. Hugely bright and full of colour, I think we all nailed some whoppers of photos that morning.