*Gerard O’Neill.
KILMIHIL native Gerard O’Neill has recently been honoured with a fellowship by the Irish Photographic Federation.
At a sitting of the Irish Photographic Federation in Thurles, Gerard received a distinction for his photography. Readers of The Clare Echo are familiar with his work as it appears in print and online on a weekly basis, the majority of which are from GAA games across the county.
Distinctions are awarded by the Irish Photographic Federation on three levels, Licentiate, Associate and Fellow, in ascending order. The Fellowship is the highest of these levels and requires a panel of twenty prints to be presented. The panel should sit together as a cohesive body of work and demonstrate the applicant’s distinguished ability and/or style in a specialist area of photography. Successful applicants are entitled to use the letters FIPF after their name.
For Gerry, the specialist area chosen was the GAA with shots included featuring Conor Cleary, David Clifford, Fidelma Marrinan, Daniel Walsh and Manus Doherty.
An associateship was received by Gerard in November 2021, the latest accolade is an achievement he is very proud of, he is currently the only member of the Clare Camera Club with such credentials.
He told The Clare Echo, “The process is a challenging one and it is trying to reach a standard of being a better photographer, having six judges sitting in front of you and then reviewing your work to get a thumbs up from them is very rewarding”.
O’Neill added, “Very few photographers can put together a theme of twenty photographs, I’m privileged to go to matches to be able to get such photographs, as the famous golfer Gary Player said ‘the more practice the luckier I get’, sometimes you’re just in the right place, the shot of David Clifford is very unusual and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, when you’re shooting at 200 thousandth of a second it is too fast for the human eye to catch, most spectators wouldn’t see what you manage to catch on camera”.
Now residing in Deepark, he established O’Neill & Associates Accountants which is based on Frances Street in Kilrush, a company which has generously sponsored Coiste na nÓg Peil championships in the county.
