A few days driving along England's south coast uncovered some astonishingly varied sights. In Brighton, we gawped at the Pavilion, chuckled on the pier, cruised the Lanes and high-fived some naked bike riders. In Eastbourne we marvelled at Bill's Eggs Benedict and saw a gaggle of pastel-coloured pensioners. In Hastings we discovered the Old Town, found Foyle's house and strolled the Stade, and in Rye we spotted Simon the Pieman and dined at the Mermaid Inn. Dungeness had us puzzling the poem on Derek Jarman's cottage and crunching the shale to the soun...

So, New York. Believe the tourist guidebooks. It is a vibrant and hectic place. Nothing does sleep. After a week in a hotel for the daughter's wedding we moved to an apartment in East Village for a week of chilling out – not much chance of that really. We walked the High Line, caught the ferry to Staten Island, walked down Wall Street, over Brooklyn Bridge, through Times Square, rode the subway to Coney Island, visited the Leica gallery and shuffled the streets in a daze. With no particular place to be, the streets offered up heaven-sent tableaux for t...

My youngest daughter, Rose, married Matthew, her boyfriend of ten years, in Central Park on May 15th May 2015. A fairytale wedding indeed.

While visiting the Big Smoke for a friend's wedding I spent a day around street photographers' most popular haunts: Brick Lane, Spitalfields, Covent Garden and Columbia Road Flower Market. No shortage of places, buildings and people to shoot – even snapped Tracey Emin out shopping.

The annual BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards this year visited the Wales Millenium Centre in Cardiff. And a star-studded evening it turned out to be: Andy Fairweather Low, Guy Garvey, Ruth Jones, Sally Barker, Loudon Wainwright III, David Gray, Cerys Matthews, Cat Stevens and folk music royalty Martin Carthy and Peggy Seeger. After deciding to forego the job of official photographer and passing the baton to my fellow snapper, Phil Carter, I just couldn't resist the temptation. The Smooth Operations team, who produce the show, kindly placed us both in opposite bo...

Forget the sterotypical image of a geographer with elbow patches, maps and anorak. I spent three days in Manchester with delegates at the Geographical Association's Annual Conference and believe me they're bonkers! Making volcanoes out of tinfoil, illustrating world issues with Lego, wearing hats made from Fairtrade products, singing geographical songs into an inflatable microphone, drawing continents on balloons, and describing the course of a river with cups of water down each others backs – just a few of the things to release their pent-up energy.

A...

After a successful trip to Costa del Folk in sunny Spain's Benalmadena last year, I was delighted to get an email asking for my photographic services for the 2015 festival. Unfortunately the weather hadn't been booked as well. There were a couple of days of outdoor performances but during the chilly, grey days the huge concert hall within the hotel complex was put to good use. With my festival pass declaring I was their 'official photographer' I managed to provide a decent cross-section of the mainly UK acts and mainly UK audience. Compere Mike Harding...

Deciding to go in search of the northern lights in December in Iceland was a good idea. What we didn't remember was that there's only four hours of daylight at that time of year. However, we managed to fit in a busy schedule including geysirs, Gullfoss waterfall, rift valley, downtown Reykjavic and its old harbour and some great scenic blizzards. An evening trip to find the northern lights was cancelled due to heavy cloud cover but on a second evening we drove down the coast to a spot with a lighthouse called Stykkishólmur. The wind was gale force and...

It was advertised as the 20th anniversary of Whitby Goth Weekend, But there was scant evidence of any goths. There were, however, plenty of steampunks, Día de Muertos, Satanists, Venetian commedia dell'arte, harlequin jesters, a smurf bride and a couple of dopey ferrets. Not enough pirates, though. By the third day I was getting tired of Edwardian bustles, wigs and fascinators, so I was glad to find an alien in the churchyard and a Maverick goth in full Mississippi gambler outfit. 

A great way to sample a whole variety of world music from world class musicians is to be offered an AAA press pass. It means you can't actually get to see all the acts as their timings overlap but I was able to see enough to know that it's a terrific festival. Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita gave a stunning performance on Welsh harp and cora, and also an opportunity for some nice visual juxtapositions. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown was indeed a lesson in the surreal, and Andy Kershaw's late-night DJ slot had the room bouncing. A good test in low-light...