An Extra Ray of Sunshine — Brighton Pride 2026

Flash on the Street: Daylight Portraits at Brighton Pride

Earlier this summer I was at Trans Pride Brighton in July — a chilled, community-led march through the city that felt, in the best possible way, like Brighton simply being Brighton.

You can read that post here. Pride on the 1st of August was something else entirely.

There is an annual moment, somewhere around late July, where I start getting excited about Brighton Pride. It is not just an event. It is a pilgrimage — a gathering that pulls in the four corners of Brighton, Sussex, and the UK, and beyond that, quite literally, the world.

This year I heard Spanish accents, Italian accents, Latin American accents. I stood in the middle of a street in Brighton, in the full heat of an August afternoon, surrounded by people who had come from everywhere to be here. That is what Pride does, and why it matters, and why I keep coming back with a camera.

A Different Kind of Day

This year I came with something new in my bag: a Godox IM30 manual flash. First outing. The plan was to use it for daylight street portraits — shooting with my Sony A7 III and a 24mm lens — and the discipline it imposed was immediate and unforgiving. To get the flash working properly, I needed to be between six and nine feet from my subject. No hanging back. No safety of distance. Right in, close, direct.

It is, to put it plainly, quite an intimate way to photograph strangers.

What surprised me was how it was received. At an event like Pride, where self-expression is the whole point, people understood the camera. They gave me their time. They gave me their faces. They stood still for a moment in the middle of a moving crowd and let the flash do its thing.

In my eyes, the flash added an extra ray of sunshine to what was already a glorious day.

The World Came to Brighton

This year's Pride carried a weight that last year's didn't. In the background — not spoken about loudly, but present — was the shadow of the terror attacks in Berlin. The police presence was visible and increased. Security was tighter. You noticed it if you were looking.

And yet the crowd filled the streets regardless. That is not naivety — it is something closer to defiance, or perhaps just determination. The people who come to Brighton Pride have usually decided, in one way or another, that they are not going to let fear dictate where they stand.

The sun helped. It is hard to feel anything but alive in that kind of heat, in that kind of crowd, with that much colour moving through the streets.

Brighton, After Twelve Years

I have lived in Brighton for twelve years. My children, who are now nineteen and twenty-three, grew up here. I have watched this city shape them in ways I couldn't have planned, and I remain grateful for it every time I walk these streets.

After the parade, my son and I had a wander. No agenda — just the two of us, a beer somewhere, a bite to eat. The kind of afternoon that doesn't photograph well but stays with you.

Brighton is a wonderful place to bring up children. It teaches them, early and without fuss, that the world contains more kinds of people than they will ever be able to count — and that this is not something to be afraid of. It is something to be curious about.

That is what I was doing on Saturday with the Godox IM30. Being curious. Getting close. Asking people, with a camera and a flash and six to nine feet of space between us, if they'd give me a moment.

Almost everyone said yes.

Until next time, keep snapping