Lens, Decks and Bristol Streets

Photography keeps circling back. Not necessarily as the main path, but it keeps tapping me on the shoulder and refusing to be ignored. I have been getting good feedback on my photos for a while now and there is something different about being behind a lens. You start noticing light properly, composition, the small human moments that most people walk straight past. It sharpens something.

So when I got a booking to shoot an event I treated myself to a new 50mm lens. Exciting but also a little scary if I am honest. Because this is different to wandering around with a camera for myself. This is capturing something that matters to someone else. That is a different kind of responsibility and one I want to take seriously. Even if photography stays a passion project rather than the main career push, I want to do it properly. Learn the craft. Show the work. Keep refining. Sometimes just backing yourself is the real shift.

The Emerge exhibition at Bentinck Art Studio felt like a bit of a turning point in that sense. I had two of my photographs selected to show, which was already pretty cool, but seeing them properly printed, framed and hanging on a gallery wall was something else entirely. Watching people stand in front of them, actually stop and look, was genuinely surreal. In the best way.

And then as if that wasn't enough, I also DJed at the launch night alongside another Bentinck studio member. The two things I have been quietly working on, in the same room, on the same night. I hadn't quite anticipated how much that would feel like things coming together. I was still very nervous behind the decks and there were people there for the exhibition who did a genuine double take seeing me on the DJ set! But I got more into it as the night went on. There is nothing quite like watching people dance to the tunes you are playing. Nothing.

A few weeks later I took a trip down to Bristol to see Tom, who I worked alongside at African Bat Conservation back in Malawi. One of those friendships forged in fieldwork that never really fades no matter how much time passes or how many countries get between you. We wandered, talked for hours, found some great food spots and I took a ridiculous amount of photos of the Bristol streets. The colour, the graffiti, the texture of the place. My kind of city.