Halle’s one Ireland wish was to do a photoshoot in a castle. Which got me thinking….Ireland would make some pretty epic family pictures. I shopped around and found a photographer and a location I loved. Bective Abby, although not a castle, was an incredibly picturesque ruin in County Meath. At the last minute, our photographer had a medical emergency and called in a fellow photographer friend to shoot our pics. We were so grateful she could step in, because it was forecasted to be the only clear evening for several days. And it turned out just perfect. I’ll let Josh take it from here.
Josh-Castles were absolutely everywhere in Ireland, we got to see so many amazing ones and often we would see some super cool ruins on the side of the road with nobody there because just a bit farther down the road were even bigger ruins. In castles that didn’t have any supervision or regulation, we were able to actually climb up into them and get views we couldn’t get from any of the supervised castles. My favorite castle we climbed in was the one we went to for family pictures because it was really big and in perfect for climbing. After we took our pictures in all the easily accessible spots in the castle Blake and I decided to climb up footholds made by the decaying rock into the inside of the castle. There were locals in there at the time too so even though the inside was closed off by locked gates we assumed we were fine to be there as well.
Inside we could climb rock staircases that were missing entire steps, visit the basement, and climb through holes in the ceiling to get to higher floors. It was exciting to think that people had lived in this place hundreds of years before I came along but it was still standing and able to be explored. The abby was probably the best one because it had maybe a dozen rooms and multiple floors to look around, but we still saw some other cool ones. One called the Rock of Dunamase had a lot of big walls to go up, and had a bunch of good views of the countryside as well. At the island, there was one that went up nearly 3 stories and had some great sea views as well. The history that all these castles contained and just the sheer amount that we saw was absolutely one of the most unique and interesting parts about Ireland.
These are some of the outtakes and the pics I (Tara) shot of Halle at the Abby. We took pics while the boys ran wild. We had a blast finding cute pic spots. Isn’t Halle the prettiest thing ever??
Now for the Real Deal:
