
For many people, the great outdoors has provided a sense of calm, escape or clarity amid a life spent in lockdown or limbo over the past 18 months.
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Sanctuary has been found on a seashore or a mountaintop and many places in between.
BBC News NI speaks to four people from Northern Ireland who spend their spare time searching for sunrises, sunsets, storm clouds and stars through a lens.
'The most incredible photographic experience I've ever had'
After dedicating many hundreds of hours over the past decade to capturing landscapes and seascapes on camera, Ryan Simpson had lost his photographic mojo or "phojo", as he calls it.
So two weeks ago he ventured to the granite peak of Slieve Binnian, the third-highest of the Mourne Mountains in County Down - one more roll of the dice in an attempt to reignite his passion.
"I stood on top of the mountain and then flip me - it was literally the most incredible photographic experience I've ever had," he says.
Ryan was preparing to snap the sun setting over the neighbouring peaks, each wrapped in thick mist that had swept in from the Irish Sea, when a slender red fox appeared to his left.
'Hours of commitment to be in the right place at the right time'
Alistair Hamill is chasing the stars with a camera in one hand and a flask of hot coffee in the other.
The geography teacher, from Ballyclare in County Antrim, challenges himself to capture constellations, comets and even auroras above some of Northern Ireland's most recognisable locations.
As if landscape photography wasn't difficult enough he splices it with astrophotography, adding another layer of complexity to the art.
In doing so Alistair, 52, says he brings "new light - or new starlight, so to speak" to those familiar scenes.
"Whenever you go out into the darkest of dark skies, away from light pollution you really get to see how much light there is in the night sky and it is incredible," he says.
"It's a matter of then setting up your camera to grab those precious photons of light that have travelled tens of thousands of light-years across space."