In Photos dot Org

  • Above the Clouds, Below the Dawn

    Window seats earn their keep on flights like this one. We were somewhere north of Lisbon, climbing north towards Ireland, when the sun decided to put on a show off the right-hand side of the aircraft.

    The horizon went from a deep, almost bruised red, up through that signature aviation orange, and finally settled into a clean morning blue at the top of the frame. That single wispy cloud hanging across the middle felt almost too well placed — like it had been brushed in afterwards. Shooting through a scratched, double-glazed plastic window is never ideal, but every now and then the light is generous enough that the window stops mattering. This was one of those mornings.

    Worth the early alarm getting up early for a flight to Stansted and then on to Cork.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length141mm
    ISO160
    Shutter speed1/160s

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  • The Diego Effect at Bantry Market

    You can tell a dog has just walked past by the geometry of the smiles. Two heads turning at the same angle, the kid in the patterned fleece still oblivious, a smoothie stall behind them advertising Mango Mix and Berry Bliss like it’s any other Friday.

    Diego is a small chihuahua and entirely unaware that he’s a one-dog charm offensive. He just trots along beside me at Bantry market and the world rearranges itself around him. I didn’t pose this. I didn’t even ask. I was a step behind with the camera, saw the moment unfold, and got it before either lad turned back to whatever they were chatting about.


    Apertureƒ/4
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/800s

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  • Pop Art and Pocket Screens

    Daniel Buren’s wall at Tottenham Court Road does most of the work for you. It’s fifty feet of saturated circles and diamonds, all bouncing off those merciless black-and-white stripes.

    I just had to wait. Two strangers soon obliged: he slumped against a blue diamond mid-text, and she tucked into a green circle taking what looked like a fairly stoic phone call. Neither registered the technicolour cathedral behind them, which is the bit I love. London’s at its best when an artwork worth millions becomes the wallpaper for a moan about being late. Exit 4, Charing Cross Road, way out though you could argue the people in the frame had already mentally left.


    Apertureƒ/6.3
    CameraILCE-7M3
    Focal length16mm
    ISO4000
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • Flamenco Frills on a Valencian Pavement

    Valencia in late October had just been rinsed by a quick shower, and the pavement was still glossy when this little party walked past me.

    The two women had gone all-in on the traje de flamenca. The ruffles stacked like waves, fresh blooms pinned into their hair, and a peach-coloured shawl folded neatly over one arm. The gentlemen kept it simpler: black suits, red ties, and what look like cofradía medallions hanging from green ribbons.


    Apertureƒ/4
    CameraILCE-7M3
    Focal length35mm
    ISO12800
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • A Quiet Evening in Kinsale

    Even on a calm evening when I took this photo, a moored boat moves about if given enough time. This long exposure shows the slight movements that show the water isn’t quite as still.

    There’s no wind to speak of, the surface looks like polished slate, and yet the boat is nodding away to itself, tethered to that bright red buoy like a child trying to stand still for a school photo.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed4s

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  • Eye of the Bison

    I didn’t know there were bison at Fota Wildlife Park, but near the end of my walk there with Henry we stopped at a field containing these large beasts!

    I wonder if they were overheating in their winter coats in the warm April sunshine, but I suspect the cold wind that blew through at intervals cooled them down.

    TIL that every European bison alive today descends from just twelve individuals. The species was hunted to extinction in the wild by the 1920s. The last truly wild one was shot in the Caucasus in 1927, and the entire global population was painstakingly rebuilt from a handful of captive animals across European zoos. Only 50-60 survived at one time in zoos across the continent. There are now several thousand, mostly in Poland’s Białowieża Forest, with smaller groups in places like Fota helping spread the genetic load.


    Apertureƒ/6.3
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length600mm
    ISO160
    Shutter speed1/800s

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  • Hen-do detour through Gerrard Street

    I caught these two coming out of the crush on Gerrard Street, London, last summer.

    The blonde in the GANNI tee looks like she’s mid-anecdote; her friend, in a white off-shoulder dress with a tiny veil pinned over a leopard headband, has the slightly stunned grin of someone three hours into a hen weekend and starting to enjoy it.

    London Chinatown is a brilliant place to wander in a bridal veil. The pavement is so packed nobody quite registers it, and you can stand under a lantern eating something fried with an L-plate fluttering off your bag, and it just sort of fits. I barely noticed them before they were gone again into the crowd, swept away on a ladies weekend in the city.


    Apertureƒ/5
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length59mm
    ISO2000
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • First Light at Cappagh

    Cappagh Beach in Kerry before dawn, with wet sand reflecting a moody twilight sky, dark rocks in the middle distance, a faint sun glow behind heavy cloud, and a pink contrail streaking diagonally overhead.

    Cappagh Beach at half-six in the morning is colder than I’d planned for. We’d driven down to Kerry the night before and I was up in the dark, heading out the door and shared the journey from Dingle with Freddie at the wheel. I forgot my wellies, but while I cursed my lack of preparation, I didn’t miss them at all once I got there.

    Then I got down onto the sand and the sky decided to put on a show. A single pink contrail (or maybe a ribbon of high cloud, I genuinely couldn’t tell) drew a perfect diagonal across the blue. The tide had pulled back and left the sand glassy, so the whole scene came doubled, sky and reflection arguing politely about which was the real one. I set up the tripod, and the 2-second timer on my camera, and stood there for six seconds at a time while the rocks held still and the clouds didn’t.

    The sun never properly broke through, you can just see its glow trying behind the heaviest bank of cloud, but honestly, this kind of muted blue hour is what I came for. I had my doubts over how good the light would be that morning, but I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t one of those sunsets you’d imagine were accompanied by dramatic orchestral music. It tiptoed into the day. The quiet ones are the ones I keep coming back to.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed6s

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  • Brooms and a Brolly

    A London street sweeper, fully kitted out in orange hi-vis, has parked his cart, bristling with upright brooms like some sort of municipal hedgehog, outside the Brompton Oratory and is holding a big black umbrella over himself for shade. It was roasting that day.

    Umbrellas aren’t just for the rain. They are very useful portable shade!


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7M3
    Focal length16mm
    ISO250
    Shutter speed1/500s

  • The Quiet One on the Bench

    A man on a bench at Coventry station, fully absorbed in his newspaper while everyone else strides past with suitcases and rucksacks, making for the platform. He’s wearing a shirt, shorts, and a shoulder bag
    whose strap cuts across his chest. A huge Paul Hollywood stares down from an advert for the “only baking book you’ll ever need”, entirely ignored. The “Gentlemen” sign on the right, the “COVENTRY” lettering on the brickwork, the queue of travellers walking past and it all frames up nicely around him without him noticing at all. Which is the whole point, really.


    Apertureƒ/1.8
    CameraSM-G998B
    Focal length6.7mm
    ISO64
    Shutter speed1/100s

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  • When a Building Came Down

    A silver Peugeot 206 with Irish registration "00-SO-599" crushed flat from above, its roof caved in and a large lorry tyre resting on the wreckage, parked on a pavement in front of a blue-fronted shop displaying mannequins in dresses with an "OPEN" sign on the door and a toppled red-and-white "INFO" sign lying beside it.

    Castle Street in Cork with a black-and-white "CASTLE STREET" street sign on the wall, showing the "irish cancer society" shopfront, "Satellite Dry Cleaners", a "Suits & Leather Jackets From €49.95" sign further down, the crushed silver Peugeot with a tyre on its roof on the pavement, a man in a white hard hat and dark jacket walking towards the camera, rubble across the road, and a second tyre in the foreground.

    August 2009, Castle Street in Cork. A building that had been under renovation gave up and came down, taking a chunk of the terrace with it and flattening a silver Peugeot 206 that had the misfortune of
    being parked on the pavement. The roof is caved in like a tin can someone stood on, with a lorry tyre perched on top for good measure.

    The wider shots tell the rest of the story: a clean gap in the row of shops, the neighbour’s render suddenly exposed to the weather, rubble spilling into the street, workers on a Manitou telehandler assessing the damage while the rest of Castle Street, Satellite Dry Cleaners, the Irish Cancer Society charity shop and everyone else carried on as best it could. Miraculously, nobody was hurt. The Peugeot was less lucky.


    Apertureƒ/9
    CameraCanon EOS 40D
    Focal length18mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/200s

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  • Elvis the Taxi Driver

    A man in a dark blazer and blue checked shirt gesturing mid-stride on a cobbled pedestrian crossing on St Patrick's Street in Cork, with Penneys behind him, a purple banner reading "Rembrandt" on a lamppost, a parked blue Ford Focus, pedestrians on the pavement, and a sheep-patterned shopping bag held by a seated figure in the bottom-left corner.

    Derry “Elvis” Coughlan is a local taxi driver in Cork. Here he was on St. Patrick’s Street in 2021. He was walking towards an older man with bags of shopping who would probably need a lift home.

    I don’t think I’ve seen Derry around since then. Not someone who appears to have an online presence either.


    Apertureƒ/4
    CameraILCE-7M3
    Focal length16mm
    ISO800
    Shutter speed1/500s

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