In Photos dot Org

  • The Invisible Shift

    A street cleaner with a bin bag in one hand, framed between a STOP sign and a no-right-turn sign. You couldn’t stage it better. I shot this from Drawbridge Street, watching the lunchtime crowd flow past him like water around a rock. What struck me was the contrast: dozens of people mid-stride, shopping or wandering around, and this one figure doing the quiet work that keeps the city ticking over.

    His orange hi-vis jacket is the loudest thing in the frame, but he’s mostly unnoticed by everyone. The young lad in the camo jacket is walking towards me, a woman in a black top is mid-step, and behind the railings there’s a whole parade of shoppers who have no idea they’re in a photograph. I like that the two road signs bookend him: STOP on one side, no-right-turn on the other as if the street itself is giving him contradictory instructions. It’s one of those shots where the composition just fell into place, and all I had to do was not fumble the shutter.


    Apertureƒ/4
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length50mm
    ISO160
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • Golden Hour at The Roundy

    Late afternoon sun hit Castle Street at just the right angle and turned the whole scene outside The Roundy into something cinematic. The outside area of the pub was packed with people drinking and enjoying the afternoon and soaking up the kind of Cork sunshine you never quite trust to last.

    The lens flare flooding in from the right was almost too much, but I leaned into it rather than fighting it. Sometimes the technically “wrong” choice is the one that captures the actual feel of a moment and this one felt like the first real evening of spring.

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    Apertureƒ/1.7
    CameraGalaxy S23 Ultra
    Focal length6.3mm
    ISO40
    Shutter speed1/350s

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  • Teenage Kicks Through a Tiny Screen

    A hand went up three rows ahead of me and suddenly I had my shot. The Undertones were tearing through their set at Cyprus Avenue in Cork, the stage lights throwing fat circles of purple and magenta across the room, and this person decided twenty seconds of shaky phone footage was worth the effort. It gave me the frame-within-a-frame I’d been waiting for!

    Everything around it dissolves into these massive, dreamy bokeh orbs that make the whole scene feel slightly unreal. I shot it wide open and let the background go completely, trusting that the phone screen would anchor the image. It’s one of those concert moments that sums up how we experience live music now. We’re half watching, half recording, the real thing and the digital copy sitting right next to each other.


    Apertureƒ/1.8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length75mm
    ISO1000
    Shutter speed1/80s

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  • St. Finbarr’s Oratory at Dawn

    Nine exposures, three positions, and a lake disturbed by a biting wind. That’s what it took to stitch this panorama together at Gougane Barra just after dawn. The sky refused to cooperate with anything dramatic, so I leaned on the scene itself: the oratory sitting quietly on its spit of land, the water holding just enough calm to throw back something of a reflection, and those bare winter trees looking atmospheric without trying. Did I say it was cold? My fingers were feeling it.

    I’d have traded my tripod for a bank of broken cloud, but you work with what the morning gives you. The HDR merge kept detail in the shadowed chapel walls without blowing the sunrise glow, and the reeds breaking through the water surface add a bit of texture to what would otherwise be a fairly smooth lower half. It’s not the Gougane Barra postcard shot. That needs mist, or rain, or both, but there’s a stillness here that I quite like.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/13s

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  • Dawn Sentinel at Gougane Barra

    A bunch of us arrived in Gougane Barra this morning to photograph the sunrise, only to be met with driving rain and mist and fog on the hills. A biting wind tore through clothes making for a missed opportunity for all of us.

    Luckily, within a few minutes of arriving, a glow could be seen on the horizon, and the rain started to thin out. In another 10 minutes the sky was almost completely clear, as if nothing had happened!

    Ironically, I would have liked some high cloud for the sun to bounce off before it rose, but it wasn’t to be so I decided on a silhouette of the tree near the oratory instead. That would fill in the sky nicely.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length32mm
    ISO320
    Shutter speed1/250s

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  • Watching the World Go By in Málaga

    A narrow side street off the tourist drag in Málaga. A man waiting, watching nothing in particular on a cool January afternoon.

    I got one frame off on the phone as I passed. No time to compose properly, no time to think about the empty chairs cluttering the left side of the shot. Just tap the volume button on my phone and keep walking.


    Apertureƒ/1.9
    CameraM2101K6G
    Focal length5.89mm
    ISO147
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • K67: A Relic of Slovenian Design in London

    It’s impossible to miss this kiosk. A bright yellow box parked outside Spitalfields Market, looking like it had been teleported in from a 1960s sci-fi film set. This is a K67 kiosk. It’s a modular street unit designed by Slovenian architect Saša Mächtig in 1966 and one of the most successful pieces of street furniture ever produced. Thousands of these were manufactured and scattered across Yugoslavia as newspaper stands, ticket booths, and telephone kiosks. Now one sits here on Brushfield Street, stuffed with art books and posters, quietly holding its own against the glass and steel of modern London.

    What caught my eye was the reflection in the window beside it. The kiosk is doubled, ghosted against the Victorian brickwork behind the glass. Three eras layered in one frame: nineteenth-century London, Cold War-era Slovenian industrial design, and the sleek commercial architecture of today. The little yellow box wins.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO400
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • Iron Bones

    I nearly walked straight past it. You’re on the South Bank, dodging cyclists, and there’s this railway bridge overhead that most people treat as a ceiling to hurry under. But look up and the underside of Blackfriars Railway Bridge is a riot of riveted iron girders fanning out like the ribs of some enormous mechanical whale. I switched to black and white because the colour version was fighting the composition; stripping it back let the geometry do the talking.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/20s

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  • Two in the Market

    I caught this one from barely a metre away. It was close enough to count the grey in his beard, close enough that the glass roof of Spitalfields Market softened into geometry behind them.

    It was early in the morning and the market was still being set up. I wonder if they were tourists in the area just like me.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO250
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • Steel and Storm Over Bishopsgate

    We’d come out of the train station at Liverpool Street earlier in the morning but when I walked past here, I stopped dead on Bishopsgate, tilted the camera straight up, and watched three towers race each other into a sky that looked like it was about to pick a fight. The central building’s white steel exoskeleton catches what little light the clouds allow through, while its darker neighbours absorb everything else. Glass, steel, and corporate ambition stacked floor after floor.

    The bright yellow Liverpool Street sign is almost the only colour in the scene. What does that say about office work in the modern world?

    TIL that the distinctive diagonal-braced tower at the centre of this shot is 100 Bishopsgate, which at 172 metres tall, is one of the City of London’s tallest buildings. Bet there’s a nice view from the top floor!


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/2000s

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  • Between the Columns on Threadneedle Street

    I’m not sure what was so engrossing on that phone but I suspect it was a review of images, especially outside the Bank of England in London and those enormous Portland stone columns. A perfect place for a dramatic photoshoot.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/2000s

  • Northern Lights Over North Cork

    You don’t expect to stand in a field north of Blarney and watch the northern lights, but here we are. Last night the aurora put on a show visible well into southern Ireland. Bands of pink and magenta hung across the sky, bleeding into that unmistakable green glow along the horizon. To the naked eye nothing could be seen, but the camera pulled out colours that made the whole scene look otherworldly.

    A passing car lit up the bare trees on the ridge at just the right moment, backlighting them with a warm glow that played off the green aurora behind. It was one of those happy accidents you couldn’t plan if you tried. Even the electricity poles added something, a reminder that this was a country road in Cork, not the Arctic Circle. These events have become more frequent as we near solar maximum, so keep an eye on the Kp index and have a dark-sky spot in mind, because the next one might be even better.


    Apertureƒ/2.8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO6400
    Shutter speed3.2s

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