The boardwalk pulled me straight in. Those weathered planks running across the dark volcanic sand towards a sea gone smooth from a long exposure, like the Atlantic had decided to hold its breath for me. Playa de Ajabo at dusk is a different beast to the postcard Tenerife of packed loungers and factor-50. This was…

A wall of glass tilt over your head and you start to feel very small, very corporate and very much in need of a strong coffee. This is the WeWork office in London. Look closely and there’s one warm pendant lamp glowing in a window, a tiny pocket of cosiness in a tower of cold…

The man in the red jacket became my anchor the moment I set up. Henry Street on a sunny day is a river of people. Shoppers, buskers’ audiences, lads cutting across to Gino’s for a cone, and a slow shutter turns all of that into smears of colour and ghostly half-people mid-stride. But he just…

A heron perched on a boat in Kinsale harbour last year. Patient and watching.

Early morning in Spitalfields, near the market and I spotted a man enjoying a moment by himself in the nearby green area.

Pull the river back a few metres and London grows a beach. I caught this stretch of Thames foreshore at low tide, the water was a proper builder’s-tea brown, the City stacked up behind like someone had emptied a box of glass towers. I love springer spaniels, so I had to photograph this.

A surfer, fresh out of the water, with her body board while a couple nearby walk and photograph the beach. What you might notice from the waves and the way the dress of the woman on the far left is whipped about is the wind. No wonder surfers love this part of the world! This…

A quarter of a second is all it takes to turn a busy footpath into a river of ghosts. I planted myself on Henry Street, dropped the shutter speed right down, and let the lunchtime crowd smear themselves across the frame while the New Yorker models behind them stayed pin-sharp and perfectly bored. It’s the…

I was waiting on Henry Street and spotted the deep shadows cast by the buildings, so it occurred to me that silhouettes would become a good subject for a photo. Luckily, a Deliveroo cyclist came along then and I captured him motionless as he rode past.

I was surprised to see a news stand on O’Connell Street. It was just outside Eason’s too, where they sell newspapers and magazines as well. What caught my eye first was the news stand, but then the man extending his arm with his phone to pay for his purchase. A new form of payment for…

A single weather-beaten log, marooned on the foreshore. It was nudged back and forth by the waves coming in and out but in the moment this photo was taken, the sky was reflected in wet sand and the log was beached. Safe from the incoming waters.

This is a small section of O’Sullivan’s Cascade in Kerry. The lovely sound of the water falling through the rocks is soothing. The picturesque scene in front of me does the opposite as I worry about composition and, “Did I get a good photo of that?”