I’m not a photographer. I’m just someone who can’t seem to put the camera down—and I’ve been like that, on and off, for more of my life than not. I’m a corporate guy, a family man, and I have precious little time between the demands of life.
So I go through life with camera in hand. I frame what I see, and I snap what I can.
I’ve rarely gone anywhere with the firm intention of doing photography. Work takes me places. Family takes me places. Life pulls me along—and when something interesting appears, I try to shoot it. Fleetingly, sometimes intentionally, but always as and when I can.
This series is “Why I Shot That / How I Shot That” — the stories behind a few of my favourite frames.
Who is this for? If you’re someone who loves photography but has to steal moments between meetings, on family walks, or in light that’s already fading—you’re my people. I’m not a professional. I’m not even that good. But I am one of you. I hope this helps spark something for your own work.
Delhi, India - 2017
Shot on: Sony A7R + Zeiss C Sonnar 1,5/50mm ZM
Delhi hits you all at once, the noise, the spice in the air, the beautiful, unapologetic chaos. In 2017, we were back in India for a friend’s wedding, exploring the northwestern cities of Jaipur and Udaipur, and carving out time to dive deep into Delhi before flying home.
That day, we’d arranged a street food tour with a local guide, a lovely, joyous man whose energy matched the streets: vibrant, eccentric, and rough around the edges.
I had as always a trio of single lens cameras: a Sony A7R with a manual-focus Zeiss C Sonnar 50mm, a Sony RX1 with its fixed 35mm Sonnar, and a Fujifilm X-E1 with the XF14mm wide-angle. This combination was eclectic enough that it caught our guide's attention - who happened to be an avid photographer himself - and zeroed in on them immediately. Conversation flowed, cameras were passed back and forth, and our food tour quietly doubled as a photography walk as we tasted our way across town.
This shot, like many, came mid-tour, unplanned, on a whim and by happenstance. The gentleman was sitting behind food carts, utterly at ease, time dissolving around him as he pulled on a crumbling hand-rolled cigarette exhaling long, dense, impossibly slow ribbons of smoke.
Our guide caught my stare with that mix of intrigue and reluctance and, smiling, approached the gentleman. A few words, a burst of laughter (I was almost certainly the punchline), and then I was gestured over.
The man was a dream subject. He flickered between total nonchalance as if I didn’t exist and sudden, intense glances straight into the lens, holding them through a slow, deliberate exhale of smoke. Vogue superstar one moment, invisible street ghost the next. He knew exactly what he was doing. I didn’t have a clue.
And yet, these of many are some of my favourites. Not because they’re technically perfect, interesting subject, but because they’re alive with the memory of how they came to be. That’s the real story I want to share. Not just the image, but everything that swirled around it in that fleeting, smoky Delhi afternoon.
Mumbai, India - 2013
Shot on: Sony DSC-RX1
Mumbai, Summer 2013. I was there for a week of risk management meetings at our India office, not exactly the stuff of travel legend but what the trip gave me was one day over the weekend to explore a city that felt utterly unfamiliar, impossibly colourful, and completely alive.
This was year I had just one camera and one lens. I’d sold all my Canon DSLR kit and made a leap that many thought was mad: the Sony RX1, a fixed-lens full-frame compact with the Zeiss Sonnar 35mm f/2 permanently attached. That tiny camera, and that single lens, reshaped my entire relationship with photography. Thirteen years on, in 2026, I still own it, and I still use it. [See my review of the Sony RX1 here.]
Back then I was younger, full of bravado, and did no research. I asked the hotel for ideas, and that was it. On that Sunday afternoon I roamed across the city, eventually finding my way to Dharavi, a vast residential area then considered one of the most densely populated places on earth. Coming from Hong Kong, a city often described the same way, I was intrigued, though obviously the texture of life there felt entirely its own.
I wandered streets and alleyways, got lost, and stumbled into whole economies and communities simply busy about their day. The RX1 was small, light, and wonderfully unobtrusive. Still, I’d always meet someone’s eyes, raise the camera just a little, and ask with the universal sign language for “photo?” before pressing the shutter.
Two frames from that day remain with me. A woman and her child working clay pots in what seemed to double as their home - quiet industry in the middle of the buzz. And a child at a doorway, watching me with that perfect, silent curiosity, while a man climbed the stairs in the background. Both, for me, hold a calm demeanour that somehow lived right at the centre of the city’s magnificent noise.