An ecletic selection of images from 2008, including top choices from FRANK MILLAR and BRENDA FITZSIMONS.
FRANK MILLERexplains his choice: " I CALL FARMER Darragh McCullough at 9am on a very stormy Friday at the end of February. "Are we on ?" I ask. "Are you mad?" comes the reply as rain hammers off the window. We are finalising arrangements to shoot the picking of daffodils for the "Big Picture" — a double-page spread in Gallery, the new Irish Times picture supplement. I persuade McCullough that I'll drive out and walk the land with him and see if a picture is feasible. On the way to Elmgrove Farm in Gormanstown, the car rocks from side to side, battered by a hailstorm.
By the time I reach the farm, the hailstorm has ended and the sky is a little brighter. I explain to McCullough that we'll need people in the picture - a picture just won't work without some focal point to break the vista of what I hope will be a sea of daffodils.
We set out in his jeep to survey angles around the land, but I am dismayed. Instead of a single massive field of blooming flowers, I see a patchwork quilt of daffodils at various stages of growth. I learn that if all the daffodils peak at the same time it will be impossible to market them, so growth is staggered. And, of course, the perfect daffodil for sale to the markets is no use to the photographer as its bloom is barely open - it needs to peak in the shop for the consumer and not in the field for the photographer. Happily for me, but not for the farmer, there is one field which has peaked ahead of the market, making it perfect for a picture.
I manage to get my car up to a high point overlooking the field, while two workers, Ellie Baker and Radomir Hurny, are persuaded to join McCullough in the field for a picture. By now it is raining again and it looks like getting worse rather than better, so we decide to go for the picture.
I explain exactly where I need the pickers to pose, deep into the patch of daffs. I lock on a 400mm lens to compress the patch of flowers and support the camera with a monopod, bracing myself against the car and under the shelter of the hatchback while a rainstorm rocks the vehicle.
Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind is an impressionistic image of pickers in a field in France on a perfect day. Our reality is somewhat different. By the time we have finished the picture we are all sodden and rain is dripping from the lens hood."
BRENDA FITZSIMONSexplains her choice: "IT'S NOT OFTEN I wake to the sound of screaming monkeys thundering across my roof, but I must admit I like it, I like it a lot - it tells me I'm not at home. It's 4.45am, and I don't normally do 4.45am starts with a smile, but when it has all the above ingredients, coupled with the fact I'm hot-air ballooning in Sri Lanka, I do manage to bounce out of my bed. With my camera gear all lined up, I'm off on yet another adventure with Joe Leahy and his Meath hot-air balloon. Today's launch site is beside a school in Hambantota, an area devastated by the 2004 tsunami. The 22 balloons from Europe and Japan are sprawled out on a cricket field waiting to be inflated. The pilots' briefing is over - the weather is perfect and it's all go, the loud humming of the fans start, and the race to the sky is on. As the sun rises I notice the starched, pressed white uniforms of eager schoolchildren hiding behind trees with eyes twinkling in fear and amazement. They get closer as the noise from the burners start, fire belching out of shiny silver spring-like machines attached to baskets. With my camera over my shoulder and pulling on the crown of the balloon, I spot this boy totally mesmerised looking upward as the balloons launch. I'm looking at him wondering what's going through his little six-year-old brain. I take several pictures of him and he is the same transfixed self in each one. He had an elastic band around his wrist, which rattled me for some reason. The image of this boy stuck with me when we were flying high over paddy fields, swooping down over banana plantations, gliding through Lake Yoda Wewa to cool down and then up 4,000ft in the sky - my God, the serenity of it all. Then it hits me. I remember being his age, copying my late father with a rubber band around my wrist and feeling, 'Now I'm ready for the world.' "