Somertime.co — About
Overview
Seventeen years as a British Army officer took me across most of the world's continents — from the alleyways of Asian cities to the wide geometries of the Middle East and the layered histories of Africa. Each posting was different. Each one left a mark.
What I didn't expect was how much I'd come to be shaped by architecture. Not the formal study of it — but the lived experience of moving through buildings that carry centuries of intent. A mosque in Oman. A colonial façade in Hong Kong. A mudbrick compound in the Gulf. You start to read them the way you read people: for what they reveal and what they conceal.
People, too. The camera became the way I kept those encounters. Long before photography was something you thought about, it was just the tool I reached for when I wanted to hold onto something true — a face, a doorway, a particular quality of afternoon light in a souk.
I left the Army with a career pivot into private banking — advising international clients on cross-border investment strategies — but the sensibility stayed. The same instincts that made me notice a building's bones or a stranger's expression still shape how I work and what I'm drawn to.
Seventeen years as a British Army officer meant living across numerous countries and moving through most of the world's continents. Each posting was a different education — different cultures, different ways of building, different faces. What accumulated wasn't just experience. It was an eye.
From mosques in the Gulf to colonial facades in Asia and the layered geometries of African cities, I was exposed to architectural traditions most people never encounter. You start to read buildings the way you read people — for what they reveal and what they conceal. That instinct never left.
Photography was always the way I kept memories. Long before it was a practice, it was just the tool I reached for when I wanted to hold onto something true. The kit has evolved — the iPhone I carry every day now captures what a professional setup couldn't have touched for immediacy. The eye was always the instrument. Everything else is just a means to use it.
After the Army, a pivot into private banking — advising international clients on cross-border investment and estate structures. The same global exposure, now applied differently. The interest in culture, contemporary art, long-form journalism and how cities evolve runs alongside everything else. Finance and culture aren't separate worlds. They never were.
01 —
Buildings are biography writ large. Decades moving through distinct architectural cultures gave me an eye for what makes a structure speak — and what makes it belong to its place.
02 —
The most interesting architecture in any city is still the people who move through it. Faces that carry geography in them. Candid or composed — the intent is always the same.
03 —
Opportune, unrepeatable, gone in a second. The iPhone in my pocket has closed the gap between seeing and recording. I'm not interested in images that could have been made anywhere.
The kit has evolved. Seventeen years ago it was film and patience. Now, the iPhone I carry every day is capable of capturing something a medium-format camera couldn't have touched for texture or immediacy. Technology hasn't changed what I'm looking for — it's just reduced the friction between seeing and recording.
The eye was always the instrument. Everything else is a means to use it. Whether it's a considered composition of a brutalist tower at dawn or an opportune frame grabbed in a market in Marrakech, the intent is the same: to make something honest.
I work across architecture, street and portraiture. The through-line is always context — cultural, historical, human. I'm not interested in images that could have been made anywhere. I'm interested in the ones that could only have been made there.
What I look for hasn't changed since the first posting.
Just the angle of the light.