A lifelong love of photography leads to Dublin’s striking architecture

Photography has been part of this Dubliner’s life since childhood, when a borrowed camera sparked a fascination with freezing moments in time. Decades later, that same passion has evolved into limited-edition fine art prints celebrating Dublin’s historic landmarks and bold modern design.

Some people come to photography late in life. Not me. My grandfather used to let me play with his camera when I was a kid, and from that moment I was hooked — fascinated by the engineering, the mechanics, the idea that you could freeze a moment in time with a click.

My parents bought me a Kodak Instamatic, and I photographed absolutely everything. Family, friends, the street outside our house — and yes, more than a few heavy metal concerts. Looking back, I had no idea what I was doing technically, but I didn't care. I just loved it.

Fast forward to 1986. I landed my first proper job at the Irish Permanent Building Society in Dublin, and with my first real wages burning a hole in my pocket, I did what any self-respecting photography obsessive would do — I got on a plane to London and bought myself a Minolta X-500 SLR. It felt like the most important purchase of my life at the time. It still might be.

Around 1987, my dad did something I will never forget. With my wages from the Irish Permanent, I'd been quietly investing in darkroom equipment — an enlarger, trays, chemicals, paper — and the only room in the house that could be made genuinely dark was the bathroom. Once my family realized they were going to lose the bathroom to me on a regular basis, my dad made a decision. He converted the attic.

He put down a proper floor, built a solid worktable out of an old door, and made a wooden cover for the hatch opening in the floor so I wouldn't accidentally step into space in the dark. It was thoughtful, practical, and completely typical of him. I spent countless hours up there developing and printing my own photographs, watching images slowly appear in the developer tray. If you've never experienced that moment, it's genuinely magical. There's nothing quite like it.

Life, work, and the usual distractions took over for a while after that, as they tend to do. But photography never really left me. A few years ago, I picked things back up again — this time with a Nikon Z6 and Z5 II — and found myself drawn back to something I'd always loved: Dublin's extraordinary architecture.

Dublin is a city that rewards anyone who bothers to look up. We walk past buildings every day without giving them a second thought — Christ Church Cathedral, which has stood since 1030. The Casino Marino in Marino, which looks like a simple single-room temple from the outside but contains 16 beautifully decorated rooms across three floors. The Four Courts reflected in the Liffey on a still morning. These buildings have stories, and I became a little obsessed with telling those stories through photography.

But it's not just the historic stuff that gets me. I'm equally drawn to contemporary architecture — the kind that stops you in your tracks because someone had the imagination to do something completely unexpected. The Convention Center Dublin, with its tilted glass facade. The Samuel Beckett Bridge, which looks like a harp lying on its side over the Liffey. The more unusual the design, the more I want to photograph it.

My style tends toward high-contrast black-and-white — dramatic skies, long exposures that turn clouds into streaks of light above centuries-old stone. Sometimes I'll add a single splash of color to a scene, a vintage bus, or a detail that deserves to stand out. I visit locations multiple times, waiting for the right light, the right sky, the right moment. Some shots have taken three or four visits to get right. That patience, I think, is what separates a photograph from a fine art print.

Which brings me to why I'm writing this. I sell limited-edition fine art prints of Dublin and Irish architecture through my website, skramshots.com, and a huge part of my heart goes into every single one. These aren't tourist prints. They're considered atmospheric images of buildings that have stood for centuries, and I've found that some of my most enthusiastic buyers are Irish people living abroad who want a piece of home on their wall.

If that's you — if you left Dublin or Ireland and miss it more than you expected to — I'd love for you to take a look. Every print is a limited edition, signed, and ships worldwide.

You can find me at skramshots.com and on Instagram at @skramshots.prints.

Some things never leave you. For me, it was always going to be photography.

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