Born in 1977, Feargus Cooney is a UK based travel photographer and filmmaker. Feargus’ passion lies in exploring places and people, often in remote but always visually striking parts of the world. He conveys his experience of these people and places through his photography and films.

Feargus’ work has taken him to all the world’s continents except Antartica (which he plans to rectify soon) and he has a particular focus on Arfica and Australia.

Feargus held an exhibition in the Bray Signal Arts centre in July 2006 showing the Wicklow mountains from the air. The collection of images showed the viewer a totally new perspective of the mountains and Feargus wanted the viewer to appreciate the beauty of the brown, peaty, high altitude land that’s about as close as you can get to wilderness in Leinster.

Feargus holds an honours degree in Documentary photography from the University of Wales in Newport, UK. His images have been published in various newspapers and magazines. He has also had a number of his short films screened on the National Geographic TV channel.

Visit Feargus’ website at http://www.fcooneyphoto.com

1. Not many people get a chance to see County Wicklow from the air and photograph the scenery. Is Wicklow as beautiful from the air as it is from the ground?

It’s a very different experience to look at the mountains from an overhead perspecive. In some ways it’s more beautiful than from the ground, seeing vegetation patterns and colours in a far more abstract way. But as with seeing anywhere from the air, it seems much smaller once you’ve flown over the landscape, and you realise how special the area is when you see it isolated from the cultivated lands surrounding the mountains.

2. The life of a photographer would appear to be a dream job but like every job it must have its frustrations - what are they?

Well to be honest the biggest frusrations are that unless you’re extremely lucky and know all the right people and get the breaks, it’s very difficult to make a career in travel and nature photography. Virtually everyone in the business has to supplement their income and time to doing more commercial work.

With the advent of the internet and digital photography it’s becoming ever easier for anyone to take photographs and people unfamiliar with the field hugely underestimate the time and expense involved in the practise at a professional level. Even with exhibitions, people are often shocked when I charge say 600-euros for a print 1-metre across. But considering that my costs of only producing the print ready for the wall approaches half of that amount, to say nothing of the expense of producing the pictures in the first place and the substantial time investment waiting for light and weather conditions, and of course the cost of renting gallery space.

If you compare it to other art forms like making watercolour landscapes for example, usually these can command higher prices when exhibited, despite the fact that usually a photograph takes more time, discomfort (for example getting up at 3am for a sunrise on an icy morning), and especially expense than the painting. I could go on a lot about the frustrations, but suffice to say I love what I do and always keeping sight of that is what keeps me from giving up, because I’m not in it for the money, happiness is far more important to me.

3. You have travelled all over the world and have seen many wonderful things. Where in the world impressed you most and why?

It’s absolutely impossible to say where my favourite place in the world has been so far because I’ve seen a lot of very different places, the best I can do is a short list. I’m particularly inspired by very open landscapes, especially deserts or arid places, like the Namib in Africa, the West Australian Outback or the Plains of Patagonia. But those differ so much from some of the most amazing things I’ve experienced such as snorkelling on the edge of a remote pacific coral atoll or a total solar eclipse in the African bush.

4. When you go on holiday from the job, do you leave your camera behind?

To be honest I’m not sure I’ve ever really had a holiday in the conventional sense. Certainly not the lying on a beach for a couple of weeks kind. I get bored very quickly in those situations and end up searching for things that interest me, and I always need to have the camera with me. I’m kind of cursed in that way (or blessed depending on how you see it), in that I feel when I’m in a place or seeing something that interests or inspires me I have to have a camera or the experience is wasted and will eventually die with me.

I always feel that I need to convey these sights to others, and make a record of it so as to preserve the experience. Last year I spent the whole year travelling, I suppose obsessively making pictures and a video documentary which I’m hoping to sell to TV soon, and in a way it was all a holiday, but a working holiday where I loved the work with a passion.

5. What is the difference between a ’snap’ and a photograph?

I’m not that sure really. Every photograph is a snap. With many of my best images I’ve had to be spontaneous and not have that much time to think beforehand. But that’s where experience, training and a certain eye comes in. I used to think that anyone could be a good photographer in the technical sense, and that’s true in some cases looking at it from an amateur perspective, or a commercial one, for example wedding pictures and so forth. But I don’t think serious photography with some artistic input can be done by just anyone. It seems from how I and my contemporaries do things that an eye and a way of seeing is needed, and that’s something that I think not everyone has.

6. For photographic inspiration I turn to the work of…

These days no-one specific. I take my inspiration from what I see in front of me, but I’m constantly looking at magazines and books. Not photography magazines though, mostly nature.

7. If I were starting my career all over again I would….

Change nothing. I always had an interest in photography, I pursued it through education in the form of a degree, where I met a lot of very interesting individuals from whom I learned a lot, including my girlfriend, also a photographer with a passion for nature and travel. I also tried various different areas and styles in University before coming back to nature, which was my first inspiration for getting into the field.

8. Not a lot of people know this but I’m very good at….

Filmmaking as well. At least I think so. I’ve had two short films screened so far on the National Geographic channel, a travel documentary, and I’m currently looking for a producer to put together another, far longer one in the form of a several part series that I made while travelling around the world last year with my girlfriend. I’ve already completed my own edit of the work which I think is good, but far too long for broadcast.

9. Have you ever been in a situation on a photographic expedition that made you as yourself “What am I doing here?”

Numerous times, I’m very good at getting myself into trouble. One time for example I was in the central African rainforest photographing in a Pygmy village. The village was remote, and surrounded on every side by rainforest and rivers for hundreds of miles in every direction. I’d been in the forest with a Pygmy guide the previous day looking for wildlife but hadn’t seen much, and he didn’t have time to keep taking me on walks so I wandered off on my own.

I did see some cool monkeys that day, but couldn’t find a way back to the village as a map and compass are very difficult to use in thick rainforest when everything looks much the same in the thick bush, and I had a lot of trouble finding clearings big enough to use my GPS I had blown my whistle quite a few times after dark to try and alert my friend and the people in the village to where I was but the insect noise was almost exactly the same and there’s no way it could be distinguished from a distance. But in the end I did get reception on the GPS and found my way back well after midnight, having blundered around in the dark for over half the night.

10. The 3 best pieces of advice for aspiring photographers….

1. If you want to pursue photography as a career, unless you want to shoot fashion or paparrazzi, don’t even think it’ll make you rich. In travel and nature photography, even the most successful people have to do relatively dull commercial jobs to get the money together to do the stuff they really want to do. It’s an extremely competitive market, and you really need to be able to handle the fact that loads of people will be doing better than you, even without talent because the gift of the gab goes a long way in this business.

2. Your family and friends will always tell you your pictures are wonderful if they’re not familiar with the field. If you want to take better pictures, do a course, don’t try and learn the ropes from a book. Whether it be night classes, a couple of weeks workshop with an experienced photographer in the field that interests you, a long degree or diploma course or whatever. You need someone that knows about photography to offer you consturctive criticism and help you to grow. You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes.

3. Again in the career field. If you’re prepared to commit to potentially years of struggle before getting noticed, have a far less secure lifestyle than most and you believe in yourself, then go for it. This is one of the most exciting things you can do. You can be pursuing a different place/topic/culture all the time, so it’s never boring. But you have to be flexible. Ireland is not a good place to be. The market is limited and quite closed minded. So you might have to leave the country. But that can be quite exciting.