A Clare photographer who is aiming to help Irish men find love in Ukraine is now training his lens on matters of the heart closer to home.
James Treacy is hoping to expand his photography business by turning to what he calls the “niche market” of weddings in the Traveller community. The Scariff man runs his own photography business and his work has featured in local and national media. The part time tour operator last year teamed up with American company ‘A Foreign Affair’ to organise trips to Ukraine for Irish men looking for love.
Now the enterprising East Clare man aims to widen his portfolio from sports and rural photography to include Traveller weddings. “I used to go to mass in Limerick on Sundays and see all the big cars driving around so I reckoned they’d have the money to pay me,” James said. He continued, “Travellers, their money is the same colour as mine. I have a saying in Scariff, you can hide poverty but you can’t hide wealth. For example if you have a hole in your jumper you can hide it by stitching it up but wealth is the exact opposite”.
James has advertised his services in the Traveller Voice and so far he’s had a “few calls”. “So people are interested. I wouldn’t think that many people are doing this area of photography. It is a niche market. It’s like anything. You have to work hard at it if you want to do anything”, he added.
James studied photography at Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT) and Limerick College of Further Education. He recently became a member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). He teaches photography and his work has been used as part of RTE’s Angelus broadcast. James said he is always looking for new business opportunities and is keen to expand into niche markets.
“I do a lot of sports photography, locally and nationally. What I find when you go into the stadiums you have a lot of photographers. There’s a lot of competition. That’s the main problem I have”, James explained. He continued, “I’m the first man Ireland to run these trips to Ukraine to find wives for Irish men. I’m always looking for niche markets to move into.” “For the last few years, I have been doing cattle mart photography. There was no one doing it and my photos would be in the farming supplements. But there are more people doing it now.”
