The November CreativeMornings/Dublin event is taking place on 1 December at 8:30am in The Tara Buildings. The theme is Death, and the speaker is Donal Moloney, who’s a photographer with more than 30 years experience. Our resident blogger, Specky Scribbler, sat down with him to discuss all things photography, death and decay.

Donal is perhaps best known for his documentary, Martin, about a man who lived under the railway bridge on Westland Row for years. Donal came to know and build a relationship with Martin, and to this day, they go out once a week for dinner or to the cinema. Donal loves ‘characters’, and getting to know people’s stories. Perhaps then you might wonder why he loves taking photos of derelict and abandoned buildings.

‘Well, when you go into these houses or buildings, you find things left behind. Often the houses are left because there are no families to take them back, so nature does.’

But if nature takes them back, how do you find the stories and find out more about the people?

‘I just ask. I go to the next neighbour - they may be 20 miles away - and I ask about the house up the road, what happened to the people there. Then people just start to talk. They love to talk and share. They don’t mind. I just tell them I’m a photographer and this is what I do for fun.’

It was about 5 years ago when Donal decided that there was something missing. His agency work is something he really enjoys, but he didn’t get the chance to get back into photography, back into what he loved doing.

‘I’ve been behind a camera since I was very young. 5 years ago I just wanted to get back to it and find my love of photography again. So that’s what I did. I looked for abandoned and derelict properties around Ireland and I infiltrated them. I liked going into old abandoned asylums and seeing what was left. Generally though, they’re small little normal houses. The big manor houses don’t exist anymore, but the small ones do. Little farm houses, coach houses. They’re left on the edge of property, left just the way they were years ago.’

So, Donal is known for his commercial work, and for Martin, but that’s not what he’ll be talking about in December.

‘There’s nothing to do with Death in Martin’s story. Nothing at all. I hope people don’t expect to see much of that stuff when I discuss death. I’ll be showing photos of the old buildings I found. Hopefully they don’t find it boring.’

If my coffee with Donal is anything to go by, his talk will be the farthest thing from boring.