This week I sat in our second sublet of the summer. I say 'sublet' but this one was actually a friend's place. They'd kindly let us stay there while they traveled. Eighteen months ago we had packed and were saying goodbye to New York. In doing so, we knew we'd be downsizing and so we offered some of our things to friends, family, neighbors, charity. Now that I'm sitting at the dining table in my friend's apartment, it's strange to recognize items on the shelves here that were once on the shelves of our place.

Quick disclaimer: I have not been diagnosed with ADHD which, I suspect, is mainly because I haven't been tested for ADHD. However, my mind tends to flit back and forth between topics. Sometimes, while talking, it happens mid-sentence. It's quite annoying because at times I feel self-conscious about not being concise or articulate enough. However, at times, I feel blessed that my mind so freely wanders. I can think of one thing and it leads me somewhere completely unexpected.

Seated at the dining table, my eye ran along the lines of the bookshelves. Books I've read could have been ones I gifted or could be ones we have in common. That's certainly not unusual.

My eye pauses on a book I know was once mine. A version of James Joyce's Ulysses that I purchased in Dublin. There are so many copies of this book with limited edition covers, centenary editions, publisher one-offs etc. This wasn't one of them. This was a bargain bin version that looked like a school textbook.

Looking at the spine of the book reminded me of a quote I think about often:

"The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring".

In a book that spans 700-800 pages, that line is 18 words long.

There is another quote that I noted while reading which goes like this:

"The man who lifts his hand to a woman save in the way of kindness, deserves to be branded as the lowest of the low."

I recently discovered that a version of that line turns up in a play from 1805 called 'The Honey Moon' by John Tobin.

"The man that lays his hand upon a woman, Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch whom 'twere gross flattery to name a coward".

I’m not saying Joyce lifted it, or knew about it, but the resemblance is uncanny.

It's quite funny to think that, at a table in NYC, in 2026, I was thinking about a quote from a book 100 years old, and that an older version of that line was in a play from 200 years ago.

And then, I thought of the time when reading Ulysses. It was in Miami. Miami. The place that I told myself then that I'd hated being, but now, in this moment, I was pining for. Pining. For. Miami. I'm confused.

People asked me while I was living there and afterwards,

"Do/did you like living in Miami?" and always the answer was "not really. Not for me."

For the last 6 months of my time there I felt that was a lie. I had found things to like while being there. I'd found things to love. Lightning, beach moments, lizards, tropical trees, mangoes (Oh, the mangoes!). There are things that are certainly not for me, but isn't that the same for wherever you live?

And now, back in New York, the place I pined for while I was in Miami, I'm now thinking about Miami. So, here we are. I'd started at a thought about recognizing old items we'd owned, to Ulysses, to a quote, to a quote of a quote, to Miami, to missing NY while in Miami and now to missing Miami while in New York.

Suddenly, as my brain is wont to do, I'm in a slight mental crisis. Why am I pining for the place that I've claimed to hate? Well, where I landed was just to the left of my friend's bookshelf, to a pile of bags. Blue Ikea-style bags, two suitcases, two boxes and a series of tote bags. Aside from what's in storage in Miami, this is what we came to NY with in June. And we have been living out of these bags since.

It's a conscious decision to wait until October/November to find a longer-term home as prices tend to drop. You don't want to rent in NY in the summer. It's peak season and you'll then be renewing in peak season in the years afterwards. So sublets and friend's kindness is what will get us through until then. But as anyone can attest to, when living out of suitcases and bags for a longer period of time, you start to think about not having a place of your own. Cupboards to store the bags away, your own bed, drawers and wardrobes for your clothes, bookshelves for your remembered, forgotten, and yet-to-discover quotes.

It's not Miami I'm pining for and in Miami, perhaps it wasn't New York I was pining for. It's home.

Since I left Ireland, 25 (Twenty-five!) years ago, I have moved 13 times. An approximate average of once every 2 years. In fact, only twice in that 25 years did I live in a place for 3 years. Your stuff is barely out of the boxes before you are thinking about your next move.

My crisis thinking brain then asks the question: "Where is home?" or "What is home?". A Place? A person? A routine? A feeling? Perhaps, to quote the philosopher, Paul Young, it's "wherever I lay my hat"? Or was it Marvinus Gaius?

And yet, Ulysses holds the answer. My home is Ireland. It's where it's always been. Dublin. The Liffey. Joyce. George's Street Arcade. Stephen's Green. The perfect pint in Harry Byrne's. The coast from Malahide to Portmarnock Beach. The Poolbeg towers.

I ran away from Ireland 25 years ago. And it was running away. But the longing for that place is stronger now than it's ever been. The reality of living in a place is different, of course. So maybe home is a feeling. I'm going back there on Thursday, before I find my next physical home, I'm going, as it turns out, where the heart is.

Thanks for reading.

Paul

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For about six weeks now, maybe two months, I’ve published an essay every Tuesday and posted alongside it on Instagram, Pinterest, Bluesky and LinkedIn.

The followers have gone up. Not dramatically, but up.

And people have been kind. Likes, comments, shares from people I’ve never met and some that have become incredibly close friends. None of what follows is about them.

This week I sat down to write the next one and didn’t want to. Actually, that’s not accurate. I wrote one about it being “never too late to start something new” which was due to go out this Tuesday. I like the writing, it’s the rest of it I don’t.

Brief pause for context. I’ve always been estranged from social media. Not in a principled way, I just don’t like it. Posting all the time doesn’t appeal to me and never has, and the part I like least is the feeling of asking for attention. Which raises the obvious question, and I’ve been going round it for weeks. If I’m not doing this for attention, what am I doing it for?

It isn’t making me take more photographs. If anything, it’s the opposite. It takes the hours I’d have spent walking around with a camera and spends them somewhere else, and I’ve been telling myself that’s the cost of doing business.

I have a full-time job. It pays the bills.

What I’d rather do with what’s left over is read, finish the novel I haven’t touched in months, and take photographs because I like taking them and I like editing them. Without the bit at the end where I have to hand them over to something.

Then there’s the video question.

Everything I’ve been told and read says the way to be seen on Instagram is reels. And I find it infuriating. I’m not a video person. I don’t shoot video, I don’t document what I’m doing, and I’ve been telling myself for about a year that I’m going to start.

I never do.

To make the thing that works I’d need a hook in the first second, a cut every two seconds, probably something funny, and probably me (from 20 years ago), in it, talking. Every one of those takes time away from the two things I want to be doing, which are taking photographs and writing about them. Moreover, to make the thing that works, means doing a thing I really don’t want to do.

So, I’m going to stop chasing it.

That means Instagram. It also means Bluesky and Pinterest, which is less of a wrench than it sounds, because I never had an account on either until this year. I opened both purely to cross-post, and the whole time it felt like doing an impression of somebody. Facebook I left about ten years ago and never posted on again, so that one’s just admin.

And LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is the one I’ve found hardest, and not for sentimental reasons. It’s felt toxic to me for a long time. The specific thing I object to is that my photography posts have now become a reason for people to email me about buying leads. I put a picture up and it gets read as a sales trigger. I don’t want the two halves of my life touching each other like that. The account stays, because that’s where the day job lives, but I’m done putting photographs there. And I hate that, because I have had people reach out to me and genuinely been interested and happy to see my work.

There are a lot of performative things we’ve agreed we’re supposed to do.

I’m speaking for myself here. Not for anyone else, and I want to be clear about that, because plenty of people love this and plenty more are simply better at it than I am. More natural. Less bothered.

For me, it takes a toll.

You make something. It comes from inside you, through a camera or a brush or a keyboard, and you’re proud of it for a short while. Then you put it out, it doesn’t get the response you thought it might, and you feel like a failure. “It’s the algorithm”, “It’s not the work, you just need to post more reels”.

That isn’t fair. It’s a rigged reading of your own work and I fall for it every time.

I’ve got friends who are artists. Their work is remarkable, and I watch them contort into formats that have nothing to do with what they make, because the platform requires it. Out of their comfort zone, in service of a machine that has no idea what they’ve made, nor cares. That’s the part I find sad.

I wonder about Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, Picasso, or Van Gogh, particularly Van Gogh, and whether any of them would rise above the noise now. I don’t know. Nobody does. It’s an unanswerable question.

The tech has failed us. Not at engineering, obviously. At the human bit. Somewhere in the chase for money a person became a data point, and the fact that we’ve accepted this as the price of having our work seen at all is a strange thing to have agreed to. Corporations have limited what people can truly achieve in favour of making as many people follow a pattern as possible and then wrapped it up and presented it to us as an opportunity. And if you pay for the next level up, you “might” get more opportunities. You won’t but that will be because your reels need to be funnier. Hookier. Sellable.

I can’t do it. More to the point, I won’t.

Social media is the furthest thing from social there is.

Which leaves this. And I’m aware Substack has started to look like Instagram and X in places, and I’m not pretending otherwise. But it’s built for writing and reading, and those are the two things I want to do, so it’s the only one left that interests me. Everything else lives on my website.

I’ll be taking photographs with the time I gain. You’ll see some of them here, and on the site, and nowhere else. Follow me, if you like. I’ll try not to care.

Until next week, maybe, probably,

Paul

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Last Wednesday was World Photography Day. My first one back in New York. I make it sound like it’s Christmas or something but for photographers, it can open doors that usually aren’t accessible throughout the rest of the year. In this case, one of my favourite places to shoot in New York, Summit One Vanderbilt, for sunrise.

Two years ago, I did the same thing, except that morning it was overcast. Which might sound like a wasted opportunity but it really wasn’t. The good part came after the disappointment of no sunrise: the crowd (and it was a crowd) cleared out, and there were very few of us left up there. That’s a rare thing in that building.

So when an email arrived saying it was happening again, I didn’t hesitate.

I met a friend outside at 4.30am for a 5am entrance. Clear sky this time, so a different morning from two years ago.

I’ve been up Summit a lot. Easily in double figures now, and I keep going back, first of all because I enjoy it. It’s one of the better observation decks in New York. It can be a bit of an Instagrammer’s dream up there, but for me its proximity to the Chrysler Building and the view of the Empire State can’t be beaten.

But going back to the same place over and over provides a challenge. It stops being about getting the picture and starts being about getting a different one. Something I don’t already have.

That’s the test. If I walk out with something new then the decision to go was right, and more than that, it tells me I’ll go again, because I’m still finding things.

So that’s what I set out to do.

I was there from 5am until 9am. The first part was the obvious part: wait for the sun, tripod up, do the thing everybody’s there to do. I did also end up taking pictures from the bathroom, which sounds worse than it is. The window in there has a good angle on the sun coming up and a view over Central Park, and it’s an angle I’d never had. This could have been my something-I-don’t-already-have picture. Here’s the thing, though.

Yesterday I was walking down a street with my wife. We are currently looking for a new apartment. Experience tells us not to live close to a hospital or fire station, otherwise you’ll be listening to sirens all the time. We passed a group of people taking photos of a fire engine pulling out of a station. For some, fire engines are something to avoid. For others it’s a photo opp. All that is to say, the sun rising over New York with a view over Central Park floats a lot of people’s boats. For me, the sun was probably five minutes up when I put the tripod away and started walking around, looking for something unique.

And then there’s the other good thing about going on that particular day. As far as I’m aware, it’s the only time they let you move up and down the levels. Normally it’s a one-way system: the escalators only go up, and then the lifts take you all the way back down to the street. On that morning most of the escalators are switched off so that people use the stairs in both directions.

It sounds like a small thing. It isn’t. The light keeps changing, and different people are standing in different places at different times, so something catches your eye on a floor you’ve already done and you go back to it. You keep moving. That’s how four hours goes by in a flash. That and the coffee.

The photographs I’m sharing this week are all from that morning, and I should say plainly that they don’t hang together. There’s no cohesive style running through them. Some are the postcard, some are people, one is a pop of red, and the last two are me playing around with the camera.

Photos like this from the Summit and 77 other locations in NYC are all on a map I created to help you find new places to shoot and what you might discover there. It’s free here.

That variety is what I was after. Go somewhere I know too well, come back with something I didn’t already have.

I feel that I did that. Different for me at least. So I’ll be going again.

Is there a place you keep returning to? I’m curious whether you’re still finding new things in your favourite spots.

Until next week, happy shooting.

Paul

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^{If you like this content consider treating me to a coffee or buying my prints.}

When I started photographing in New York there was a ferry outside my apartment.

It ran up and down the East River and I could be on it in a few minutes, so I took an awful lot of photographs from the ferry, on the ferry…of the ferry. When I wasn’t on the ferry the subway took me straight into Grand Central, so I shot a lot around Grand Central.

Some of the reasoning was that they were simply there. I could just take them. I didn’t have to feel so overwhelmed by a location, and I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the camera, or the light, or the time of day, or how many people happened to be on the street that morning.

This isn’t a lesson in how to take photographs. It’s a lesson, I suppose, if we want to call it that, in how to see them.

If you’re new to the city you might want to hit the obvious places. The Staten Island Ferry, Times Square, Grand Central, Central Park, places like that. And as a tourist you may just want to document the fact that you were there, and that’s fine. I have those photographs too. Everyone does.

But as a photographer, or an aspiring one, or someone who gets out with a camera at weekends, there’s a real challenge in finding the less obvious photograph in a very obvious place.

Eventually I ventured further out. The High Line. In and around the East Village. And what I noticed was that I was still doing the same thing: photographing a statue, or a sign, or some particular feature of the area. There’s a sign in Central Park about not swimming in the pond. I photographed that. Nothing overly adventurous.

What I didn’t realise at the time was that I was building a muscle for seeing that I didn’t necessarily know I had.

The famous places aren’t a compromise. They’re where the learning happens, because everybody has the same access. You and I can stand on the same deck at Top of the Rock, on the same afternoon, in the same light, with the same railing in front of us. Nothing separates the two photographs except what each of us decided to look at.

That’s a rare thing. Usually when one photograph is different from another you can point at something: the weather, the light, luck, a place the other person couldn’t get to. Take all of that away and what’s left is the looking. Which means the beaten track isn’t the thing you graduate from. It’s the practice room.

I’ve put the locations of some of these photographs onto a map. Not a list of good spots to go and stand in. More a way of showing that they were all made in real places, most of them places you could get to this afternoon, if you live in NYC, and of seeing how many of them pile up in the same few.

For example, nine of the photographs on it were made at Summit One Vanderbilt. Not nine around Midtown. Nine in the same building, across more than one visit, because I kept going back and it kept having something else in it.

At Top of the Rock. I have the view south, the one everybody goes up for, with the Empire State Building at the centre and One World Trade beyond it in the haze. It’s a great view and I’m glad I have it. From the north side of the same deck, there’s another one: a couple leaning on the concrete parapet with Central Park spread out grey and green below them. Same spot, ninety degrees of difference.

In Times Square. One of the frames from there has an enormous lit advertisement in it, a basketball player pointing out of a circle with a speech bubble beside her, and along the bottom edge the dark silhouette of somebody’s head cutting across the whole thing. In black and white it reads less like an advertisement and more like a shape. The billboards are what everyone stands there for, including me. This is still a billboard. It’s just not only about a billboard.

On the Staten Island Ferry. There’s the Statue of Liberty through the window reflections or reflections on reflections. There’s one with another passenger holding a phone up to it, which is the picture the crossing is for. And there’s one at dusk, of a woman at the rail with her hair up and a scarf over her shoulder, watching Lower Manhattan across the wake. Neither of those is the better photograph. They’re just two things that were available on the same boat.

None of these needed access to anywhere difficult. They needed standing in an obvious place for longer than was comfortable.

The map

The map is on my site. 74 places, 139 photographs, pinned where I stood, or close to, with notes on light and timing as I write them. It’s free.

Some of the pins are exactly what they say. The Staten Island Ferry is plainly the Staten Island Ferry. Others you’d look at and have no idea where you were unless somebody pinned it for you, which is most of the fun of it.

One thing it isn’t. It’s not a list of shots to go and take. What I’d want it to be useful for is the other thing: that a place you’d written off after one visit usually has more in it than you might have expected. Or places that you hadn’t considered going that you might now consider.

It also isn’t finished. I’ll keep adding as I keep shooting, and the notes will fill in as I write them.

Where to Photograph New York

If you’ve got a famous location you keep going back to, and you’re still finding something new in it, I’d like to know which one and what you found. Those are the ones I want to add.

Paul

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My father died in 2007. It was sudden, and I was 26.

I was desperately upset, which is what you’d expect when losing a parent. I don’t think I was thinking straight for most of that week (and probably the 12 months afterwards). After the funeral, the extended family and friends went to a hotel in Malahide, Dublin for the reception.

At some point I took myself off to the bathroom and cried. I’d cried a lot over those few days. It would just happen. At the reception I felt the need to hide it. To cry on my own.

Coming back out, I was near the hotel lobby. My uncle Brian was walking in with somebody. He saw me. He could see I’d been crying, and he stopped in front of me.

I asked him if I could talk to him. “Of course,” he said.

Truth is, Brian looked so much like my dad. As much as I’d asked to talk to him, I don’t think talking was what I wanted. Once he was standing in front of me, I had nothing to say at all. I think I wanted to be near him.

We sat down. Somebody came over to offer condolences, and he shooed them away without making anything of it. Then he sat there and didn’t press me. Didn’t ask what I’d wanted to talk about. Didn’t try to fill the silence.

I ended up apologising to him for not knowing what to say. For having asked him for a conversation in the first place. He put his arm around my shoulder, and didn’t make me feel like I owed him a sentence.

It was only years later, and I mean years, that it occurred to me. This man had lost his brother. Same week, same funeral, same everything, and I hadn’t thought about it from his side at all. Grief does that to you. You don’t think straight.

Brian died a few weeks ago. I tried to get to Ireland for the funeral, but the airline delayed the flight, then cancelled it, leaving me no time to find a replacement.

So I wasn’t there.

At the end of July, we lost Glen Hansard. I’m sure you’ve seen the videos by now. A huge talent, obviously, but it was never only the talent with him, it was how he was with people. Years ago, on stage, before playing a song for Levon Helm, he said this:

“People always say, we lost somebody great today. You don’t lose anything, you gain, because the best of that person you inherited. If you’ve got the strength and the will, you inherit the best of the person who passed.”

And then about Helm himself: “he doesn’t go. He just gets bigger.”

Brian’s life wasn’t an easy one. He had a stroke about a year after my dad died and lived with it from then on, which was hard on him and hard on his family.

None of that was in the lobby that day. He sat down next to me and said nothing. I needed that more than I knew at the time.

There’s no lesson in this, and no photography spin in it either. It was a small thing. Not quite holding a door open or making somebody a cup of tea, but sitting down beside a person and not asking them anything. Just being there.

You don’t know what one of those is worth to the person on the other end of it.

I’d have given anything to tell Brian what that did for me. Not then. In the years afterwards, when I understood it. Now I can’t.

Is there someone you could still tell?

Thanks for reading.

Paul

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Every photograph in this week’s post has somebody in it who is on their own.

That’s the only thing they have in common. New York, Dublin, Kyoto, Miami, Atlanta, Mexico, spread over three years. The locations are the least interesting thing about any of them.

All images shot with Leica SL3, M11-P or Fujifilm X-T4.

When I’m out on the streets of New York, my process has become less about the location and more about the framing and how it tells a story. Specifically whether it shows any emotion.

I need to be careful how I say the next part, because the thing I’m about to describe not caring about is exactly what a lot of photographers love, and they’re not wrong to love it.

I’m not interested in the fact that New York is a touristy city. I’m not that interested in the people going about their commutes, day to day. The hustle and bustle.

What I like is how architecture integrates with light and shade. And people, yes. But people in the context of solitude, or taking time for themselves.

That’s a harder thing to find in a city than it would be out in rural areas.

Which is the challenge. And the challenge is what drives me when I’m shooting on the street in New York, or in any city.

When I’m somewhere that isn’t a city, all that training and experience of framing things a certain way comes with me. It turns out none of it was ever about the city. It’s about how to create emotion. How to frame a story that makes somebody think, what’s going on here? Or, this person I’m looking at, what’s going through their mind?

One of the photographs I’m sharing this week comes from a walk I did in Howth, in Dublin.

I wrote about that walk before, in a piece about how long it took me to recognize my own home, or to feel anything much about it. Go and read that one if you haven’t.

I was walking on Howth Head, out towards the lighthouse, and I came upon a girl kneeling on the ground, staring out into the ocean from the cliff edge. It was a very somber moment. “Somber” isn’t the right word, though. “Somber” is a sad word. She was pensive, maybe. Lost in thought.

I took a photograph from either side of her.

Of the two above, I adore the color photograph, because it captures exactly what I want to feel in those moments.

That’s me, most of the time I’m out with a camera. In my own head, lost in a world of thought, headphones on and blocking out noise.

I do exactly the same thing in the bustling city, the one that’s filled with people. I don’t care about the sounds. Getting lost in my own world helps me get into a state of flow.

When I’m walking with the camera, I’m in another world, thinking about what I’m seeing, or about what I’m feeling. And when I see somebody who is visually showing me the feeling that I’m feeling, I need to capture it.

Phil Penman, the great street photographer, once told me about the things he looks for when he’s out on the street. New York, primarily. That’s what he’s most famous for, although he photographs other cities amazingly well.

He said he likes to photograph in a way that shows you something unique, but there’ll be a reference point in it. One of the examples, if I’m remembering it right, was Darth Vader walking down a street in Rome. A basilica in the background. Another was a unique person in a unique situation in New York, with the Empire State Building blurred out in the background. You don’t need those buildings to tell you where you are. They’re so recognizable that you already know.

I’m almost the opposite in that regard.

That one is Times Square. The most photographed few hundred metres in the world, and there isn’t a single thing in the picture to tell you.

And that’s a train station in Miami.

I love to take photographs of recognizable things, of course I do. The one at the top of this post is the Summit, with the Chrysler Building sitting right there behind her, and you know exactly where you are before you’ve thought about it. I think (hope) Phil Penman would like that one.

But I almost prefer the other feeling. The question of it.

What am I looking at?

I think that’s what art is. Because if you don’t automatically know what you’re looking at, maybe your mind starts pointing you in the direction of the things you want to see in it. Or want to feel in it. Or don’t want to feel, but do feel, and do see.

I’m curious whether you work the other way round. Do you go somewhere because of what it is, or do you go and wait to see what turns up in it?

Until next week,

Paul

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Every photograph I am posting this week is one I took before I left New York.

The Staten Island Ferry. Bethesda Terrace. Snow in Midtown. Somebody on the subway. All of them unmistakably New York, all of them mine, none of them new.

I moved back to New York, and I had assumed that returning to a city you know would feel like picking something up where you put it down. It doesn’t. You don’t move back to a city as a photographer. You meet your own back catalogue. And that’s not a comfort. It’s a bar.

My wife and I run a nomadic gallery, ankydyn, so I spend a lot of time around artists, and I have never met one who thinks their old work is safe. You like it on Monday. By Thursday you can list what’s wrong with it. You are only ever as good as the thing you just made, and everything before that gets reassessed in light of whatever you have learned since. There are photographs of mine I remember taking and thinking, I can’t believe I took that. It takes about six months for that to turn into: what was I thinking when I took that!

So the pictures I made here before I left don’t reassure me. They set a standard on days I may have been lucky, and now I have to clear it.

Then there is the year in between New Yorks. I spent most of it on beaches. Miami first, and then the coast around Dublin and in England when I went back. Sand, water, weather, people at the edge of the sea. Good work, I think, though see above.

And here is what I have been telling myself since: that a year of that has made me forget how to be a street photographer in a city.

Which is nonsense, and I know it is nonsense, because it’s the same method. Same walking, same waiting, same watching for the second when a scene arranges itself and then comes apart again. I didn’t lose the skill. I lost the context, and I have been treating one as though it were the other.

It’s worth saying how long I have been back. Not long. Barely any time at all. I also started a full-time job, which is a perfectly good excuse I would like to use and can’t, because the fear did not wait for a reasonable interval before turning up. It was here more or less since the day I picked up a camera.

A month ago I had one day in Nice at the end of a work week and nearly spent it in a cafe answering email. I wrote about that last week. I went out instead, walked the old town, and at some point stopped hunting and started seeing, and could not work out why anyone would spend a day any other way.

I thought that had settled something.

It settled nothing. The same feeling was waiting for me here, in the city I know best, in front of the work I already made.

So these photographs aren’t a portfolio this week. They’re evidence. Proof that I lived here before, walked these streets before, made things I was pleased with before.

Which turns out to be no reassurance whatsoever.

Going out with the camera anyway is the only way to push past that.

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You can treat me to a coffee or buy my prints.

Thank you for reading. Until next time.

^{All images shot with Leica SL3 or Q3.}

The most useful thing anyone handed out at Cannes Lions this year were fans. Motorized beauties that blow misty water. Stunning decision making.

It was 43°C (almost 110°F) two days running and mid-to-late thirties for most of the rest, with humidity off the charts. I don’t think I was properly dry for a week. The festival itself was good: good meetings, good panels, good conversations. But air conditioning was the scarcest resource in the south of France, and effective fans were a premium.

I had one day to recover before a weekend in Dublin. I thought about spending Monte Carlo. I’m an F1 fan, but with no race on it was just choosing one posh, expensive town over another, and I’d already had a year of yachts and expensive price tags living in Miami. My flight home was out of Nice. So I gave the day to Nice, and to looking for something with a bit of culture in it.

Vieux Nice (Old Town) delivered. Narrow streets in every shade of yellow and orange. Cafés spilling onto the pavement. Washing strung between buildings. Markets you have to walk through sideways. With shade. Which after a week of B2B conversations in that heat was the actual point.

I walked the old town and then out to the beach, which I did not know until I got there is stony. Think Brighton Beach (UK), plus twenty degrees, plus a great many more people. Which got me thinking about beaches. Live in California or Florida and the good weather is reliable enough that the beach becomes the fabric of daily life, somewhere between the gym and the supermarket. Grow up in Ireland and England and it is the opposite. A hot sunny day is an event, and when it turns up, everyone flocks. Nice was also the flocking kind. Stony, packed, parasol after parasol in lines, the water green and blue and yellow and clear at the edges, people in and out of it all afternoon. In terms of crowds Coney Island gets like that. Not much else I have seen in the States does.

Then I flew to Dublin, which was reliably wet, and that was exactly what I needed too.

Here is the part I did and didn’t plan for.

I recently went back into an industry I had left and told myself I would never return to. Full-time, proper hours. My real worry about going back was that I would put the camera down. I had a story ready for that. Work would open up travel, and travel would mean shooting. Then I travelled a lot in the first five weeks and shot almost none of it.

On the morning I went to Nice, knackered from the week, I nearly stayed in a café to read and answer email instead. I am very glad I didn’t. Somewhere in the old town I got the thing street photographers talk about. You stop hunting for photographs and just lock in. Into seeing, and you start wondering why you would ever spend a day any other way.

We have just moved back to New York and we are subletting, so nothing feels settled, and I have noticed how the habits are creeping in. “Once we’re settled, I’ll shoot more.” There is nothing actually stopping me except the story I keep telling myself. Vieux Nice made that plain. The job and the camera do not have to be one or the other.

One more thing, while I’m here. I haven’t published anything on this Substack in six months. After Art Basel in December I was socially wrung out, so I parked the writing and just took photographs for a few months. This is me starting again.

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The biggest week of the year in Miami. By a long shot. Art Basel at the conference centre isn’t just Art Basel at the conference centre. It’s two more large shows on the beach, several around the beach side, more on the city side, and countless pop-ups in galleries, hotels, coffee shops, and street corners. And I dread the idea of it.

This is my one and only year in Miami. Summer was incredibly quiet. Too hot for people to come here. I’m averse to crowds, so that was fine. I’m also averse to extreme heat. I got out some mornings, but by 10am the sun and humidity were a potent force. Daily lightning saved my sanity. And it never got boring.

October arrived, and the temperature started to mercifully taper off. Still very hot, but now there was an “oooh, that breeze feels nice.” The coffee shop was busier. Traffic building. Landscapers out in their droves. “THE SNOWBIRDS ARE COMING,” the South Floridian Paul Revere cried. For my non-American friends, that’s people from colder climates who have decided never to experience a cold winter again. Down from the North they come, and Miami comes back to life. And the unofficial welcoming party – Miami Art Week (MAW).

This was to be our first experience of MAW. Art Basel Miami, of duct-tape banana fame, is the poster child of the week. Around it, Untitled and Scope held their places on the beach, with Aqua and Satellite between them. On the city side, Art Miami’s Context, Red Dot, Feria Clandestina, Nada, and on and on. No shortage of shows to see, art to buy, and afterparties to attend.

“Take my advice…” a local gallerist told me two weeks before the event, “…plan your days on either side of Miami. You can’t do the city and the beach in the same day. You could easily sit in traffic for 2–3 hours just getting from one side to the next.”

It’s not cheap to get around either. Basel priced from $88 for general entry to over $3,000 for VIP tickets. The venues are built, the booths are built, and the people come. As an attendee of similar shows, I usually feel worn out after just one major show. That’s just my feet. In Miami, your wallet gets worn out buying the privilege to wear out your feet.

As it turned out though, none of that would bother me. I wouldn’t be troubled by long traffic jams. No exhibit floor fatigue. My wallet safe from buying KAWS and Lichtenstein replicas (originals I could NEVER afford). And crowds? Not my problem. Our first experience of MAW wasn’t as visitors; it was as gallerists at the Satellite Art Show. applause, applause “Thank you, thank you, too kind”.

Cue a dread level I didn’t even know was possible. For reference:

Level 1: Attending a crowded event.
“They’re dressed well. I should have worn something else. I feel fat. Ohh that’s amazing! How much?? There are way too many people in here. I’ll just wait outside.”

Level 2: My work in a group show.
“People will show up. It’s the gallery’s responsibility, right? My friends are coming? That’s renting a crowd. Oh, everyone’s work is better than mine. That guy talked to me about my work, but he’s just being polite. It feels kinda good though. No, no, it doesn’t. I’ll wait outside.”

Level 3: Solo Show.
“I don’t want to go.”

Level 4: Any of the above, but with a requirement to present something.

Defcon 5: Gallerist showing other artists’ work.
“OH MY GOD, what if people don’t come? What if they come and leave IMMEDIATELY? Or they don’t buy anything? The artists are going to be here?? I hope we sell their work. It’s a big effort for them to be here. I feel sick. Is it too late to back out? What if I pass out? This parachute is just a backpack with bricks!!!”

And so on.

Brief pause for context. We created a nomadic gallery called ankydyn gallery (lowercase on purpose) on October 1st this year (2025…just in case the algorithm serves this to you in the future). It’s part of a longer-term plan to support artists whose work we love. We fast-tracked the launch because being in Miami and part of MAW seemed too good to pass up.

We applied and were selected for the Satellite Art Show at the Geneva Hotel, Miami Beach. A five-star rated, Qatari-owned boutique hotel with a bar/nightclub and guest DJ J-Lo at the front. Lolz no. It was a hellhole. The first install day involved shifting furniture out of the room that was meant to be gone before we arrived. The walls were yellow. Not a sunny yellow. A “tar from 50 years of chain smoking” yellow. Not optimal for showing art. And we were at the end of a hallway. Great, I thought, for keeping a safe distance from bone-crushing dubstep, coke heads, and tech bro rage I’d feared. As it turns out, Brian and Brittany, the head honchos of Satellite, had great taste in music. Sadly, being at the end of the hall was more hindrance than sanctuary.

Here’s the real truth. I loved it. We overcame the room’s challenges. The artists’ work (12 painters, sculptors, fabric artists, 4 filmmakers, and 29 photographers) was varied, hugely talented, and worthy of space at the big shows. The artists who were present helped install, sell, engage with visitors, and turned the show from stressful into fun. We were incredibly lucky to secure a sponsor, Ilegal Mezcal, and that absolutely helped. Moe from Ilegal was onsite serving visitors and adding to the room’s welcoming vibe. We turned what should have been a condemned hotel room into a lived-in space. Lamps were art. The closet, the iron, the cups, the wine bottles, the bathroom mirror. No area left untouched, yet the room still felt breathable. Room to move. We even held movie nights hosted by M&MDB Films, screening a film made specifically for our show, complete with popcorn runs. That smell brought people in too.

And news alert: Visitors were great. Friendly, interested in the art and the artists. We had some great conversations and made meaningful connections.

I dreaded the experience. Representing other artists was new to me. I desperately wanted to do the best job we could. Some artworks sold, others didn’t. That’s how it is. My feet hated me each day, but visitors were likely overstimulated, exhausted, and sore-footed too. It helped to remember that and not take every non-sale as a personal failure.

I’m proud of what we did. With ankydyn gallery, we jumped into the deep end and learned so much. I’d do MAW again. I’d even do it in a hotel. With many, many caveats. White walls being one. And next time, I won’t freak out ahead of it by inventing disaster scenarios in my head.

Right?

With immense thanks to all 45 artists involved for putting trust in ankydyn gallery to represent your work at MAW.

Here’s a few more photos from our room. Thanks for reading.

Paul

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“It’s just a border. Why can’t I figure it out.”

I’m printing photos. Not just any photos, but the work of 29 photographers. This is not the same as printing my own work, which I’ve done for the last couple of years. I’ve often been so bored with the technical process that I’ve resorted to “that’ll do.” Now, “that’ll do” won’t cut it.

Let me take you back a little, to add some colour to where things are now. I am coming up on my third anniversary of owning a camera. Before that, my last one was a Canon EOS something-or-other about fifteen years ago. I bought that camera because I was going to a Formula One race and wanted better photos than my Samsung Galaxy 4 could take. Spoiler. They weren’t better. Photographer, not the tools.

In the last three years, I’ve taken courses with ICP, gone on photo walks with photographers I admire, consumed a stupid number of photobooks, owned more cameras than is sensible, and taken well over 50,000 photos. 20,000 this year alone. Practice made me a better photographer. Not the gear. Not any talent. Just practice, and the inspiration I’ve found from people I’ve met along the way.

My wife and I created a gallery a couple of months ago. Ankydyn Gallery. It’s mostly online for now until we find a physical space. We have our first in-person show at Miami Art Week this December. A hotel room will be converted into a gallery to showcase the work of 16 multidisciplinary artists and 29 photographers. 45 artists in our first independent show. Which is a wild sentence to write.

For the photographers, I reached out to people who have meant a lot to me over the last few years. People who shared some of that journey. People who encouraged my work. People whose work showed me what a world without competition feels like. A world full of people who are simply driven by their passion. It has been humbling that almost everyone I asked said yes.

Now I’m standing over my printer, battling the technical quirks I had zero patience for in the past. The weight of expectation feels higher. None of these photographers will be in Miami to see their printed work in person. That matters to me. I want their experience to be as good as I can make it from afar. I’ve dreaded this moment for weeks. I bought backup ink. I have high quality paper, an excellent printer. The equivalent of buying all the gym gear. Now I have no more excuses not to go to the gym.

Between my mate ChatGPT and me, we worked through settings, test prints, and colour management. And yes, I figured out the border issues. And then I held a print from Hana Adams in my hands and had a strangely intimate feeling. The paper felt heavier than any I’d held before.

“I’m printing someone else’s work. I’m holding someone else’s work.”

And it is stunning.

I’ve printed so many of my own images. I often let the process overshadow the fact that I was printing for a show or a sale. Now I’m holding someone else’s work and, because I’ve forced myself to understand the technical side properly, I can finally see the image for what it is. Remarkable. And it will be in our show.

I needed this. I needed to step out of my own way. My insecurities about my own work have pushed me into “that’ll do” far too often. It’s a genuine honour to print these photographs. The printer has never produced a better result, and I’m proud that Ankydyn Gallery will represent them in December.

If you are in Miami, come by and see the work. And my printing skills.

Head over to ankydyn.com to see all artists (including the photographers) involved in Miami Art Week.

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I went. I saw. It conquered. My heart. And my SD card.

Wrote a bit about it which you can find here.

I made a questionable travel decision. But it was worth it.

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For many years I worked in sales. Most of us have. Selling a product, a service, our skills, or our personality. Life is full of transactions. Lots of opportunities for wins. Equal opportunities for rejection.

This week gave me three big moments. Huge moments. They arrived almost back to back, and for an instant I let myself feel wonderful. Then, in true Statler and Waldorf fashion, those two Muppets in the balcony who start with one opinion and swing to the opposite, that feeling turned into something else entirely.

Here are those three moments and their alternate reactions.

1. The Leica Mastershot

Leica Fotografie International selected one of my photos as a “Mastershot.” It is their second highest honour, behind “Picture of the Week.”
I was delighted.

Then I saw that someone I know personally had been awarded Picture of the Week. Of all the gin joints. Their photo is amazing, and they deserved the praise, which poured in through our WhatsApp group.

In the past, when anyone in the group had a photo selected, they would share the news and the congratulations would follow. I felt that sharing my achievement would pale in comparison. I said nothing. I shared a story on Instagram, and twenty-four hours later it was gone. I haven’t thought about it again until now.

2. The Der Greif Publication

Der Greif is an award-winning photography magazine distributed globally. Issue 18 launches this week at Paris Photo, the biggest photography fair in the world.

They have chosen one of my images for the issue. My first ever appearance in print. A huge milestone.

However, until I physically hold a copy, I don’t actually know which photo they picked. And somehow that uncertainty has soured the experience. I keep imagining it’s a photo I don’t like. Not the best representation of my work. Even though they chose it. That is some strange, twisted logic.

3. The Gallery Showcase

My wife and I launched a gallery, ankydyn gallery, and we have our first major show in person at Miami Art Week, just two blocks from Art Basel. Sixteen featured mixed-media artists. Twenty-nine photographers.

Last week we announced the photographers, and the feedback has been incredible.

But the excitement never really surfaced. I am so desperate for the photographers (and the other artists, but my affinity is the photographers) to have a good experience that my own joy is buried under anxiety and the weight of expectation.

It feels like inviting friends to a fancy restaurant. They insist on paying, but you still feel you have to cook, otherwise it won’t be good enough.

From my years in business development, not much has changed. You have your KPIs, professional and personal. You hit them, tick the box, and move straight to the next. Achievements are rarely celebrated because “enough” always moves just out of reach. Even when you know the thinking is irrational, you can’t help yourself.

Maybe the hustle mindset rewires us. “Enough” becomes the can we keep kicking down the road. The pursuit of happiness gets confused with the pursuit of more.

I am in my mid-forties now and no closer to understanding what “enough” means. What I do know is what I do not want. That feels like a start, but it does not define satisfaction either. Especially as I feel I’ve known what I don’t want for a few years now.

It isn’t validation, though I keep pretending it might be. I still tell myself that if I achieve x, I will feel y.

But these three things didn’t change how I feel. Writing this is my way of noticing that.

Validation feels like bowling a strike. You tell yourself you are not a good bowler (and I am definitely not), and that everyone bowls a strike eventually. But when you do, you don’t celebrate. You sit back down, pretending it is nothing, while everyone else seems to enjoy the game with effortless ease.

Being human is weird.

P.S. If any of this rings true, I’d love to know how you handle your own version of “good news.” Do you let it land, or do you find a way to dismantle it too?

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For 15 years, I lived in or around London. I had a car for most of that time. I spent weekends popping over to Marlow or Henley (20 mins drive), Hampton Court (30 mins drive), or, ooh, the John Lewis in High Wycombe (30 mins drive). Very, very occasionally would I travel farther than that. And if I did, it had to coordinate with long weekends, as longer vacation time was reserved for trips abroad.

And who hasn’t said, “I haven’t been to such-and-such a place in my own country,” because you assume it’ll always be there? “I’ll get to it at some point.”

Then I moved to the US. And with that move, I left undiscovered the coastlines of Wales, the moors of the Peak District, the castles of Scotland, the wild Atlantic coasts of Ireland, and what had been top of my “it will eventually happen” list, the Lake District in Northwest England.

For reasons that are far too laborious to mention, it made most sense to travel to the Lake District now. Now that I live in Miami, it took three flights to get me to Manchester, England. A mere 2 hours south of the Lake District.

Slight aside here. If I’d gone when I was living in England, it would’ve taken about 5 hours door-to-door. And if that’s not bad enough, I very frequently drove to Manchester to watch my favourite football team. At any stage, I could’ve just continued for another couple of hours and found myself by the lakes. But alas, no. Now, I flew from Miami to Atlanta, then to Dublin, and finally to Manchester, and then rented a car.

And it was glorious.

There are places you will visit that have undergone, or will undergo, periods of extreme modernisation. Cities creeping outwards are the clearest example. But aside from the influx of artisanal coffee shops and bakeries that were unlikely to be so heavy in numbers (and calories) when I could have visited previously, the place was exactly how I had envisaged it being 15-20 years ago.

The wifi and phone signal were sketchy. Which I loved. And, oh, the land, the buildings, the history. Perhaps I have lived in the US too long that I’ve forgotten…no, that’s negative…Perhaps I have lived in the US just long enough to appreciate the history of places that were once wallpaper to me. Or maybe it’s just age.

And with age, time, or mainly a desire to photograph sheep and birds interesting places, I have more than a travel bug. I have always traveled. I moved out of my home when I was 21, and until I travelled for work, I was still going back to Ireland 4-6 times a year and taking the odd city break in Europe or a weekend excursion to John Lewis in High Wycombe.

But travel always felt tied to something, not self-serving. Home was for duty, family, obligation; city breaks were box-ticking exercises; work trips were airports, hotels, and meeting rooms. Now I crave a car and my cameras on the passenger seat with the expectation that I will be pulling over, unplanned, to photograph sheep and birds something unique. To me, at least. And there are few greater feelings than the feeling of flow with a camera (or writing).

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But I started this story by calling it a questionable decision. Well, my plan is to move back to Europe next year. But for some reason, it made sense not to wait.

The great philosopher William Crystal once mused,

“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible”.

This was not quite like that, but the sentiment is similar. If you can, maybe don’t put off that trip or opportunity to explore something close just because “it’ll always be there”.

And as another wonderful poet, William Mack, once quipped,

“It’s a terrible, terrible mistake, chubbs, but you turned out to be the f**cking love of my life.”

That could be you and your Lake District!!

Here are a few more images.

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Wait behind the yellow line. Don’t give them a reason to be angry. Wait to be called. He gestures for me to move forward. I’m his first of the day.

I place my passport, boarding pass and green card on the counter.

“Remove your hat.”

I was just about to, but fine. He beat me to it. I remove my hat.

“Stand on the yellow mark. Look into the camera.”

I’m on the mark, but I readjust anyway. I look into the camera. I don’t blink, I don’t smile, I don’t breathe.

“Passport and boarding pass.”

They’re right there on the counter in front of him. It’s okay. It’s fine. I pick them up and hand them to him.

“Where do you live?”

“Miami.” No emotion. Just answer the question.

“Why were you here?”

You’re holding an Irish passport, I think. I’m trying hard not to say that. He’s looking at me suspiciously.

“I’m from here,” I say, my Irish accent underlining the point.

“That’s not what I asked. Why were you here?”

The anxiety rises. The snappy response builds. He’s staring at me now. It feels less a light questioning and more an interrogation. He knows the answers he wants. He’ll judge anything outside of that.

“I was visiting my mother.”

“How long were you here?”

“About a week. Two.”

Damn, I know I messed up there. They don’t like hesitation.

“Which is it?”

“Two. Two weeks”

“Did you go anywhere else?”

“I went to England for a week.”

“What for?”

I think of the car, the winding roads, the changing leaves, the lakes.

“Because of the beautiful countryside.”

He doesn’t like that. And his face tells me that I’m being difficult now.

“Do you know anyone in England?”

“I know lots of people in England.”

He really doesn’t like that. I know what he meant but I couldn’t stop myself.

“Did you meet anyone in England?”

What are we even doing now? I met a load of people. B&B hosts. Friends. Other residents. I went to a football match, spoke to another Irish guy for two hours among seventy thousand people. I chatted to a father and kid about the game afterward.

“No.”

He sighs, gives me the look, then slams my passport, green card, and boarding pass on the counter.

“Okay.”

That’s it. That was the exit from my childhood home. A visit to celebrate my mother’s eightieth birthday. Time with family. More conversations about the welfare of an aging world and increasing responsibility.

And that was also the welcome to my current home. The place I worked hard to earn the right to live.

I’m not alone in this experience. In the grand scheme of things, it’s nothing more than the words, actions, and reactions of a person in a role that seems to grant a right, or at least a habit, of power.

I’ve gone through this process countless times in the ten years since moving to the United States, and it says something that I can recall the moments when people have been kind. That’s how unusual it is.

And I know that even with this discomfort, I’m still moving through the world with every advantage. I speak the language. I’m white. I carry the right passport. If this is how it feels for me, I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone without those shields.

I’ll forget his face soon enough. But not the feeling. The unfortunate aide effects of a learned reflex that comes before every border. The calculation of tone and movement.

A reminder that belonging is always conditional, even when the passport says otherwise.

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“I’ll probably move away for a year”.

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I was confident in that prediction. As a 21-year-old Dubliner, I couldn’t quite think of a future longer than a few months ahead, let alone more than a year. I was at a mini crossroads in my life at the time. I’d just broken up with a girlfriend, my first “real” job had made me and two-and-a-half thousand others redundant, and my parents had left the family home I grew up in and retired to the country.

I moved to Windsor in England. My brother was living there at the time, although he traveled frequently and for long spells with work. I spent large parts of that first year alone, settling into a new life, a new country, and a new friend group. By the time the first anniversary of my move had come around, my brother had announced that work was taking him to live in the US. On the surface, I felt as lost as when I arrived. I went back to Ireland.

I lasted three weeks.

I realized two things. It had taken me that year to feel settled in England. And three weeks were enough to know I never wanted to move back to Ireland.

Ireland changed fast after I left. In that first year alone, the Euro came in, the metric system replaced the old measures, new roads bypassed the towns I used to pass through, and immigration laws reshaped the country. With my parents gone from Dublin, it didn’t feel like home anymore.

That was 24 years ago. A quarter of a century.

Of course, so much has happened in that time for all of us. But something strange happened to me in June this year. On a trip to Dublin, where my mother is now living again, I took her car to Howth Head, a place I had visited countless times growing up, and walked a trail I had never been on before. Ever.

“So, what you’re telling me, Paul, is what changed for you is that you went home for a walk?”

Well, yes, kinda. I grew up going to this place in a car. Parking at an overlook with a view across Dublin Bay. Sitting there for a few minutes and leaving again. Whenever I went back and was playing tour guide, I just did the same thing. Never ventured on a walking trail. But on this trip, I craved the idea of walking alone with my camera. The scenery took on new life for me, but something that was, I thought, so familiar to me suddenly became new again. I fell in love. And I can’t say that I had ever been in love with Dublin before. I was like realizing the girl whose pigtails you keep pulling is actually the love of your life. You know it, but something needs to be revealed to make you see it for what it is.

Will I ever move back? Unlikely. Truth is, I am in love with other places too. Windsor will always hold a special place in my heart. London, New York. I’m so happy to be reacquainted with a love I never appreciated, and now I can.

That is also in no small part thanks to my love of photography, which has pushed me into things I wouldn’t have done.

Here are some shots from that day.

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I’ve written two pieces negative space in street photography. How what you bring into a frame can enhance what’s left. Links to both are below.

Negative Space, Positive Impact

Negative Space and Fancy Footwork

Thanks for reading. As always, would love to hear your thoughts.

Paul.

I bought a DSLR about 15 years ago. Everything in auto. No idea or desire to truly understand what it did. I just wanted to marvel at the resolution of the photos. I took it to Virginia Water Lake on the first day.* I didn’t know what I was doing, just walking around with an expensive point-and-shoot. But even then, I found myself drawn to images of, well…nothing. Blank space. I didn’t think about it then, and I don’t really think about it now. Even if the camera isn’t in auto, I am.

Last week I wrote about negative space. How what you leave out of a frame can be just as important as what you include. This week, I’m sticking with that theme, but with a bit of fancy footwork. Less about space itself, more about how you move your feet until the shot feels right.

The images all come from a public dance event in Battery Park, New York. I’ll also share some other images that give me the same vibe. (I always feel too old to be using words like vibe)

A caveat. I don’t tend to check the screen on the camera when I shoot. I shoot what feels right. Often, it isn’t right, but I move around, try different angles, experiment, and then check the results later. And that’s the main point here…move your feet. I’ll explain why below.

First up, a miss — but I’m finding my position.

At public events, you are often surrounded by multiple cameras all vying for the “best spot.” Sometimes the best spot is opposite of what is obvious.

Photographers, sometimes against their own will, are often pushed into a small section in front of the stage. But at events where there are no sections, you have more freedom to decide what suits your style.

In the above image, I’ve circled the elements that I’m personally not happy with as distractions. Crowd crossing with performers, photographers huddled together, limbs just out of shot, wiring on display, etc.

The main reason I moved to the side of the stage was because I wanted an interesting backdrop. In this case, the city. The other photographers in this image are facing a harbor. However, with the stage elevated and the water and boats below stage level, there would have been nothing that indicated where these performers were or why this performance was unique.

That works if you’re just there to shoot the performers. But as a street photographer, anything that can highlight the uniqueness of a scene can be the difference between a good photo and a great one.

Closer, but not quite.

Here I’m moving away from the crowd. I love shooting performances where you can see expressions on the crowd’s faces. Still, if the angle doesn’t allow for a clear separation between the performance and the viewers, I sacrifice something.

Here, I have a backdrop (albeit out of focus in this image), the Jenga building, so we know we’re in New York. I have some interesting performance angles, but still too much noise around the stage.

Giving up on the whole view.

For this one, I’m starting to use a barrier in front of me to cut out the underside of the stage. I have most of the components I think I need for a good shot. Performers, wires blocked, the NYC backdrop.

Yet when I look at this photo, I think: “Well, why not just crop the bottom part of the stage out?”

Where’s the fun in that!?

The one that did it for me.

As with my shots around the Jokoro in Tokyo, I feel that a search for emotion or some drama trumps everything.

The performer is positioned on the closest side of the stage to me. So I had to give up on the backdrop for this image. I wanted to block out the wiring under the stage, but including both the Jenga building and the wiring would have obscured the first part of the stage. So I opted to lose the building.

Small shifts like these can help when you find yourself in a similar situation. Moving around to find a unique shooting spot, finding ways to incorporate place as a subject, using the environment to draft in negative space, rather than thinking, shoot now, fix later.

I’m curious — how do you approach it? Do you walk and experiment, or do you prefer to settle in one spot and wait for the moment to come to you?

Until next week, happy shooting.
Paul

*FYI, I tried to locate those images, and guess what? I deleted them. A lesson for another day.

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A major grocery store brand currently features a tagline on its paper bags.

“It’s what’s not in the bag”.

It’s their way of saying that their products have no unnatural additives. It’s a clever way of saying that they are all about organic without actually saying it.

When I see this, I think of negative space in photographs. I could say,

“It’s what’s not in the photograph”.

Someone once said to me that Black and White photography covers a whole manner of sins. I don’t think I fully agree with that. I believe that to be the case with high-contrast adjustments or masking out something in the image that you want to cover up. However, naturally framing negative space into the shot can both cover the “sins” and provide subject focus, added drama, and enhanced composition.

The photo in this post was taken at Top of the Rock, the roof observation deck of New York’s Rockefeller Center. They have recently installed a couple of attractions to boost revenues, but also to compete with newer observation decks that offer more modern, visually appealing, Instagrammable features. One of these new attractions is inspired by one of the most famous black-and-white photos from New York’s golden Art Deco age. “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” depicts workers having a break sitting on an iron beam amid the construction of the Rockefeller Center. Now, you too can sit on a beam, complete with a seatbelt and minus lunch, and be lifted into the air, rotated, and lowered again.

This new attraction presents an opportunity for those who don’t just want the photos of the immense view of Manhattan’s skyline. The challenge, for me, is how to compose an image that conveys an element of drama, and that drama is not diminished by the crowds of onlookers, with phones and GoPros out, coffees in hand, and the obviously less than perilous safety measures of the Beam. To expect to have an image without the crowd is tough, UNLESS you cover them up with something else. In this case, a wall. What I am left with is a focus on the things I do want. And then I have to be patient to capture the right subject, the right expression, and to leave viewers with a question: “What is going on here?

Check back next week for a process post with more examples of how negative space conceals the clutter and pulls the eye where it belongs.

Cheers,

Paul

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I’ve written two pieces about the scenes from this amazing location in Tokyo. What it invoked for me but also my process as a street photographer when faced with it. Links to both are below.

Now, It's Smoke

Chasing Smoke at Tokyo’s Sensō-ji Temple

Thanks for reading. As always, would love to hear your thoughts.

Paul

As a street photographer, I’m a sucker for smoke. The faintest wisp drifting through the air, and I’m all over it. Most of those shots never work, but the addiction is real. Sadly, context still matters more than smoke itself.

At Sensō-ji, the source of this smoke is a large incense burner called a Jokoro. Visitors crowd around it for all kinds of reasons. Some believe the smoke cleanses body and spirit, others say it sharpens the mind or even heals injuries. For me, it’s a perfect excuse to think monochrome. In my head, black and white always feels right for smoke. The strands separate and pull the drama through.

Here are a few frames that explain why context is everything, even when the smoke is this good.

First up, a miss.

This might seem obvious. Lots of my own bug bears! Phones, backpacks, wandering arms, it’s all here. In general, a 35 mm lens is fine for a scene like this, but I couldn’t get far enough away from the Jokoro without picking up a mess of distractions. The solution for me is to get closer.

Closer, but not quite

I moved in to escape the clutter and ended up too close to capture the full pit. A wider lens would have helped, though the crowd would still have crept in. Even then, my angle cut heads in awkward ways, and the scene still felt busy in ways I didn’t like. Hands over faces, more phones. Still, the smoke is my subject; I just needed some better context.

Giving up on the full view

At this point, I stopped chasing the entire scene and started looking for gestures. That freed me to process in the black-and-white look I wanted. I shoot mostly monochrome, though the camera records color; later, I decide whether to keep what I saw in the camera or push it somewhere new.

Context & Subject

This, for me, has more drama. No faces needed. I have my smoke, and the hands are gesturing to a power within the Jokoro. Once I had the context and subject aligned, I was happy to move on, although I could have stayed there all day.

Below are one or two more images. I hope these small steps–starting wide, accepting misses, changing angles, narrowing attention–offer something you can use the next time you find yourself in a similar situation.

Questions, ideas, or requests for future process posts are always welcome.

Until then, happy shooting.

Paul