The Triggers That Make Me Reach for My Camera

Photography, for me, often begins with a feeling I do not expect. I can be walking somewhere with no plan to shoot, no subject in mind, and then it happens. Something clicks. Something ordinary pulls at me. These moments are hard to explain, but I have come to call them my triggers. They are random, and they often confuse me. But I have learned to welcome them.

One of the most common is the sight of a chair, chairs or more often an abandoned chair. There is something quiet and powerful about a chair left alone. Maybe it is because chairs have been central to my working life. I have used them every day, watched people come and go from them, seen how they carry presence even when empty. An abandoned chair tells a story that feels unfinished. It holds a space where someone used to be. That is enough to make me lift the camera to my eye.

Another trigger is the Welsh flag. It can stop me in my tracks, even if it is flapping from a window or painted on an old garage wall. I think this comes from a deep place. I am furiously loyal to my mother tongue ‘Cymraeg’ and to Cymru (Wales) itself. The flag is more than a symbol. It reminds me of language, belonging, stubborn pride, and all the little things that shape how I see the world. Photographing it feels like a quiet act of connection.

And then there are umbrellas. Only for colour and not for black and white. This one surprised me at first. They pop up on rainy days, obviously, but it is not just the weather that draws me to them. I think it is the influence of Saul Leiter. His work has shown me how something as everyday as an umbrella can become poetry. The colour, the shape, the way it catches light or hides a face. I find myself chasing those moments, not to copy him, but because his work taught me to notice.

These triggers do not follow logic. I do not seek them out. They appear and they stir something in me, a gentle nudge to stop and look again. Over time, I have learned not to question them too much. I simply respond. I take the photograph. And somehow, in doing that, I understand myself a little more.