It was harder to find the way in the dark. I knew the route because I had seen it during the day, but now, in the predawn twilight, it felt different. The first part was easy—a satisfying crunch of hiking boots on gravel, lit only by the beam of my head torch. As I started to make my way across the fields towards the cliff edge, there were moments when I wasn’t quite sure that I was wandering off track. I checked the time – it was still 40 minutes before sunrise, and I settled these giddy thoughts.

I found a rhythmic stride, my camera pack backpack snug and steady, and I carried my tripod in my hand. Holding down brambles or giving a steady hand to get over a low fence was helpful. Soon, I heard the distant sound of the waves at the base of the cliffs. I was near. I was outside the arable land, and a bounce underfoot from the clifftop grasses was springing me forward. The final, narrow path through Gorse and Heather was easier to follow but also more treacherous to trip over. Thorny gorse scratched at my jacket and pack, and I recovered from a couple of clumsy stumbles in my enthusiasm to get set up at the tomb.

Then I was upon it – Leaba na Prionsa, the Prince’s bed, also known locally as the Chieftain’s grave. I had visualised a sunrise photograph and planned to do it on an autumn morning with favourable conditions. It looked good as I extended and locked the tripod legs. The backpack is off, the camera is out, and the wide-angle lens and filter set are already in place. The light was rising, and I paused to look at these 4,000-year-old stone slabs, speckled white with age. I couldn’t help but reach out and touch what felt like the essence of time itself.

Creating photographs at first light nurtures a sense of awe and wonder like no other time. You feel like you have the entire world of rising light to yourself. To have and maintain a sense of wonder in places near and familiar is a gift that fuels and compels creativity, as well as the drive to share the beauty and stillness of fleeting moments.

Officially an ‘unclassified megalithic tomb’, this ancient burial site predates written history. Many of these tombs are located in Ireland, particularly in Cork and Kerry. Where I stand now, alongside a tripod ready to seize slices of time, is the oldest known connection to our forebears in the Kinsale area.

The great thing about prehistory is that it leaves so much to our imagination. Who were the people who lived here a hundred generations ago? Who is buried here? Why this place? The questions are endless. The sun is now beginning to lift over the horizon just by the small Sovereign island. Its two larger neighbors are directly out to sea, to the south. It is time. I finalise the focus and exposure settings and trip the shutter. A moment of dawn light, the tiniest fraction of time since fellow humans built this tomb to honour those passing to the next life.

Historians tell us that folklore provides clues to the beliefs and rituals of centuries past. Further west along the coast, what we now know as the Bull Rock was said to be the gateway to the spirit world. A colossal cave runs right through this barren offshore island known as Teach Donn - the house of Donn, guardian of the spirit world. As the sun rose higher, it lifted the chill of the autumn morning. I packed the equipment to get ready to go and took out a small flask of hot tea. It never tasted so good.

There’s something profoundly moving about the convergence of technologies separated by four millennia—the carefully positioned stone slabs intended to preserve memory across generations, and my modern camera with its own mission of capturing fleeting light. Both are attempts to hold time still, to mark moments of significance. The ancient builders used limestone and positioning relative to the sun; I use sensors and glass. But our human impulse remains unchanged—to witness, to remember, to preserve.

The Irish landscape is layered with these connections between past and present. Standing at Leaba na Prionsa as the light changes, I’m reminded that photography itself is an act of marking thresholds—the brief transition from night to day, the space between sea and sky, the boundary between what is remembered and what is lost. The megalith before me has stood as a sentinel through countless such transitions, weathering storms and seasons, witnessing the slow transformation of the surrounding landscape.