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.

Way back at the end of March of this year (2025) I was in Berlin for a couple of weeks. I blogged about this before and promised to post the second part of that, and then promptly forgot all about it. Well, better late than never! So here is part two of that trip.

I was recently in the wonderful city of Edinburgh for a few days, and while I was there I was taking some photos of the cityscape from the viewpoint of the castle. Now, I’ll have a bigger photo essay on my Scotland trip in the future, but when I got back home I was looking at these thinking that they would make great faux miniature shots.

A few weeks ago I got to spend some time in Berlin, and so of course I took the opportunity to try and photograph the city whenever I had a chance. While I actually had a bunch of different cameras with me, I ended up taking quite a lot of photos on my iPhone. I will cover the other photos I got with both my Fujifilm and Canon cameras in a later post, but for now, I thought I would collect all the iPhone ones into a single story!

I had been quite looking forward to our trip to Switzerland. I had never been to the country before and was pretty excited about the adventure. Our journey, while not specifically for photography, had the promise of lots of photo potential, but unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate. We travelled to a little town outside of Lake Zurich and on to the City of Geneva, also on a lake!

In early January my wife and I decided to get away for a few days to relax before the new work year started. We headed to a nice relaxing retreat in Co. Wexford, and while the trip was mostly for a holiday, of course we snuck in some photography time! The last time we were in Wexford we had visited the beautiful and famous Hook Lighthouse in the south of the county, but we had done so at noon during the summer, so the light was a bit flat. This time we aimed to visit it at sunset, to capture it in better light. So we set off on the drive down the peninsula towards hook head and its namesake lighthouse. We were not disappointed.

As many of my long-term followers have probably noted, I haven’t posted nearly as much in this past year as I have previously. While my blogging has been tapering off for a while, 2024 was undoubtedly my least productive. In this post, I wanted to touch on that a little bit as well as cover some of the more positive things from the past year too. I also wanted to share some photos and other tales that I never got to share in 2024. This will probably be a long post, so buckle up, or maybe get some coffee!

Every time I go to New York, I end up spending an inordinate amount of time in Grand Central station. Mainly, because we usually end up staying nearby, and it is a handy throughway to other avenues. But it’s also because it’s kind of a magical place. It is like something out of a movie, and it probably has been in many. Every time you walk through it, there are stories happening all around you.

A little while ago, we decided to take a few days break away from the hustle and bustle and headed off on an adventure. We wanted to go somewhere out of the way. Where we ended up was probably about as far away as you can get in Ireland without actually leaving the mainland or going on a ferry. For the longest time I had wanted to visit the top of the island, and so my wife booked us into a hotel on the northernmost peninsula in the northernmost county in Ireland: The windswept and very beautiful Inishowen peninsula in Co. Donegal. And what a place it is.

Earlier this year, I had a chance to visit two of the cities I’ve always wanted to see: Copenhagen and Stockholm. Ever since visiting Oslo a few years ago, I’ve really wanted to see the rest of the region and Copenhagen and Stockholm were on the bucket list. So, when I got the chance to see both of these cities, I jumped at the chance. This wasn’t going to be a strictly photographic trip - I was there with my wife on a business trip, but it was still an opportunity to get to visit these wonderful cities.

The giants causeway is probably one of the most famous natural attractions on the island of Ireland. Located on the northern coast of Northern Ireland, the famous landmark is a series of volcanic rocks that formed into hexagonal columns. It’s somewhere I always wanted to see in person, with the formation being featured in geography text books when I was younger, not to mention practically every tourist board promotion for the region. Finally this past weekend, I got to see it in person.

My first reaction: “Is that it?”

I first visited Cambridge a couple of years ago and I absolutely loved it. This was my third visit since then and my first visit post lockdowns. There is something really nice about the city. It’s small, like a big town, and it has a combination of history and grandeur as well as the peaceful parks and riverside. It also has great cafes and great food.

On the last day of our recent trip around the southwest of Ireland, we stopped at a Lavender farm in Co. Wexford. My wife and I have always been a fan of Lavender, and it featured in the flowers at our wedding, so it was nice to see where it comes from. It also always makes for good photos.

Like many people, while I’ve been lucky enough to travel abroad quite a bit, I haven’t actually spent much time exploring my own country of Ireland, and I’ve actually been to surprisingly little of the island. With Covid making international travel complicated and not something I particularly want to partake in right now, we recently decided to take a few days holiday in the southeast of Ireland. One of the most interesting places we visited was to the Hook peninsula to visit the famous Hook Lighthouse

Being cooped up at home for over a month now, like many people I’ve resorted to going back over old photos and projects as something to do while we can’t go out and shoot. I was going through my archive and something made me start looking at some old New York photos. I have a lot of fond memories of visiting the city and so, I decided to put together a little trip down memory lane, with a little virtual exhibit.

Back in June I spent a week in New York, and while I was there I didn’t do much photography, as I was mainly there for a holiday, and also I was recovering from a bad chest infection that I had had the previous month. Even so, I couldn’t resist the call of the camera, so I still managed to get some shots in.

I’ve been taking a little break this week, and I got to spend some time in London. The city, like the rest of the UK and Ireland is currently experiencing a heatwave, and as someone who doesn’t do well in the heat, I’ve found it quite oppressive and hard to function. Anyway, I haven’t really been taking many photos, but here are a random few from the few days in the city.

left to complete all four seasons. I wonder if I will I get a prize? It was really warm for this time of the year, and it felt like summer, but the trees were still budding, and the cherry blossoms were still blooming. After a while, it’s hard not to capture the same thing over and over, especially as it is such a small place, but the picturesque buildings and town just cry out to have their photo taken. I also managed to capture a bit more of the countryside this time, as well as some evening shots of the town square.

I was passing through a very sunny London city twice over the last week. On each occasion, I was only there for a day or so, and so I didn’t have a lot of time for photography, but I still managed to squeeze an hour or two in on both trips. I hadn’t really intended to shoot street photography specifically, but it sort of ended up that way. I was originally planning to do more “travel photography” style shots, and I was also shooting a video for my new travel vlog series, but in the process of trying to avoid the typical shots of London everyone takes, I somehow ended up shooting street photography. I was actually really lucky with some of the shots too.

In the previous issue of my travel diary, I talked about visiting the German city of Darmstadt on a dull day. I had deliberately gone for an industrial and rigid look to the photos for that piece, to enhance the mood of the dull weather. While this certainly suited the atmosphere, it does perhaps misrepresent the town of Darmstadt. During on the rest of my time there, the sun was out and the feeling couldn’t be more different. It’s actually a lovely city, and a very green one.