Momentary Awe Photography

22/09/2025

Thank you Japan!

This was my 6th time in this wonderful country and although it was a quick trip this time only to Osaka and Kobe, I loved every minute of it. The Osaka Expo 2025 was an amazing experience, at times chaotic, but always surrounded by smiling, helpful people. Until next time…

28/10/2024

If you have been following my road trip this summer, driving from Dubai to Portugal and back, you would have noticed that I have now arrived back in Dubai after what was an epic adventure – if you want a recap, on Instagram I kept a daily video diary for the entire trip!

After 24000 kilometers and 17 countries, it’s now time to sit down and look properly through all the images. It’s always difficult when doing such a long trip as you tend to forget parts of it and then all of a sudden remember of yet another place you visited.

So today, I will leave you with this simple image of my car (which I have been calling the Mothership for the last 10 years) in one of the nicest places I camped during the entire trip – a gorgeous spot in Greece with a beautiful view of the Aegean Sea. For the entire time I was there I heard nothing else but the sea and the birds.

If you have been following my road trip this summer, driving from Dubai to Portugal and back, you would have noticed that I have now arrived back in Dubai

16/09/2024

Continuing with images from the trip, this one was also fairly early in the route. During our previous big road trip from Dubai to Romania in 2015, one of the places we stayed at and loved was Cappadocia – in fact, I asked Ana to marry me during our stop there. At the time, we didn’t camp there, but this time I really wanted to find a place to camp and wake up early to photograph the tens of hot air balloons that are famously hovering above the valleys most mornings.

Well, I couldn’t have asked for a better spot – I woke up at 4am surrounded by the noise of balloons being filled up with hot air. I have lots of photos I like from that morning, but I think my favourite one is the one above as the first thing that popped into my mind when I made it was “people will think this one is AI generated” as the balloons look like they were purposely arranged into this shape. Well, I can tell you, this is pretty much straight out of the camera – I only slightly corrected the shadows and highlights.

https://www.momentaryawe.com/not-ai/

13/09/2024

In case you've had enough of my daily updates and you want to see some photos from the trip.

I will try in the next couple of weeks to catch up with posting some of the photographs I made over the last two months or so using either the amazing Fujifilm GFX100IIS or it’s smaller brother the X100VI. The image above, although it looks like an aerial shot, it was made from a high platform (with a transparent floor), overlooking this bend in the river where the amazing Rumkale Byzantine fortress lies.

10/07/2024

If you have been following along on Instagram, you would have seen in my daily updates that I have made great progress so far and I am already in Europe (I am writing this on my last day in Romania). It has been a great route so far that has only intersected once with the route we drove from Dubai to Romania nine years ago.

I have had a few great camping nights so far, but the most unexpected one has been next to a place called Belograchik, in the North-West of Bulgaria. It took quite a drive to get to the camping spot as the road was way smaller than my car – I am pretty sure I have some new scratches on the car from all the branches brushing over the car. It was totally worth it though as I arrived in a beautiful forest clearing at the top of the mountain.

Everything turned even more magical at night, when the Milky Way was fully visible and the only sound you could hear were crickets. Definitely the kind of evening and night why I do these sort of trips.

One other thing to note about this photograph is that it is the first photography I publish made with the brand new Fujifilm GFX 100SII, an amazing machine that I am starting to fall in love with very quickly.

You can also see the photograph larger on the blog ( I am definitely making a print of this one when I get back): https://www.momentaryawe.com/magical-camping/

22/08/2021

I usually don't enter into photography competitions very often, but I made an exception with the Loop Design Awards and now some of the entries have been selected for the People's Choice Award voting stage including my series of photographs from the House of Wisdom in Sharjah. If you like the photographs and have a minute and a vote to spare, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

The House of Wisdom was designed as a monument celebrating Sharjah being the UNESCO World Book Capital in 2019 and has a cantilevered roof extending 15 meters beyond its walls. The exterior lattice does wonderful things to the late afternoon light and there are interesting reflections everywhere.⁠...

01/07/2021

While I was figuring out what to name this post and came up with the obvious name “Parang Mountains” (since that’s the name of the mountains in the photograph above), I realised I have another post titled exactly the same and photographed very close to where the above place is, but in 2011. The shot above was made a few weeks ago while I was in Romania for a week with my son, exploring some of the places I love close to my home town. The difference is that I feel this image is so much better than the one in 2011 both from a composition point a view and a retouching point of view. This is one of my favourite things about having a blog for such a long time – I can go back and look at old images and see that I have (hopefully!) improved.⁠⁠
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I will be away from Dubai for most of the summer and will most likely not blog much (if at all) during this time – I will probably add things here and there on Instagram if you’re missing my photographs.⁠⁠
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02/06/2021

Before flying into Sarajevo we didn’t really have a particular plan about what we will be visiting, we just figured we will rent a car and drive around the beautiful country side, finding interesting things as we go. Besides the Mostar bridge which I had known about for a long time, my favourite place we stopped at was the Blagaj Tekija, a Dervish monastery close to Mostar, almost 600 years old. It’s location is like something out of a movie, on the side of a river emerging from a mountain cave. The river water has an amazing colour and a small waterfall is just in front of the monastery. We spent quite a bit of time sitting down and watching the river flow in front of us and trying to make sure our three year old will not fall into the water.⁠⁠
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As an architectural photographer, it’s also a nice change to photograph really old structures instead of the uber-new glass and concrete jungle of Dubai.⁠⁠
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25/04/2021

Taking a small break from my posts with various series of images, I wanted to post this photograph I made today.⁠⁠
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With things being a little bit slow at the moment this morning I decided to wake up at 5am and take a drive in the mountains above Dibba.⁠⁠
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Dibba is a small seaside town on the East Coast of the UAE and most expats living in the UAE have probably been there at some point for some snorkeling or camping or a scenic trip in one of the traditional dhows. Although the actual town is not visible in this photograph, the mountains looked gorgeous this morning with fog lingering for a few hours after sunrise.⁠⁠
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20/04/2021

Throwback to January 2015 when I spent a couple of weeks in Hokkaido in the North of Japan with , and a few other talented photographers shooting the beautiful winter landscapes and these absolutely gorgeous fishing boats which get taken out of the water during the winter so they don't get crushed by the sea ice.⁠⁠
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I loved the various boat shapes and the incredible colourful details.⁠⁠
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