Cormac’s photos of Inis Oírr in Lockdown capture moment in time

When Cormac Coyne first visited Inis Oírr in December 1996 with his girlfriend, Máire Ní Chonghaile, the Dubliner was so overwhelmed by the night sky in Máire’s home place that he sat on a wall outside the pub for ages, just looking up at it.

The lack of light pollution on the smallest of the Aran Islands allowed the keen astronomer and photographer to drink in the stars – and unlike most people, he knew what he was looking at.

Cormac and Máire got married in 2006 and when their first child, Aoibhe, who will be 13 in August, was born, they decided to move from Dublin to the island “for the quality of life”, he says.

Cormac, a scientist who’d worked in pharmaceuticals, found a new career as a secondary school teacher, working on Inis Meáin and Inis Oírr, and the couple who went to have a son, Fiachna (10), settled into island life.

For his previous work, Cormac had built computer systems and helped train people to use them, a part of the job he loved, so while he was nervous about the transition to teaching, he embraced it. And he had free time to pursue his other loves of photography and astronomy. Anybody who follows Cormac on social media will be familiar with his stunning images of Inis Oírr, as he captures the beauty of this small place by day and night.

His photos are now the subject of a new online exhibition, Inis Oírr in Lockdown, which is being hosted by the island arts centre, Áras Éanna, on its website. All but three of the 65 images on display have been taken since March, explains Cormac, whose love of photography indirectly grew from a fear of flying. His uncle took him on a trip to London when he was seven or eight and to assuage the fear, made him ‘assistant photographer’, carrying his Nikon camera. Cormac also took photos and co-incidentally, Máire discovered the two small albums containing his first pictures as he was preparing for this exhibition.

Back then, he realised he loved photography but it wasn’t until he was older, “about 30, that I started spending a bit of money on equipment”. On the island, Cormac combined his passion for the heavens and photography by putting the camera at the back of a telescope, capturing images of the moon, stars and nebulae.

In 2013, Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield took a series of photos of Ireland from space and they made a big impression on Cormac.

“I thought ‘I’m living in a special place’ and even though my photos were fairly ordinary back then, I used to put them on Facebook and Twitter for people who were living away from home.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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