This August one of my images from Ethiopia will be hanging in HOST gallery in London as part of Foto8 Summershow. The image, of a father and daughter threshing wheat using donkeys was taken in January 2010 in Addei, Northern Ethiopia. The Summershow -an annual even which kicks off wit a big street party- features over 150 photographs and takes place throughout August and all the prints are for sale. 

The latest issue of the online photography magazine 100Eyes features photographs on the theme of "Home". Amongst the work of 9 other photographers, the current issue features my work from the Shadowlands series I am currently shooting on the empty housing estates and mansions around Ireland. many thanks to Andy Levin for choosing the work and for curating the magazine. Enjoy leafing through it!

Tomorrow night I'm heading to Portlaoise to open an exhibition of photographs by John Lalor at the Aras an Chontae. "Third World Eyes" is a photographic journey across three continents that John embarked on in 2008. John was a student on my documentary photography course in April 2010. He brought his portfolio into the Gallery of Photography on the first night and showed some images that will be appearing in the exhibition. The photograph of the little girl from a village in Nepal was the one I remembered the most. Despite her dirty face and  scruffy hair, she is still beautiful in her little pink dress. Nothing, not even poverty can take that away. I thought of Steve McCurry's Afghan girl and told John about his work and his book South Southeast which I remember saving up the money to buy almost (gulp!) ten years ago. I took it back down from the shelf  the other day and remember how I was mesmerized by his perfect composition in the photograph of the fishermen from Sri Lanka, by the decisive moments he captured in so many of the images like the doves outside the mosque in Mazar-e Sharif in Afghanistan or the man in Agra standing in a stream with water falling from his hand into a spectacular reflection of the Taj Mahal. Then there were the colours, those colours that only come out after rain, especially in Jodhpur, never did chili pepper red and sky blue go so well together. I wish John every success in his photographic career and hope he never has to sew rolls of film into his clothes as he negotiates unsafe borders in dangerous places.

The DCU student magazine "Flashback" popped through my letterbox today thanks to Claire Brown. I answered a few questions for her some weeks back about being a photographer, how photojournalism has all changed, changed utterly and recounted some of my African experiences. Not least of which was getting detained in the Democratic Republic of Congo by those charming fellows at the ANR (Congolese Secret Police) on arrival in the country alone one rainy November night. For my students, past, present and future, Claire asked me about advice for young aspiring photojournalists. So, I'll repeat it here just for you guys "Photograph what moves you. Come up with an idea for a long-term project, keying off something that's personal to you and that you care about. This way, you will shoot with a passion and a purpose and this will show in your images. Build up a relationship with your subject and develop your social skills. Get inspired by looking at the work of photographers you admire in books, on websites etc. Photojournalism won't make you rich but if you are happy to be fulfilled on a personal and professional level, then don't give up" 

One of my ghost estates images features on the front of Guardian G2 today. The feature is Ireland's Shattered Dreams. Inside, there is a double page spread of the horses outside an abandoned house in Leitrim. They were beautiful horses, like those ones of our childhood dreams, you know, that whisk you away somewhere better. White Beauty. The one on the left was very curious and kept coming towards me, he was trying to sniff the camera. So, I let him. Then he gently tugged at the strap. The house, somebody's abandoned hopes and dreams. There were building materials gathering dirt, workers overalls on the ground, a fireplace with no hearth in a room with no view, but for hilly mounds of unkempt wild grass.