Some years ago, after I had announced another book, a photographer colleague said to me: “Dude, you have a serious problem.” He’s probably right. Considering that making photography and natural history books for mainly the Irish market doesn’t really pay the bills, keeping on making these books isn't probably a smart economical move.
On the other hand, the process of making books is a very rewarding experience. Starting with a faint idea, developing and clarifying the concept, researching the content, making the images, writing the text, and eventually putting it all together is very exciting.
So when the O’Brien Press, the publisher I have been working with for almost twenty years, came to me to ask if I would like to make a book on peatlands, I didn’t have to think for long. For the first years as an Irish resident I had been living in an old cottage in the bog, and my first photography job after settling in Ireland was with the Irish Peatland Conservation Council to document the development of the Bog of Allen Nature Centre. Peatlands are beautiful, fascinating, mysterious, and intriguing. Being able to dedicate a whole year to these wet and colourful places was a dream come true.
The first step I take when starting a new book is to put together a detailed concept and table of content. This helps me get a clearer idea of what I actually want to achieve, which in the long run saves me from aimless research and needless trips. Doing this was relatively straightforward on this occasion. Contrary to their visual chaos, the natural history and the ecological processes of peatlands are very logical and structured.
Then - after some initial research and writing a rough draft version of each chapter - I hit the road. I traveled from the fens and raised bogs of the Irish midlands to the heaths and blanket bogs of the western seaboard. It turned out to be one of the most enjoyable times I ever had on the road, visiting some familiar sights and discovering new places. Still, photographing the peatlands was challenging. Because of the apparent uniformity of these habitats, creating striking images is not easy. More often than not peatlands are just vast areas of mosses, grasses and heather without any striking features. As a consequence I mostly ruled out the wide vistas, because no matter what I would do, the image would be about the noticeable features - the trees, the mountain chain in the distance, the lake in the foreground - but never about the peatland itself. Going macro also wasn’t the solution - although close-up images of plants, invertebrates and other wildlife would be an important part of the book - because these images would only show a small part of the whole.
So how to capture “the peatland”? My solution consisted of a high resolution camera and two tilt & shift lenses, a 50mm and a 90mm, and twenty years of practicing “seeing”. With this set-up I set out to photograph the - on first view - chaotic plant communities of fens, raised bogs, blanket bogs, and heaths. These plant communities are not only the essence of the peatlands, they are the peatlands, making up the colourful surface as well as the deep layers of peat that has formed over a period of thousands of years. The high megapixel count of the camera would capture the finest details and the tilt function of the lenses would make it possible to have everything in focus while maintaining a fast shutter speed. The latter is a necessity in a country where the wind almost never eases, and this infamous wind was also the reason I didn’t even consider focus stacking as an option. The rest was up to me, finding patterns and bringing order to the chaos. The result is a collection of intimate peatland studies, patterns of grasses, mosses, and heathers, interspersed with delicate wildflowers, filigree spider webs, and dew drops, which combined are the peatlands.
After returning to the office after an enjoyable spring and summer on the road, it was time to finish the text for the book. With the peatlands still fresh in my mind this turned out to be a surprisingly easy undertaking. Some additional research, fact checking, and four edit runs later the text was finished and matched to the images made, and it was time to hand the project over to my editor at the O’Brien Press.
This next part in the process of making a book is a productive back and forth between author and editor. As a writer, no matter how often you review your work, you’ll never get it perfect for the simple reason that you get lost in your own work, you can’t see the forest for the trees. The fresh eyes of the editor see the bigger picture, and I am very lucky that my editor not only improves the flow and readability of my books, but also calls out factual mistakes. This is at times embarrassing, but very much necessary.
Once the text has passed all judgement and is ready for the wider world, everything is handed over to a designer, who has the challenging task to put words and images together. For books like this this is tricky. Text and images not only have to look good on the page, the images also have to be placed to complement the text, which most of the time is not an easy task. Designing a heavily illustrated textbook is effectively a three-dimensional jigsaw and for this one - which only got its title ‘10.000 Years Deep - The Story of Ireland’s Peatlands’ at this stage of the publishing process - it took a few weeks to get it right.
And then it is done. Another book completed.
While I am writing this ‘10.000 Years Deep - The Story of Ireland’s Peatlands’ is at the printer, for the author an anxious time of waiting. There is always the possibility that some major mistakes have been missed, or that something goes wrong at the printing press. It will be another few weeks before I will hold the first copy in my hands, until then I’ll be working on another book. Yes, I do have a problem.
‘10.000 Years Deep - The Story of Ireland’s Peatlands’ will be out this October.
Carsten Krieger, August 2025
