Anthony Murphy | Photographer

I began taking photographs when I was a young boy but only got my first “proper” camera about 20 years ago. Of course in those days, there was no such thing as digital photography, so my long-time interest in photography began with 35mm film and slide.  

The arrival of my first camera coincided with the beginning of my exploration of the ancient megalithic sites of the Boyne Valley. Soon, I was exploring ancient sites in the region (a lot of the time with my friend and artist Richard Moore in tow) and taking pictures of them. We started exploring the technique known as “painting with light”, which involved lighting up stones and monuments with torches, flashes and sometimes even candles! When the Mythical Ireland website began in March of 2000, visitors were captivated by this type of photography. It encouraged me to keep going and to try to capture the monuments and the landscape in a different light.

The introduction of digital photography was a revolution. Previously, I had to bring my film to the camera shop to be developed. The next day, I would collect the prints, bring them home, and then begin the painstaking process of scanning them on a flatbed scanner and editing them on the computer for upload to the website. But with the arrival of the digital camera, all I needed to do was connect the camera to the computer via USB cable and, hey presto, I could immediately edit and resize the images.

Over the course of the years I have continued to take photographs and my equipment has improved in that time too. With the rise of social media I began sharing my work on other platforms and soon found I had new audiences for the photography. As well as featuring on www.mythicalireland.com and on my Facebook page, Instagram, Flickr and Twitter, my images have also been used in my books, most notably in the full-colour non-fiction books Island of the Setting Sun, Newgrange: Monument to Immortality, Mythical Ireland: New Light on the Ancient Past and Dronehenge.

Follow my work

You can see my photographic work in several places in addition to here on the website.

www.facebook.com/mythicalireland

https://www.facebook.com/groups/mythicalirelandgroup

www.flickr.com/mythicalireland

www.instagram.com/mythicalireland

www.twitter.com/mythicalireland