Category: Stories Behind the Shots

Leamaneh Castle and Máire Rúa

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I took this picture at the Cliffs of Moher when I went to Ireland. The Cliffs are located in and area of County Claire known as The Burren. The Burren is an area that has limestone embedded in the ground making for a bare and vast, yet immensely beautiful landscape. There are several castles throughout the surrounding area but the story of one in particular was told to me several times by the locals.

Leamaneh (Lemeneagh) Castle is located between Corofin and Kilfenora. In 1639, Conor O’Brien, the man who owned the castle at the time, married a woman by the name of Máire ní Mahon. Máire had bright red hair and was commonly known as Máire Rúa (translates to ‘red Mary’). Máire Rúa had already been married once before but her husband had died while they were still young, leaving her with a substantial estate and fortune, which allowed her and her next husband, Conor to build a mansion on to the tower house of Leamaneh Castle. During this time, Máire came into a beautiful white horse and famously wouldn’t allow anyone else to ride it. (I promise this will come into play later, so remember it). When Cromwell’s armies came from England during the Cromwellian War of Ireland, Conor fought on the side of the Royalists and was mortally wounded. His comrades carried him as he was dying back to Leamaneh castle and called for Máire to let them in. Believing Conor to be dead already, she is alleged to have told them ‘dead men have no place here’. When they finally convinced her that Conor was still alive, she let them in and tended to her husband, but he still succumbed to his wounds and died that night. Realizing that the Leamaneh would be taken away because Conor had fought against Cromwall, she got dressed in her finest gown (and according to the locals, put her best Wonderbra on) and rode to Cromwall’s men. She then entered and announced that she would marry any Cromwallian officer who would have her hand. She then married Cornet John Cooper and was then able to keep Leamaneh Castle and its estate. Apparently, Máire wasn’t exactly fond of Cooper and had only wanted to keep the estate. One day she called Cooper to meet her at the stables and offered him a ride on her horse, a ride that Cooper gladly accepted. Once Cooper and the horse had ridden a ways off, Máire whistled a fierce whistle and suddenly the horse took off galloping. Legend then has it that the horse ran off the edge of The Cliffs of Moher, with Cooper still on it. With Cooper out of the way, Máire and her children then lived at Leamaneh and the estate was passed down through generations until the house fell into ruin in the 18th century.

– Hazel

Photo © 2015 Hazel Arroyo

Frozen Spiderwebs

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On this first day of autumn, I find myself missing my college friends and my college town, so I’ve decided to share this picture and a story with you all.  I went to school in Buffalo, New York: a place notorious for having some pretty cold winters. In fact, we made national news last year when in the span of less than 24 hours, parts of downtown received about 8 feet (almost 2.5 meters) of snow. Last year was no exception. In fact, we actually had about five snow days at the university, which up until that point was practically unheard of. This picture was taken at the apartment that my roommate and I shared during my last year of college. During one of those snow days, I glanced out of the backdoor and noticed that there was something that looked a bit cloudy on the awning. When I got closer, I realized that there was a spider web that had completely frozen into an icy silk sheet. I had never seen anything like it before and I just had to take a picture of it. If I remember correctly, that day was about 4˚F (-16˚C) and the wind chill was around -12˚F (-24˚C). While there were definitely days when I wished that I had just gone to school in the south or on a beach somewhere, I actually found that I had grown to enjoy the cold. I also had some pretty great experiences like learning how to push a car out of a snowy parking space, learning the importance of having thermal everything, and learning how to efficiently use the tunnel system on campus so that I wouldn’t have to go outside to get around. In my experience, nothing forms friendships faster than having to stay warm.

– Hazel

Photo © 2015 Hazel Arroyo

Parisian Coffee

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On the summer between my second and third years of college, I went to Paris for a short-term study abroad program in Comparative French Literature. During my time there, I discovered that my favorite thing to do in all of Paris was to sit at cafés to read and watch people pass by. In particular, I loved the location and atmosphere at La Contrescarpe. (Why they had ‘Cambridge Tavern’ coffee cups, I will never understand). La Contrescarpe is a café on the Southern end of Place de la Contrescarpe just off of Rue Mouffetard in the Fifth Arrondissement. Rue Mouffetard is a small, lively street that is full of cafés, shops, food marts, bars, and restaurants, all of which have apartments for a few stories above making you feel like you are walking through a man-made canyon. The street is entirely cobblestone and, for most of the day, is closed to motor traffic. The energy on this one street exemplified to me the spirit of the average Parisian: friendly, happy, helpful, and enchanting. While walking through, it feels as though you are wandering around some sort of an animated musical from a children’s movie. (If anyone has seen Anastasia (1997) it absolutely feels like the song the characters sing as they wander through Paris). This feeling culminates at Place de la Contrescarpe: a small roundabout lined with cafés and shops with a fountain in the middle situated a few blocks away from the Pantheon. Every evening that I spent at La Contrescarpe, there were two old men who performed accordion/fiddle duets for hours. They always seemed so joyous and would smile and laugh their way through the songs they played as they encouraged people to dance in the emerging moonlight. How could anyone not be enchanted by such a quaint, beautiful, and wondrous place?

– Hazel

Photo © 2015 Hazel Arroyo

Note: This picture was taken on an iPhone 4S. 

The Greater Yellowleg

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One of my favorite places is the Guanica State Forest. It became a nature reserve in 1919 and was designated by the United Nations as a Biosphere Reserve in 1981. In my opinion, and that of many others, Guanica is one of the best examples of a subtropical forest as well as dry forest in the Caribbean basin. A dry forest should be devoid of shore birds, the only exception being an area with seashore and even then, the shore birds should be limited to those areas with shoreline available. Guanica defies these expectations. Any depression that fills with water in Guanica attracts shore birds, allowing them to be found throughout the dry forest. These pools are essential as the highly endangered Puerto Rican Crested Toad lives in these unique water reserves. In fact, this specific location is designated critical habitat. I am very familiar with the area as it was one of my study sites for the work I did for my Masters Degree thesis in the late-1980s.

Fast-forwarding about 25 years, this particular day started with thick cloud cover. I thought to myself “Great, the light will filter itself naturally”. All morning long there had been intermittent drizzle. I was taking my fairly new Canon 7D through its paces at the time. Needless to say, I was concerned about the drizzle. I hiked two of the trails I had used for my research by the time I realized the drizzle was not going to stop. It was nearing noon and I was getting hungry. The only cover in the vicinity was a small area of mangroves. I kept my camera and 400mm lens on the tripod while I searched for my meal bar and water bottle. As I started to open the wrapper this Great Yellowleg lands at the edge of my lenses’ minimum focus distance. Slowly, I got behind the camera and took a few shots of the little fellow as he grabbed a morsel and took off. I couldn’t believe my luck at picking the spot and being able to get a good shot, seemingly out of nowhere. Afterwards, my luck continued to improve as the drizzle dried up and the day resulted in several good shots and even better memories.

– Bryan

Photo © 2015 Bryan Arroyo