It’s that time of the year between Christmas and New Year when the world seems to slow down, and you never know what day of the week it is. I’ve been going back over old photos in my library and pondering the past year. I actually got out to take photos quite a bit this year, but I have been really bad at sharing the projects that I was shooting. These include photographing a local stately garden throughout the seasons, visiting a national park at sunrise and sunset and a trip to Scotland to see lough ness. So, as they’ll never see the internet light of day otherwise, here’s a quick overview and some images I took over the past year.

Way back at the end of March of this year (2025) I was in Berlin for a couple of weeks. I blogged about this before and promised to post the second part of that, and then promptly forgot all about it. Well, better late than never! So here is part two of that trip.

I was recently in the wonderful city of Edinburgh for a few days, and while I was there I was taking some photos of the cityscape from the viewpoint of the castle. Now, I’ll have a bigger photo essay on my Scotland trip in the future, but when I got back home I was looking at these thinking that they would make great faux miniature shots.

Back at the end of April I was in London for a few days, so as always I took the opportunity to get a few photos and some video while I was there. I didn’t really go very far from our hotel in Southwark, pretty much staying to the south bank, but even here there is plenty to see just walking up and down the Thames. So Join me for a walk along the Thames in London taking in bridges, river traffic, and life by the water, capturing both video and stills with the Canon R6 Mark II.

A few weeks ago I got to spend some time in Berlin, and so of course I took the opportunity to try and photograph the city whenever I had a chance. While I actually had a bunch of different cameras with me, I ended up taking quite a lot of photos on my iPhone. I will cover the other photos I got with both my Fujifilm and Canon cameras in a later post, but for now, I thought I would collect all the iPhone ones into a single story!

I had been quite looking forward to our trip to Switzerland. I had never been to the country before and was pretty excited about the adventure. Our journey, while not specifically for photography, had the promise of lots of photo potential, but unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate. We travelled to a little town outside of Lake Zurich and on to the City of Geneva, also on a lake!

I had done a bit of research before travelling, and both spots looked beautiful and scenic. What I didn’t realise though, was that apparently at this time of the year, both locations are frequently covered in low cloud. Luckily, we still got some hours of sunshine, and I was able to see some shots of the amazing scenery, but the low cloud and bitter cold had other ideas.

We recently took a trip to Switzerland and visited both Lake Zurich and Lake Geneva where I braved the cold and low clouds to try and get some photos. It started with an incredible sunrise flight out of Dublin, and I managed to get some photos and video of Lake Geneva and Lake Zurich during breaks in the otherwise cloudy, foggy and incredibly cold weather. We ended the trip with an incredible flight out of Geneva over the Swiss alps before arriving back in Dublin.

In early January we took a road trip to capture sunrise and sunset in the southeast of Ireland, starting with the world's oldest working Lighthouse: Hook Lighthouse, Co. Wexford, followed by a spectacular sunrise over the estuary of the river Slaney. Finally, we visited a Co. Wexford Beach made famous for being used in the movie “Saving Private Ryan”.

As many of my long-term followers have probably noted, I haven’t posted nearly as much in this past year as I have previously. While my blogging has been tapering off for a while, 2024 was undoubtedly my least productive. In this post, I wanted to touch on that a little bit as well as cover some of the more positive things from the past year too. I also wanted to share some photos and other tales that I never got to share in 2024. This will probably be a long post, so buckle up, or maybe get some coffee!

Every time I go to New York, I end up spending an inordinate amount of time in Grand Central station. Mainly, because we usually end up staying nearby, and it is a handy throughway to other avenues. But it’s also because it’s kind of a magical place. It is like something out of a movie, and it probably has been in many. Every time you walk through it, there are stories happening all around you.

A little while ago, we decided to take a few days break away from the hustle and bustle and headed off on an adventure. We wanted to go somewhere out of the way. Where we ended up was probably about as far away as you can get in Ireland without actually leaving the mainland or going on a ferry. For the longest time I had wanted to visit the top of the island, and so my wife booked us into a hotel on the northernmost peninsula not he northernmost county in Ireland: The windswept and very beautiful Inishowen peninsula in Co. Donegal. And what a place it is.

Back in April my wife and I took a road trip to the northern most region in Ireland, the Inishowen peninsula in Co. Donegal. We were there for a few days and took the opportunity to photograph the northern most point on the island of Ireland, as well as some of the incredible beaches in the area.

In part one of this series, I talked about my visit to the Danish capital of Copenhagen last May. In this second part, we travelled on to the Swedish capital of Stockholm and were treated to an unusually warm early May weekend, which led to an amazing few days in the beautiful city.

Earlier in the summer I spent some time in New York City and I took various photos while there, although I’ve been a little behind in editing them. As part of the trip, we spent some time in Brooklyn and I got some good shots, but I am only getting around to properly editing them now. I thought this might make a good video, so I recorded a session of editing 4 of these using Capture One.

Earlier this year, I had a chance to visit two of the cities I’ve always wanted to see: Copenhagen and Stockholm. Ever since visiting Oslo a few years ago, I’ve really wanted to see the rest of the region and Copenhagen and Stockholm were on the bucket list. So, when I got the chance to see both of these cities, I jumped at the chance. This wasn’t going to be a strictly photographic trip - I was there with my wife on a business trip, but it was still an opportunity to get to visit these wonderful cities.

I first visited Cambridge a couple of years ago and I absolutely loved it. This was my third visit since then and my first visit post lockdowns. There is something really nice about the city. It’s small, like a big town, and it has a combination of history and grandeur as well as the peaceful parks and riverside. It also has great cafes and great food.

After two and a half years, I finally got to travel overseas again last week. It was the first time travelling in the new reality of the semi-sort of but not really - post(ish) COVID-19 world. It was a part work trip, part “get away and clear your head” type of trip, and it involved two countries, and multiple forms of transport. Hey, if you’re going to do it, do it right.

Like many people, while I’ve been lucky enough to travel abroad quite a bit, I haven’t actually spent much time exploring my own country of Ireland, and I’ve actually been to surprisingly little of the island. With Covid making international travel complicated and not something I particularly want to partake in right now, we recently decided to take a few days holiday in the southeast of Ireland. One of the most interesting places we visited was to the Hook peninsula to visit the famous Hook Lighthouse