ng from Ireland my vision of the west and America is the freedom of the open road,” he tells us. “I really like that idea, that Hunter Thompson kind of thing. I found a big similarity between the space in the Mojave desert and a bog landscape here. It’s very wide-open, bleak, just a huge space.”
One such bog landscape in Killarney turned out to fortuitously provide that ever sought after “perfect shot.”
“It was a really horrible day, grey clouds and everything, and just when I got to that area the sky cleared up and the rain was still there,” Gabriel recalls. “It created this double rainbow. I was shocked because I’d been to that place several times before and every time I’d go there it wasn’t quite right. In this case it was the perfect shot for that area.”
Gabriel’s hero is famed photographer Jay Maisel, who once said, “Try to go out empty and let your images fill you up.” For a commercial photo Gabriel will prepare for the client’s needs, while personal projects get this more freestyle approach, resulting in magical images like a psychedelic Día de Muertos-inspired shot.
“The skull woman is actually my girlfriend,” he says. “It was influenced by Mexican Halloween ’cause I was around Los Angeles when that was going on maybe two years ago and wanted to recreate it here when I was back in Ireland, so I said, ‘Let’s dress up like that. (laughs)'”
Mostly self-taught, Gabriel took a pre-university photography course in Dublin years ago, but then a regular job put that behind him until recently. Now he’s getting exposure through Shutterstock and exhibiting in places like The Black Mariah gallery in Cork.
“Photography has changed my life for the better,” admits Gabriel. “I get a reasonable income off of it, even though it’s part-time, but it helps me to go traveling, to shoot more projects. It’s passion. Even though I wasn’t in photography for five or six years I always knew I’d end up going back into it. I’m committed to it for life.”