I often find myself envying photographers who do this full time. The ones who drive out in their vans, climb into the hills, or wander streets that are not the ones they grew up on. Landscape photographers, travel photographers, even street photographers who hop between cities and countries.

Then I remember what I wrote in Not Just Living for the Weekend. That note was my attempt to understand the life I have and how photography fits into it. The day job, the meetings, the small windows of time where photography fits in. I may not have a life built entirely around photography, but it has been woven into my days in a way that matters to me.

I previously wrote on my ‘About’ page that photography is a little more than a hobby and a necessary ‘escape’. It is the thing that lets me step outside the noise of the day, even if only for a short walk or an hour of looking at a single frame on the screen. But sometimes I wonder what happens if your escape itself becomes work. If photography is the thing you run to after meetings and deadlines, what do you run to when photography becomes the work? That is where I remember something Ken Robinson said about those fortunate ones whose work is also their element. They are so at home in what they do that the line between work and life almost disappears. The idea of retiring from it would feel like losing a part of themselves.

When I watch someone like Thomas Heaton, I feel I am looking at one of those people. The long drives, the nights in the van, the early hikes, the editing, the printing, the videos. It all seems to sit in the same space for him. It is work, but it also looks very much like his life.

His YouTube channel follows him as he heads out for landscape photographs, often in his van, sometimes camping, usually with a camera backpack, his tripod and a plan to chase light. There are videos just about turning a plain van into a kind of portable studio, a small moving home that lets him park near a trail, cook a meal, dry his gear and sleep a few metres from tomorrow’s sunrise. I remember clips of him sitting in the back of the van, making a cup of tea after a long hike, the wind outside while he talks through the image he has just made. Then there are glimpses of his studio back home, with prints on the wall and shelves filled with books and gear.

There is one video in particular where he parks the van in the Lake District, sleeps there for the night and wakes up already on location for sunrise, just a short walk away from his viewpoint. It feels like he has managed to arrange his life around the outdoors, light and weather, and it is simply a joy to see.

Of course a part of me thinks about what it would have been like to follow a path like that. To have a van, that kind of time, a studio dedicated only to photographs. But I also want to say this clearly: I am genuinely happy for people like him. I find real enjoyment in seeing someone build a life around the thing they love, and to see that life in all its small routines and details. Their happiness, at least as it appears on screen, feels like something I can quietly share in rather than something to resent.

My own days look different. Right now I rarely get the chance to leave the city, let alone disappear into the mountains for a week. Work, family and a long list of ordinary responsibilities keep my days full and mostly rooted here in Lahore.

Most people I know live inside some version of this and it feels like a fairly normal part of life. Even the photographers who seem completely free on YouTube have their own invisible constraints that never make it into the videos. We see the best light, the best trips, the tidy edits.

One of the simple gifts of YouTube is that it lets you slip into someone else’s life for fifteen or twenty minutes. If I cannot stand on a cliff edge in Scotland or camp in a forest, I can still sit here in Lahore and watch someone who is doing exactly that. I get to share a little of their weather, their effort, their joy. Thomas Heaton’s channel has become one of those small escapes for me, a way to breathe a bit wider inside the reality I do have.

And when the video ends, I am still here in Lahore, with its impossible traffic, tangled wires, sometimes with a camera on the streets and sometimes with a laptop in my office, writing engineering proposals for hydropower projects.

I think I am somewhere in the middle. I enjoy watching people like Thomas Heaton without turning their lives into a yardstick for my own. I am happy that some people have managed to build their weeks around what they love and at the same time I keep doing what I can with what I have – my family most of all, this website, these notes, my cameras and the bits of enjoyment I get out of my own photography whenever life allows.

I just found out that Thomas is now working on his third camper van. If you are curious about how his latest build is coming together, you might enjoy this video on his new MAN TGE 4×4