SIAR Photography has been a long time in the making...
My photography story began at 17 years of age, when I was selected to tour the world with Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance. Dancing shoes on and camera in hand I documented the landscapes and cultures of the countries we visited. Upon my return to Ireland a number of years later, I became an accountant. While studying for my degree and ACCA exams I delved deeper into the world of photography and soon found myself shooting local sport and then progressing to family, wedding and commercial photography. For three years, I worked both jobs in sync: Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 I was business manager and tour accountant for One Direction’s world tour, while weekday evenings and weekends I was a freelance photographer. Eventually the time came to focus solely on photography and Gary Collins Photography was established in 2014.
SIAR Photography was created due to a lack of a home for my passion projects involving the Irish landscape and culture. My beginning was as a hobbyist landscape photographer and my personal collection of Irish landscape and culture photographic work, past and present, was simply stored on numerous hard-drives in my office with nowhere to showcase or share them.
At one point in 2015 we registered two domains to house my landscape photography work, however, with Gary Collins Photography developing in its own right, this never progressed. But the idea never left the back of my mind, and in early 2019 with a renewed investment in developing my continuing passion for Ireland and the outdoors, the idea for SIAR Photography came about - a new brand, separate identity and home for my contemporary landscape and cultural photography of Ireland.
Having traded more traditional landscape photography products at local craft markets and fine art retailers on an ad hoc basis previously, SIAR develops from an approach and style, developed from recent exhibitions and commissions including:
“Tradition in the Landscape' - Capturing Irish Culture in the County Clare Landscape” | Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann Inis (2016)
“Capturing Clare’s World Champion Irish Dancers” | Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann Inis (2017)
Furthermore, An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha (the Munster Irish Dancing committee) commissioned an expansion of the 2017 Fleadh exhibit to capture all 38 of Munster’s World Champion Irish Dancers to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Munster Irish Dance Championships in 2018.
Each of these exhibitions are unified by an alternative photographic approach - capturing Ireland’s landscape and culture; heritage and art installations that celebrate Irish culture – the Irish language, dance and music, along with unique portraits of Irish dancers performing in the Irish landscape, including my own self portrait, as you can see here, leaping in motion at the Cliffs of Moher.
So this is the story of SIAR Photography so far.. I'm proud to launch this website in December 2019 and look forward to the road ahead - ag dúl siar!