There is something utterly captivating about photography’s knack for snagging a moment and holding it tight, a way to freeze time and keep the world’s constant churn in check. For me, survey and documentation photography is not just about grabbing a nice shot; it is a deep-seated urge to bottle the past, catalogue history, and leave a visual trail of our ever-shifting surroundings. Diving into its roots from the mid-1800s onwards, I am bowled over by those early pioneers who took a scientific oddity and turned it into a powerhouse for social, cultural, and historical shifts. It is personal too, every time I am out with my camera in Aberdeen’s weathered streets, I feel a thread tying me to them, that same itch to preserve what is slipping away.