About S Black Photo
Steven Black — Photographer
S Black Photo is the photography of Steven Black, a Belfast-based photographer exploring the landscapes, coastlines, cities and wildlife of Ireland.
Photography has been part of my life since my teenage years, when I first picked up a Pentax MG. The cameras have changed considerably since then, but the reason I pick one up really hasn’t.
For me, photography is an opportunity to slow down, get outside and properly look at what is around me.
Ideal image:
Steven outdoors with camera, preferably with the campervan and an Irish landscape in the background.
Wide landscape orientation.
I don’t want simply to record where I have been.I want to make photographs that capture something of what it felt like to be there.
Sometimes that means standing on a coastline waiting for the last light of the evening.
Sometimes it means wandering through Belfast after dark, watching the city change under artificial light.
Other times it means getting out of the campervan in the middle of the night because the clouds have finally cleared and the Milky Way has appeared above the mountains of Kerry.
Finding the Photograph
A lot of my photography begins long before I press the shutter.
I might have an image in my head and return to a location waiting for the conditions to come together. At other times there is no plan at all. I arrive somewhere, explore and see what presents itself.
I’ve learned to value both.
Ireland gives me an extraordinary landscape to work with. From familiar places I’ve photographed many times to somewhere I’ve never visited before, there is always another location, another composition or different light to find.
But a famous location doesn’t automatically make a good photograph.
The light, weather, tide, season and sometimes a little luck can completely change a place. Part of what keeps me interested in photography is never knowing exactly what I am going to come home with.
Even after all these years, I am still learning.
I’m still asking the same question I have asked myself throughout my photography:
Can I make this better?
The Beginning of S Black Photo
S Black Photo was established in 2014, although the journey towards it started many years earlier.
That year brought an important moment when one of my photographs, Heron on the River Bann, won the Northern Ireland Photographic Association Annual Award.
It gave me the confidence to begin taking something that had always been very personal to me and start sharing it with a wider audience.
The first S Black Photo website followed.
The website has been rebuilt more than once since then, just as my photography has changed over the years.
Looking back through the archive, I can see not only the places I’ve photographed but the development of the photographer behind the camera.
And I don’t consider that development finished.
Heron on the River Bann
Northern Ireland Photographic Association Annual Award, 2014
Ideal image:
Your actual campervan somewhere recognisably Irish.
Travelling Ireland
In 2019, I bought a van and converted it into a campervan.
That changed the way I could photograph Ireland.
Instead of always needing to travel somewhere and return home the same day, I could stay. I could follow the coastline, change direction because of the weather, wake up close to a location or simply keep driving to see where the road went.
Some of my favourite photographs have come from those journeys.
They haven’t always been the photographs I originally set out to make.
I’ve slept beside beaches, travelled the Wild Atlantic Way, explored Ireland’s east, south, west and north coasts and found places I might never have visited had photography not given me a reason to keep looking.
The campervan has become part of that process: part transport, part accommodation and occasionally a place to sit waiting for the rain to stop.
Bunaw Milky Way, Kerry
Some photographs come from careful planning.
Others happen because the plan changes.
I went out hoping for clear skies. Instead I found cloud, rain and very little hope. Then, for a short time, the clouds moved and the Milky Way appeared above the mountains.
Moments like that are a reminder of why I keep going out.
You don’t always get what you expect.
Sometimes you get something better.
Photographs to Live With
When I am working on an image, there is still one deceptively simple question that often comes into my mind:
Would I want to see this hanging on a wall?
That matters because S Black Photo isn’t about producing photographs simply to fill a social-media feed.
The photographs offered here as prints are images I believe deserve a life beyond a screen.
Some capture places that are instantly recognisable. Others are quieter moments discovered while travelling.
What connects them is that each represents somewhere I stood, something I saw and a moment I decided was worth preserving.
Photography still gives me the same thing it did when I first picked up that Pentax all those years ago:
a reason to go somewhere, slow down, look around and see what I can find.
And I still believe my best photograph is one I haven’t taken yet.
Explore the Collection
Discover photographs from across Northern Ireland and Ireland, available as fine-art prints.