• Sometimes I just need to get away from it all, no shoots, no briefs, no deadlines, just a few days with no expectation to deliver anything to anyone.

• The commissioned work is constant, and while I love the craft and the challenge, it can become a cycle, shoot, edit, deliver, again and again. It doesn’t take long before the creative part of the brain starts to feel boxed in, like it’s only allowed out if there’s a budget and a client attached.

• A few weeks ago, we took a family trip to Porto, not a photography break just a short holiday. Warm air, good food, lazy mornings, I brought the camera along with no plan to use it, but it was there just in case something caught my attention.

• Most mornings, before anyone else was up, I’d slip out for a wander on the quiet streets. No tourists yet, just locals opening shops or hosing down pavements. I didn’t set out to make anything. I wasn’t thinking about the usual things, composition, clients. I just let myself follow whatever looked interesting.

• Old tiles, cracked windows, forgotten corners. It wasn’t about getting great shots, it was about the act of looking again. Slowing down, taking in the texture of a place without the weight of a job riding on it.

• Those early walks became a kind of reset, a reminder that photography doesn’t always have to be about outcomes, it can just be about noticing.

• I came back feeling sharper, more grounded, not because I’d made anything remarkable, but because I’d made room, had space to breathe, to see, to let the creative part of my brain stretch without pressure.

• It wasn’t a work trip, it wasn’t a project, it was a holiday and just for a few hours each morning, was exactly what I needed, a bit of quiet me time and just enough photography to wake something up again.