Northern Ireland Photography - M1key - Michal Huniewicz
Here's a bunch of photos from Northern Ireland taken during a short trip with my friends in July 2014. Surprise - it turns out that Northern Ireland is not a country, just like England, Wales, and Scotland aren't. It's only together that they form a country called United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And I've lived here for more than four years already...
Sources:
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Uploaded on: 2015-01-12.
Northern Irish Summer
Which Way Is Belfast?
Tired of the iconic bad weather of London, we decided to visit Northern Ireland for a little bit of change. (sound of thunder)
ISO 200, 18mm, f/8.0, 1/500s.
Braving the Jungles of Northern Ireland
Ammar, who is now internationally famous for surviving my trip to Mauritania.
ISO 200, 30mm, f/8.0, 1/400s.
Kartik
Martin
House in the Distance
House on the coast, ideal setting for a holiday murder.
ISO 200, 45mm, f/8.0, 1/250s.
Trees
Bombus hortorum
Garden bumblebee [1] after having landed on Kartik's green t-shirt. We just told him to keep calm.
ISO 200, 35mm, f/8.0, 1/250s.
Moving on
The famous coastal route in the north-east of Northern Ireland.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/9.0, 1/50s.
Campanula Rotundifolia
This is a harebell [9], a plant dedicated to Saint Dominic, apparently [2]. I'm not sure what that even means.
ISO 200, 55mm, f/8.0, 1/250s.
Konichiwa
Martin on the stairs leading to what is known as Belfast Castle.
ISO 200, 20mm, f/8.0, 1/250s.
Ammar posing
Man in the Mirror
Cynical
Another split
Martin about to do another split, this time mid-air, as he was falling off the stairs.
ISO 200, 20mm, f/2.8, 1/4000s.
HM Prison Crumlin Road
This is a newly-opened tourist attraction - the only Victorian era prison remaining in Northern Ireland. [3]
ISO 200, 11mm, f/2.8, 1/80s.
Interior
Although it was closed in 1996, a few inmates and guards never left, and still keep an eye on you...
ISO 640, 11mm, f/4.5, 1/40s.
Stairs
Opened in 1846, it soon became home to men, women, and children - one of the children sentenced to three months hanged himself in the cell in 1858. He was 13 years old. [3]
ISO 800, 11mm, f/4.5, 1/40s.
Rubber Room
Firestarter
Gallows
Until 1901, the executions were carried out in public view. Then, this execution chamber was improvised. The condemned would live in a large cell
just next to this chamber, unaware how physically close he was to the gallows.
ISO 800, 11mm, f/4.5, 1/13s.
Coffin
The coffin was already waiting, and the body would be taken out of the prison building...
ISO 800, 11mm, f/2.8, 1/40s.
Burial Ground
... and buried here without a grave, the initials sometimes scraped on the wall. This is unconsecrated land within the prison walls.
ISO 200, 16mm, f/8.0, 1/125s.
Gaol
Overall, seventeen people were executed here, the last one in 1961.
ISO 200, 11mm, f/8.0, 1/250s.
Common Criminal in the Stocks
Kartik being punished for staring at women. He showed no remorse!
ISO 200, 11mm, f/8.0, 1/50s.
Pump-House
Industrial
This cool industrial setting is, indeed, where the mighty Titanic was built.
ISO 320, 11mm, f/6.3, 1/40s.
Dock
Overwhelmed
Pole dancing
Titanic Museum
This Is How Titanic Was Made
You get to see how they made the boat that was meant to be unsinkable.
ISO 800, 18mm, f/3.5, 1/25s.
Inside the Museum
It took 3 years to build RMS Titanic, and then 5 days for it to sink, which happened in 1912. [4]
ISO 400, 18mm, f/3.5, 1/10s.
Ammar in the Museum
Out of 2224 people onboard, about as many as 1500 died in the disaster. [5]
ISO 400, 18mm, f/3.5, 1/25s.
Museum
I liked the architecture of the building, obviously made to look like a ship.
ISO 200, 20mm, f/9.0, 1/640s.
Jump
Dunluce Castle
Coming back to the coast, the Dunluce Castle. The first castle at Dunluce was built in the 13th century. [6] The current one isn't as old.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/8.0, 1/250s.
Kartik Posing
Coast
Like a Boss
Big Drop
We felt adventurous, and decided to get off the beaten path, but it took a lot of highly dangerous climbing.
ISO 200, 22mm, f/8.0, 1/640s.
Into the Unknown
Soon, the castle was only looming far away in the distance.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/11.0, 1/400s.
Lost in the Quickgrass
Many hours later, nearly drowning in what we called quickgrass - very wet and very deep grass, occasionally becoming marshes - Kartik was sure we were lost.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/8.0, 1/500s.
Cave
Kartik Posing Again
As it often happens on these sort of adventures, we found nothing interesting at all.
ISO 200, 34mm, f/4.5, 1/60s.
Martin Shooting
Getting Dark
This Is Not a Roadkill
[phone shot] This is a deep fried mars bar. That's right, a deep fried mars bar. After having this, I was sick for two days. When I ordered it, no one looked at me funny, like it was perfectly normal to order a piece of chocolate deep fried in oil and battered.
ISO 100, 5mm, f/2.0, 1/125s.
Worth Seeing, Not Worth Going to See
And this was meant to be the biggest attraction of the trip - Giant's Causeway.
ISO 200, 20mm, f/8.0, 1/1000s.
Giant Disappointment
But it wasn't. Especially Kartik and I (not in the photo) were not particularly impressed with Giant's Causeway, and called it Giant Disappointment.
ISO 200, 50mm, f/8.0, 1/800s.
Giant's Causeway
Okay, it wasn't that bad. Apparently, these basaltic rocks are 50-60 million years old, and there are 40 thousand of them here.
ISO 200, 11mm, f/8.0, 1/320s.
Kevin
This guy, named Kevin, was very impressed, though, and he asked to be photographed as he was screaming "Freedom!"
He acted a bit strange, and we thought he was going to commit suicide, but he didn't.
ISO 200, 11mm, f/8.0, 1/500s.
To the Rope Bridge
It was raining more and more, but we went to the rope bridge anyway.
ISO 200, 20mm, f/8.0, 1/160s.
Mary Poppins
The person taking care of the rope bridge (red coat) referred to Martin as Mary Poppins, and Martin thought it was hilarious. Here, the two are seen exchanging insults from a safe distance.
ISO 200, 20mm, f/8.0, 1/125s.
Smelly Island
The little island on the left hand side was inhabited by a billion birds, and the stench was beyond words.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/8.0, 1/200s.
Martin Posing
Martin posing inside a house we later decided was full of asbestos.
ISO 200, 32mm, f/4.5, 1/50s.
Stevie Topgun
One thing Belfast and the rest of Northern Ireland is famous for is the Troubles, the ethno-nationalist conflict that lasted from 1968 to 1998. [7]
That's three decades of violence between the Irish/Roman Catholic inhabitants of Northern Ireland, and those identifying
themselves as British/Protestant. It was a struggle about the role of Northern Ireland (part of Ireland vs. part of Britain)
and the rights of the Irish minority.
In the photo, the guys with our guide, Peter.
In the photo, the guys with our guide, Peter.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/8.0, 1/1000s.
Lt. Col. William Bucky McCullough
I am blissfully ignorant about the whole conflict, and it's even more complex that it seems (see the Scottish flag?).
This guy on the wall, a loyalist (British/Protestant), was at least killed by the republicans (Irish/Roman Catholic), but the area
is littered with murals dedicated to loyalists killed by other loyalists...
ISO 200, 35mm, f/8.0, 1/1000s.
Jackie Coulter
Such as this one, of someone called Jackie Coulter, a loyalist eliminated by another group of loyalists.
The artistic level of these murals usually matches that of the artists in my high school.
The artistic level of these murals usually matches that of the artists in my high school.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/8.0, 1/1600s.
Kitsch
This American-style patriotism in a European setting made us all somewhat uneasy.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/8.0, 1/1250s.
Gates
These gates separate loyalist and republican neighbourhoods, and they automatically close for the night. The city also has separate republican and loyalist public transport systems. It's just like the Middle East.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/8.0, 1/1000s.
Peace Walls
There are peace walls separating different neighbourhoods, and new ones are still being added, some almost 8 m high. It was hard to believe we were in 21st century Europe. Wealthy middle class people live in neutral neighbourhoods though.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/8.0, 1/500s.
Bombay Street
That's a memorial on the republican side, with the names of various people killed over the years, some also after the Troubles officially ended. One or more of them were killed by the Topgun dude from a few photos before.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/8.0, 1/640s.
Rubber Bullets
Those are rubber bullets used by the police. They are meant to be non-lethal, but if you get shot from a close distance, you quite possibly die, as it has already happened in Northern Ireland.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/8.0, 1/250s.
Peace Wall and Cages
The walls serve their purpose to this day, and Peter told us kids still throw rocks to the other side of the walls. He mentioned that in most cases kids from loyalist and republican families only meet at university.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/8.0, 1/640s.
Solidarity
Fond of taking other people's land, the loyalists traditionally side with the Israelis (and there are Protestant Jews, so to speak), while the republicans side with the Palestinians in terrorist solidarity.
ISO 200, 18mm, f/7.1, 1/1000s.
In the Cab
UVF
University
Despite all of the above, Belfast is meant to be a good place to live, and is supposedly rather welcoming to immigrants. Judging by the languages being spoken and heard,
the conflict will naturally end, as Northern Ireland is being overrun and will be overwhelmed by the modern Vikings - Polish migrants. Many of whom are oblivious to the complexity of the situation of the city,
and blend in to some extent, not necessarily preferring the (also) Roman Catholic republicans, but it has happened that Polish flags were burnt alongside those of Ireland by the loyalists. [10]
Those people who move into contentious parts of the city (as rent prices there are generally lower), find themselves in an unusual situation where they have to live in harmony
with the local hegemon, and calling the police may not be an option. Which sounds just like Somalia, but during our trip we felt perfectly safe.
ISO 200, 20mm, f/8.0, 1/320s.
Fag
Thanks
And that's one of his lungs he spat out... No, just kidding. It's just a heart-shaped poop. Thanks for viewing the gallery.
ISO 200, 55mm, f/5.6, 1/60s.