Chris Maclean is a British designer and photographer based in Manchester, UK, whose work drifts between observation and emotion.

As a designer, he solves problems and shapes systems; as a photographer, he steps into a different world entirely — one without briefs, boundaries, or outcomes. Photography is where he creates freely, led only by instinct, atmosphere, and feeling.

Chris has spent years travelling the world, living in Australia and New York, and wandering through Asia, South America, Japan, and beyond. Wherever he goes — whether far from home or on familiar streets — he walks alone with a camera, waiting for the world to offer something fleeting: a quiet figure, a break in the fog, a gesture most people would never notice. His work is rooted in these small moments that happen constantly around us and disappear in a breath. He sees them, gathers them, and gives them a cinematic life.

When photographing people, Chris often begins with a conversation sparked only by the presence of the camera. After the initial awkwardness fades, he asks them to stare into the lens and simply exist — no smiles, no performance. He releases the shutter when he feels they’ve stopped trying to be anything and have become themselves. A brief truth is shared, a story exchanged, and then they part — often never to meet again. At other times, he works candidly, finding honesty in unguarded movement and unnoticed interactions.

In landscapes, he is drawn to thresholds: fog-drenched forests, solitary roads, vanishing bridges, birds lifting into heavy skies. His images live in the in-between — between the known and the unknown, stillness and motion, waking and dream. They are not documents of places, but records of what a moment felt like.

Characterised by muted tones, emotional quiet, and an almost cinematic sense of atmosphere, Chris’s photography doesn’t seek to explain or solve. It simply asks the viewer to pause — to feel something, however small, however fleeting.

This is where his art lives: in the freedom to wander, to notice, and to honour the invisible mood of the world.