I’ve been going back over old photos in my library and pondering the past year. I actually got out to take photos quite a bit this year, but I have been really bad at sharing the projects that I was shooting. These include photographing a local stately garden throughout the seasons, visiting a national park at sunrise and sunset and a trip to Scotland to see lough ness. So, as they’ll never see the internet light of day otherwise, here’s a quick overview and some images I took over the past year.

As the last vestiges of summer have now long faded away, my favourite time of the year for photography has come. I love Autumn, and indeed winter, for shooting street photography, because of the light. The low sun here in Ireland creates a beautiful golden character to the light and as the season turns from Autumn to Winter, and the sun gets lower, you get beautiful long deep shadows.

Every year we like to get up early on New Year’s day and head to the beach to watch the first sunrise of the new year. It’s a little ritual to start the year, but unfortunately, it hasn’t always gone exactly according to plan. Last year, we couldn’t actually get to the beach, because of a strict covid lockdown, as it was outside the permissible distance. This year we did get there, but instead of a glorious sunrise, we were treated to stormy seas and winds. Not exactly what we were hoping for, but it led to some cool photos anyway.

At the weekend we decided to go on an expedition in the car to the seaside. While we don’t exactly live inland, travelling around has become something of a chore now. While you can take public transport, I’m still somewhat wary of it, and so we try and stay in the car where we can be fairly isolated. On a July weekend, you might be thinking the beach would be packed, but at the height of a typical Irish summer, that wasn’t going to be a problem, as the temperature barely got above 16 degrees Celsius for the day, and the sky looked like something out of a science fiction movie.

After the incident I had the last time I was out shooting Street Photography, I have been finding it hard to get back to shooting. The attack put me off wanting to do street photography at all, having both shattered my confidence and also my motivation. But slowly I’ve ben trying o make myself get back out there, and this Saturday, I finally did my first street shoot in a while. 

Sometimes when I’m out shooting street photography, I will go out with a theme in mind. Other times, it will just sort of happen organically. I was walking through Dublin in May, and it was still pretty cold for that time of the year, yet there were lots and lots of tourists around and tour groups. I am actually fascinated by how other people view my home town, and when shooting street photography here I try to capture that. In this case, I seemed to gravitate towards catching the expressions of people enjoying their visit to Ireland, and the occasional local who got caught up in the mix too.

I hadn’t had a chance to shoot some street photography in nearly a month, so I was happy to get out and shoot again. I wanted to try and practice and change up the way I shoot a bit, especially for street photography. I wanted to focus on things like shadows, and reflections, and be on the look out for something different to the type of things I normally shoot. I wasn’t hugely successful in changing my habits, but I still got a couple of shots I’m really happy with.

Spring has arrived in the city with an unusually warm couple of days, and it really showed on the faces of the people as they went about their daily lives. The ever changing beat of the city seemed more alive, and everyone from the tourists to the locals seemed to be enjoying the nice weather.

It was a bank holiday weekend here in Dublin this weekend, and as is traditional at the start of August, many people were away on holidays. The result of this is that the city was unusually quiet. I had headed out to shoot an episode of my “Street Photo Diary” companion video series and while I normally complain about how busy it is, for once it was nearly too quiet.

Last year I got up early with the aim of capturing the sunrise for the first day of the year. I took some nice shots of the light before dawn but it clouded over too much before the actual sun rose. Still, I wanted to make it a tradition, and so, once again, I headed to the same spot in order to catch the first rays of the sun for 2018.

Sometimes I just like to go for a walk wth my camera. Without intent or purpose. Just to see what one can see. This was one of those days. A little bit of everything.

I’ve always been quite fond of textures and patterns. I find that, even in the seemingly harsh and cold medium of concrete and glass there can be beauty. I spent a few hours the other day in one of the newest parts of Dublin City, where there are lots of modern buildings as well as ongoing construction, and the light was just right to really emphasis the aesthetics of these elements.

I had been walking in Dublin's Stephen's Green park and it was a beautiful sunny day. So far this year, we've been having a great summer, which is unusual here in Ireland. The summer sunshine falling through the patterns of light in the trees makes for a beautiful canvas.

I've always been fascinated by the changing seasons. When in the depths of winter it's hard to imagine that the bare trees were ever burdened down with leaves. In the summer it's hard to imagine that they were ever bare. This year, the winter seemed particularly long, and so, when summer finally came around, the explosion of growth seemed especially dramatic.

I headed into the city yesterday to go for a walk and take some photos. It was a beautiful spring day, and while there's been some nice days this year so far, yesterday was glorious. While there was still a cold bite to the air, the sky was a beautiful shade of blue, the light was a rich golden hue, and the air was fresh and breezy.