I’ve got a picture in a Guardian photo gallery today – the story will follow tomorrow. There are some nice editorial images in there (certainly far stronger than mine) – my personal favourite is the final one.

I spent today with a youth media project in York, looking at risky behaviours and the peer pressure teenagers can find themselves under. I didn’t take many pictures but it felt nice to give my camera a dust-off after a photo drought of more than a month. I was pretty streetwise at school but I have to admit to being quite shocked hearing about some of the hedonistic behaviour that now seems par for the course among young teenagers in Britain today. The group’s handiwork will be turned into short films for their peers on making positive choices.

Youngsters study in an evening school in Rambagan, one of Kolkata’s main red light districts. The classes, run by the charity Child in Need Institute, ensure children from the neighbourhood are safe in the evenings and able to keep up with their education. Many children’s mothers are sex workers who work from their homes. Others are at risk of trafficking, alcohol or drug abuse or other social problems if they hang around on the streets at night. Some children have graduated from the night schools and gone on to university.

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One of my images has been commended in the Sunrise Awards for new professional photographers in the north of England. I can’t actually remember which pictures i entered and haven’t officially been told which one has been picked, but a mole tells me it is probably the one above. I have to admit that I feel like a bit of a prat for entering the occasional award because I know that really these things are more about ego than what really matters – namely (in documentary photography) the people whose stories we are meant to be telling. Still though, it’s nice to have something recognised, especially at a time when I’m feeling quite low in confidence and have barely shot a photo in six weeks. I’m itching to get back out there but am no longer interested in single frames, and am in the middle of the long and drawn-out process of trying to work out access for the next project I want to work on.

A few weeks ago I wrote that I had spent a day working on a mental health community project, mainly taking photos of a former head master with Alzheimer’s. This is the final piece put together using my images, along with photos and recordings and other input from lots of other people. It’s about the stigma of living with mental illness, and I think it does a great job.

I was talking to someone about letters of complaint the other day and remembered one which I received last year but never posted up. It arrived the day my Moving On photofilm was carried on the BBC website. It still makes me laugh A LOT.

I had quite a laugh this morning, taking some cheesy portraits of a group of Czech Roma boys who are doing some recordings of their hip hop tracks. They didn’t think much of some of the locations I suggested, because apparently grass “isn’t hip hop.” I think they were hoping for sports cars and bikini-clad babes but there aren’t many of those around the Salford/Manchester borderlands. I love their hip hop hands.

I’ve been really busy with work recently and it’s weeks since I have taken any photos for myself. This should change shortly as my MA course begins again next week, although that will no doubt return me to an almost-permanent state of agitation as I try to spin too many plates at once. I have no idea what I’m going to photograph for the early assignments (not that I know what any of them involve) but I am trying hard at the moment to build the bridges that should help me produce a meaningful major project on the subject I want. In the meantime, a few portaits I have shot recently on stories I’ve been working on for Inside Housing and the Guardian. These may or not be used.