Having the camera with me again

Photography has been part of my life for a long time. It started during Art School and, over the years, became more than just a hobby. It gave me an excuse to explore places, meet people and look at things differently.

I have worked on personal projects, photographed live music and spent countless hours walking around cities with a camera. Some of those photographs ended up in exhibitions, while others became projects such as The Cobblestone and Dublin in Black and White. For a while, Six Photography was the place where I collected and shared that work.

Then, gradually, photography became less present in my life.

Not because I stopped enjoying it. In fact, I never really stopped taking photographs. The difference is that, like most people, I started using my phone more and more. The iPhone was always with me, it was convenient, and the results were often good enough. Looking back at my Instagram, it is probably a better record of the places I have been and the things I have seen in recent years than my camera archive.

At the same time, my Canon increasingly stayed at home.

My Canon 5D Mark III is a great camera, and for years I carried it around with a collection of lenses. But that also meant carrying a fairly substantial amount of equipment. Taking it with me became something I had to think about: Where am I going? What am I going to photograph? Do I really want to carry all this today? And I think that is where I lost something.

Photography shouldn't always require a plan.

Some of my favourite photographs were taken simply because I happened to have a camera with me. There was no project, no particular intention and sometimes not even a particularly interesting destination. Something caught my attention, I took a photograph and moved on.

The phone solved the problem of always having a camera with me, but it also changed the way I approached photography. I became more of an observer with a phone than a photographer carrying a dedicated camera. There is nothing wrong with that, but I realised I missed having the flexibility to take a photograph the way I wanted, something the phone couldn't always give me.

Recently, while looking back through my old archive and working on bringing Six Photography back online, I started thinking about why I wanted to photograph again.

It isn't really about becoming a professional photographer, or about producing technically better photographs. And it isn't about having the latest camera or the perfect collection of lenses.

I simply miss being able to take the photographs I want.

I miss walking around with a camera and paying more attention to what is happening around me. I miss going somewhere without necessarily knowing what I am looking for. I miss coming home with photographs that I didn't plan to take.

That is also why I am changing my camera system. I want something that is small enough and light enough that I will actually want to take it with me. Something that can become part of everyday life rather than something I only take out when I have decided in advance that I am going to photograph.

Looking back through my old work has also reminded me that photography doesn't need to be perfect to be worthwhile. Some photographs I still like, some I probably wouldn't take today, and others are technically far from perfect. But they all represent something: a place I visited, a person I met, an event I experienced or simply a moment that caught my attention.

So this is, in many ways, a return to photography. Just making more space for something I have enjoyed for most of my life.

This website and blog are coming back as part of that process. There are old projects I want to revisit, photographs buried in archives, places I want to return to and new ones I want to explore.

And hopefully, a camera that comes with me a little more often.