This post was inspired by Neale James of the PhotoWalk Podcast, who posed the title question.

In the Australian winter of 2024, I decided to spend less time working and more time doing what I enjoy. I negotiated Fridays off from work and started a weekly focused practice in the photographic genres I most love: insect macro and candid street.

The Australian city in which I live, Sydney, has the chronotype of a teenager, typically not exhibiting anything more than the necessary rote signs of human life until around lunchtime. On the other hand, insects begin their quotidian insect-y business the second their haemolymph thaws in the warmth of our east coast sun. Except in insect diapause, my Friday photographic walks loosely follows these rhythms.

In the morning, I head out in my local suburban bushland or to one of the Sydney public gardens to photograph some of the beautiful and bizarre tiny creatures who live there.

By noon, it’s often warm enough for all but mad dogs and crazy corporate joggers to do anything but seek out shady respite, and having walked about 7km by this stage, I head into the Sydney CBD for some lunch.

But here’s the thing: early on in my Friday jaunts, I discovered a café that serves the most delicious coeliac-friendly burnt Basque cheesecake, and then later, one that freshly bakes to-die-for gluten-free chocolate croissants, and more recently one that dares you to choose between the softest, creamiest double-layer chocolate mousse cake and the crunchiest, chewiest espresso butter, almond & chocolate roulade, or to indulge in a bit of both! And because coeliac-friendly fare in the ‘burb’ cafes where I live is generally heavy on texture (the kind that sticks to your teeth) and boringly from the same commercial bakeries, on Fridays, I abandon healthy lunches and eat delicious city cake instead.

Then, having consumed all the calories (and more) that I burnt on my morning walk, I attempt to burn more by heading into the Friday afternoon city crowd to photograph some of the beautiful, quirky and bizarre Sydney street life.

So, while I’m unlikely to ever write an autobiography of any kind, least of all a photographic one, if I did, perhaps an apt title would be On Fridays I Eat Cake.