What the judge was saying was factual – the banks weren’t giving any money, nobody wanted to buy anything, everybody wanted to sell. I’d been thinking it alright… what am I going to do? But his words were my worst fear realized – they kind of shook me.

I’d been in the buisness since I was 19. I was 59 now, and it’s a shock to get to 59, to be thinking ‘what am I going to do now?’.I had no work anymore, no income, I needed to do something. That judge was the catalyst for realizing it.

There’s a gap between the time you realise something, and when you take action. It wasn’t instantaneous, no flash.It took a while. I didn’t make a plan, but there was a touch of serendipity…

A man I knew was retiring as an aerial photographer. I was always into photography. My first job as an auctioneer, they had a fabulous camera for taking pictures of houses. The boss was a decent fella and one weekend I said ‘I’m going to an airshow, would you mind if I borrowed the camera?’ And I started taking pictures of airshows.

I loved that about photography – capturing a moment in time, a very fleeting moment someone else mightn’t see – that I could create in this way.

And I loved airplanes, loved going up in them. Cork Airport opened in 1961. Our home was right on the flight path for planes coming in from the north. These were propeller planes and they were slow. First you heard this distant rumble and then they very slowly passed – you got a really great look. I’d climb up on the shed to see even closer.

I was 14, 15, I’d never seen anything like it. Astonishing to see these machines, suspended in the air.