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
Delhi, India - Sony A7R + Zeiss C Sonnar 50mm f/1.5 ZM
Delhi, India - Sony A7R + Zeiss C Sonnar 50mm f/1.5 ZM
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
Mumbai, India - Sony RX1
Mumbai, India - Sony RX1
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.
Delhi, India - 2017
Mumbai, India - Fujifilm X-Pro2 + XF14mm f/2.8
Shot on: Fujifilm X-Pro2 + XF14mm f/2.8
I can’t remember where this was. I don't even remember taking this shot.
All I know is that I rediscovered it years later, languishing in my Lightroom catalogue, flagged with a single lone star—a quiet signal from my past self that it meant something.
And when I found it, a flood of memories came rushing back. Wandering the back streets of Delhi with my wife, losing all sense of time, immersed in colours that felt impossibly saturated. Busy people, silent streets. I remember being awash with it all, trying to absorb everything around me. I could smell, feel, and taste where I was—or maybe I couldn’t, maybe it was never quite like that—but one thing was distinct and clear: the feeling of sharing that sense of adventure and wonder with my wife as we discovered Delhi for the first time.
That is the beauty and power of a photograph.
I don’t remember taking this. I wasn’t on a photo walk. I didn’t actively look for light, shadows, colours, or expressions. I was just present—enjoying the company, and losing time away from my real world of corporate life.
I’m not a street photographer. I’m not even sure I know what that really means. But this is a photograph of a street scene, not because I set out to make street photography, but because I wanted to capture a memory of a beautiful, serene moment. The orange of the light, the sheets, the gleam of the bowl—all of it lit by a narrow corridor of light that poured vibrancy into the cold, grey concrete around it.
It’s not a picture. It’s a feeling.
Hong Kong, 2025
Repulse Bay, Hong Kong, 2025 - Hasselblad X1Dii + XCD 55v f/2.5
Shot on: Hasselblad X1Dii + XCD 55v f/2.5
This is home. My backyard, my hood, my old stomping ground, call it what you want. It’s the landscape I see so often it blurs into the background noise of daily life.
I can’t count the times I’ve walked past this exact wall and palm. Behind it a public shower, not remotely exotic and it doesn’t need to be. On weekend lunch walks with the dogs, I’ve fallen into a simple ritual: one camera, one lens, just point, shoot, and gather frames to remember life by.
It could’ve been the Fujifilm, the Sony, or the Leica dangling from my wrist. But that day I’d grabbed the Hasselblad, and I’m glad I did. The light was doing something kind to that yellow wall warm, honeyed, vivid against the cool grey of the concrete, and the camera drank it all in.
Maybe that’s exactly why I pressed the shutter. Not because the wall was remarkable, or the light was meh-okay, but because I know, one day, this perfectly ordinary walk will be a memory I’d love to step back into. The click of claws on pavement, the faint splash of water in the background, the particular warmth of that honeyed, sun-bleached yellow paint - these are the textures of a life that’s quietly, beautifully mine.
Photography, for me, has never really been about chasing the exotic. It’s about the fleeting moments that jump out from the noise before they fade back into the background. And they're mine. Captured.
But the real star? My dog, trotting unbothered out of the frame, not giving a flying f.. goodbye. That’s the shot. Not a postcard, just a small, beautiful, perfectly ordinary moment from a life I’m lucky to call my own.
Hong Kong, 2013
Hung Hom Wet Market, Hong Kong, 2013 - Sony DSC-RX1
Shot on: Sony RX1
This was my year of revelation. I had just sold everything. Canon DSLR, lenses, flashes, accessories, the whole lot and poured all the returns into one camera and one fixed lens. For about a year, that was it.
That one year, one camera, one lens rewired something deep in me. [Read my Sony RX1 review here...]
Photography was a hobby I’d picked up again after many years, but I had little appetite for the act of “doing photography” between work, family, and the blur of daily life. What I craved was something simpler: the quiet joy of documenting life as it happened. To many, these were throwaway frames. To me, they were high-value memories. The RX1 unlocked a new rhythm, a simple ritual of carrying a camera everywhere, every day. EDC before EDC became a buzzword.
This is one of many Hong Kong daily-life frames I captured while simply moving through my own. I didn’t need dedicated photowalks, scouted locations, or aimless wandering. I just needed to go about life, lean into the mundane, and feel for the unseen mood humming beneath the surface.
This one came to life one evening in a Hong Kong wet market, while we were out getting groceries. Shades of pink and red against raw meat, the butcher’s warm lamps bleeding onto the pavement with a glow that, for so many here, was just part of the city’s wallpaper.
But for me, it pulled like a quiet fire. I was drawn in like a moth to a flame, except I wasn’t burnt, I was caught in a spell. And I pressed the shutter to bottle that exact mood before it dissolved back into the everyday.