Gary Numan - Electronic Sound Magazine / December 1, 2015 by Ed Walker

I think the most important thing about shooting someone like Gary Numan is that I feel like I need to slow down. You are obviously nervous about taking a pioneer of electronic music’s picture, but I always feel like I’ve done it too quick. When it’s happening your mind is going 100 miles per hour and you are adapting to your surroundings and making it up as you go along. Next time I’ll try and stop and remember that you need to make the most of the time you have. Even though I was prepared with my Nikon and Speedlight, Sony and reflector I never got the reflector out and the shots with the Speedlight were not up to scratch because I didn’t think through the situation before it was too late. I even knew what picture I wanted to take and although I got the shot in the end it was a close call. However, each time you learn something new and take away another experience that feeds the up and coming projects…

Get your copy at www.electronicsound.co.uk

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LoneLady - Electronic Sound Magazine / September 14, 2015 by Ed Walker

The Barbican is a fantastic venue for pretty much anything they want to do, so a series of gigs in their arts space sound like a fabulous idea, in theory...

Electronic Sound asked me to go to the Barbican to take some pictures of LoneLady, who by her own admission is not really an electronic artist, she sounds to me like a mix of Joy Division and, well actually I don't really know. She was resident in a small studio space near the gallery and in there she had been recording and practicing. The space was packed full of recording equipment, laptops and a big analogue synth. This belonged to another artist on the bill that night, Wrangler, who Electronic Sound asked me to shoot as well.

When I arrived I met the PR and she told me Julie (LoneLady) was pretty tired and could I make it as quick as possible. When I was introduced to Julie she was quiet and clearly tired and probably nervous about the gig that evening. The lighting in the studio space was just how I like it, low and ambient and there was also a lovely red desk lamp which helped colour the mood too.

We started by shooting Julie in front of the massive synth which Neil from Electronic Sound had specifically told me to make sure I get a good one of. It's a beautiful wood panelled machine with loads of inputs and knobs and lights so fabulous to shoot someone in front of. I'd been taking pictures of it on it's own and had pointed the red lamp over the top of it to alter the look and when Julie came in to be photographed I left it where it was so it was pointing over her shoulder at me.

Once we had a few shots in the studio I took her out the the foyer area where there were loads of amazing concrete pillars and rough textures, we shot by the lifts and in front of big signs using the available light. I still need to work on my directing of subjects, I'm so used to getting one or maybe two opportunities to shoot on the street that I forget that with portraiture I can take my time!

After that Julie went off to rest and Benge from Wrangler came in to be interviewed and I took the opportunity to take some shot of him playing with the synth and a couple of portraits too.

Once the interview by Danny Turner had been done it was time for their sound check. The space was truly a gallery space with white walls which had projected movies on and in the centre a square plinth which the artists were going to play from. All the equipment was set up and while they were doing their sound check I got some great shots, these turned out to be much better than the actual gig.

When the evening came around the people started milling into the gallery space something became abundantly clear, this is a gallery and not a music venue, which means there were hardly any lights. Also the PR told me that Wrangler has specifically asked for the lighting to be low. The result was that despite my best efforts I didn't get a single live shot of Wrangler I was happy with. When Lonelady came on the lighting was slightly better meaning I got one or two usable shots but I really wasn't happy with them. In retrospect I should have taken my tripod and in future I will because if I had I might have got something I was a little more happy with.

The result was that I was very happy with the portraits but not at all happy with the live shots. I should have been more prepared, I am so used to thinking that both my Sony and my Nikon can handle anything that when they can't I am taken by surprise; not next time!

Get your copy of Electronic Sound here!

A new me / February 5, 2015 by Ed Walker

So as of the start of February 2015 I’m going freelance, I’ve done this before but for different reasons, this time I’m doing it because I want to readdress the balance in my life and buy back some time. I’ve been a Digital Designer for nearly 20 years, in that time I’ve launched a Print Design company, a Digital Agency, a music dot com, I’ve also worked in e-learning, live music, publishing, finance and, just recently, communication companies. I’ve also been freelance a few times before. But this time it’s different.

Ever since I left my job at Immediate Media a year ago there has been something nagging at me and photography has been a massive part of that. I’ve always thought I was a pretty good designer but never great and I’m ok with that. I’ve never strived to better myself in any extraordinary way, just what was needed at the time and situation I was in. However, when I re-discovered photography that all changed. Suddenly I had found an art form that I was fully comfortable with, I can hear my voice finally, something I never have been able to do with design. When I joined Immediate Media after a month I very nearly left the company because I didn’t feel like I was doing very well and I also watched this video:

http://vimeo.com/39578584

Now I don’t want to make massive wet plate photographs, although that would be cool, but I want to commit myself to my art like this guy is committed to his. I will always have a backup because I can go back to work, what I do is actually very much in demand at the moment and I’m good enough to get a job at reasonably short notice but in many ways I don’t want that, I want no backup, I want it to be this or die.

It’s taken my recent experience with my last job, where the whole company has to hot desk, the equipment is poor and the tech support even poorer, the whole organisation is a mess and no one really cares to make me realise, life is too short for this.

I don’t know why I take the pictures I do, I don’t know what pictures I could take if I had a lot more time to devote to it and that is much more important to me than earning enough money to buy a house. I need to get to the bottom of why I’m so drawn to the images I make and the only thing I really want is to find out how great I could be at making pictures, where that could take me and how much better my life could be as a result.

To do this I’m thinking of doing an MA in Photography, the project needs to represent a further understanding into my process but also look at another aspect of my work and I’m not sure what that could be yet, but I’m working on it. I’m also going to travel and shoot in different places, interested to see the difference in responses and reactions to my style and my approach. It’s going to take a lot of networking, something I really find hard.

The ultimate goal is to find a way through my passion to a satisfactory result. The best thing about that is I have no idea what that result will be, it’s also scary but there is nothing I love more than a clean sheet to start again and make something new. A new me.

Lunchtagram / August 7, 2014 by Ed Walker

There are two things that really move your photography forward, new technology and a new setting. When I moved to Edinburgh one of the things I was most worried about was the lack of Underground system to shoot my close up portraits on.

When I started shooting in Edinburgh I went to the underground car boot sale for my low light stuff but it wasn’t the sort of environment that I could practice my close up portraiture but then two things happened. I rediscovered Instagram and I bought a new camera, a Sony A6000. It was only the super quick auto focus and WiFi connectivity of the A6000 that allowed me to get back into the close up work.

Every lunchtime I go out and walk up and down Princes street taking pictures of tourists and locals; practising my technique of walking across their path or quickly darting in front of them to get a close up shot. I love the work of Bruce Gilden but don’t quite have the courage to get right in the face of my subjects like he does yet, however I managed to get some quite impressive shots of the unusual and interesting women who populate the city centre. It’s not the perfect time of the day to shoot, in the midday sun, but I was surprised by the results.

Instagram evolved earlier this year to give you much more editing power over your pictures adding vignetting, sharpening and much more control over your colour as well as the standard filters it’s always had, this allowed me to get the type of results I always look for. In addition the WiFi connection between my phone and my camera allowed me to get my pictures into Instagram immediately resulting in an ever growing set that allows me to scratch my itch of close up work once again, let me know what you think.

You can see the full set here

Sony A6000 first thoughts / June 5, 2014 by Ed Walker

So this is not a technical review, specs don’t interest me at all. This is a short piece on my reaction to this camera after one week of using it. If you don’t have time to read it the TL:DR is the Sony A6000 is the best camera I’ve ever used.

I’ve been slugging my Nikon D7000 around for three years and it’s heavy and big and cumbersome. The reason I’ve been doing that is that it performs, no other camera I’ve ever used could match it’s autofocus, it’s low light capability and it’s immense battery life.

For the past 8 months I’ve been struggling, persevering and becoming more and more frustrated with my Fuji X100, a camera which takes amazing pictures but has a glacial autofocus and a dreadful battery life. I experimented with zone focussing but found it just too difficult in low light and I’ve tried slowing down my photography, but I wasn’t getting the results I wanted. I would often go out and shoot, miss shot after shot and find myself cursing it all the way up to the moment the battery died.

The one aspect of the Fuji that I did like was it’s size and weight. Being able to just slip it into my pocket was really appealing so I’ve been looking for something for a while but of all the mirrorless cameras out there I haven’t been able to find one that was the right price coupled with the right performance. I need fast autofocus in low light, it’s what my photography is based on and I can’t compromise on that.

So when the Sony A6000 was announced I read the reviews and after a particularly disappointing evenings shoot with the Fuji I just went ahead and bought it.

I’ve been shooting with it for a week with the 35mm f1.8 lens and it’s speed, accuracy and image quality has blown me away. The electronic viewfinder is bright and clear, the menus are pretty good compared to even the Nikon (and head and shoulders above the puzzle menus of the Fuji) but it’s the autofocus that really stands out as a stunning feature.

With face recognition switched on it locks onto people so well and so quick that it feels faster than the Nikon and whilst I’m still getting my head around the other focus settings, so far it’s performed amazingly well. I’ve been able to point the camera in someones general direction and it locks onto their face and gives and clear sharp image at f1.8 focussed on their eyes.

The low light outperforms the Fuji with far less grain and even at the lowest light levels the autofocus didn’t even blink.

Battery life too is great due to some neat power saving tricks like a proximity sensor next to the eyepiece so the electronic viewfinder only comes on when you look through it. I shot for around 3-4 hours without a charge and still had around 30% left however this is all academic because the A6000 uses an Micro USB cable (like Android phones) so you can charge it from your computer, lovely.

It’s also tiny, with the lens on it’s not quite small enough to put in your coat pocket but taking into account the performance this is still a very compact and light camera which is comfortable to hold and much lighter than my Nikon.

So it’s only been a week but I’ve decided to go all in and sell my Nikon and lenses, I’m that confident in the abilities of this little camera. I’ve bought a 50mm f1.8 lens to accompany my 35mm and I’m looking forward to combining the wider style shots I’ve been getting at the car boot sale with much more intimate close up portraits, I finally feel like I have the camera that can deliver the performance I need without compromise.

Photography on Immediate.co.uk / August 19, 2013 by admin

The new Immediate Media website has just gone live and there is quite a considerable amount of my photography on it, mainly the staff portraits which I have been shooting on and off for the past couple of weeks. This is the first major project I’ve done with pro grade flash kits. I’ve taken over one hundred portraits after having little over a day training. As you can probably imagine it’s been quite a challenge but it’s also been really rewarding because I would have never thought of myself as being able to achieve these kinds of results, nevermind direct the subjects and edit them to be consistent throughout.

I’ve always thought that if I were to attempt portraiture I would attempt to bring some of my street ethos into the studio but with a strict brief like this it’s virtually impossible. Only careful repetition and an almost robot like approach to the technique will give you the results that are needed. One thing is for sure, I wouldn’t want to do this full time, however it has sparked my interest in how I can actually say something with this completely different setup and relationship between myself and the subject.

First half of 2013 / August 3, 2013 by admin

After the being exhibited three times last year, featured on the Guardian website and for the first time really finding my feet in an artistic endeavour that was purely mine (and that was being heaped with praise), the first half of 2013 has been a struggle. Late last year, a female friend made a public tirade against me telling me that I was no better than a man who wolf whistles at women down the street. That was one of the nicer things she said, I won’t go into the other details. Whether she really thought this, was having a bad day or even if she was drunk, it got to me. From November last year to the middle of 2013 my rate of pictures dropped dramatically.

So this is the first half of 2013’s better output and I think it’s telling, I’m not as close in a lot of pictures. I’m choosing my subjects more carefully and I’ve really tailed off from the commuter pictures.

So here it is, this is a re-adjustment, a tweaking of my style and while I don’t think it’s quite as edgy as my output from last year I’m hoping that will return in time. I’ve decided to stop concentrating on creating with the intent of being exhibited and looking for praise and really put my efforts into a long term project thats simple and focussed and solid. I’m not really concerned how long it takes me, I’m imagining it will take me years but I know what I want to say now and I’m going to concentrate on saying it.

You can buy my book "2012, Women" here

My 2012 / January 13, 2013 by admin

2012 has been a pivotal year in my photography. During the previous two years I had plans to be exhibited and published but up until 2012 it hadn’t come to fruition. There is one main reason for this, I didn’t have my thing. In 2011 I spent a lot of time shooting street, specifically Borough Market, and I think this was training me to get closer. The market gets very cramped and crowded and I was finding that to get the shots I wanted I needed to be quick and close with my subjects, it also allowed me to move on swiftly and over the year I was getting bolder with my shots.

Then in January 2012 I decided to buy a new camera. Due to a banking error (PPI related) I could afford to step up my equipment and was deciding between a D7000 and a D700. A friend had a D7000 and lent it to me to play with before made my decision. The same day I stepped onto a tube at London Bridge and shot the most important image of my life. I caught the eye of a girl in headphones standing 3 feet away from me in a crowded tube carriage and as I raised my camera to my eye, focussed and took one frame. She continued to hold her gaze, she posed for me. As they say that the first reaction colours your whole approach, this couldn’t have been better, if I ever see her again I will thank her because it gave me the courage to get closer, seek eye contact and capture intense, personal images that a lot of people seem to really like.

That shot not only gave me my thing, it set off a year of pictures which would see my work being described by the Guardian Camera Club as ‘stylish and uncompromising’, win places in three separate exhibitions and have a follow up photography review with Gina Glover where she heaped praise on how far I had come in the 12 months since I first showed her my work.

After that first shot I quickly followed it up with a great portrait of another woman, this time on a bus in Brixton and over the coming months I built up half a dozen close up street portraits. Also in May I moved jobs and my commute was extended to take in London Bridge to Angel and it was here that I captured some great images of tube life. The great thing about tube stations is that they are not only platforms but also stages, lit (in London Bridge’s case) by spotlights and full of subjects from every walk of life. It was these images that caught the attention of the Guardian Camera Club who reviewed a portfolio of 6 images that I submitted to their Flickr group.

It was also on Flickr that I submitted some pictures to a competition ran by The Horniman Museum called ‘The London Look Photography Challenge’ and the first image I took in January was selected out of over 300 images to become one of 14 images exhibited in the Museum.

Shortly after that the tube images that II submitted to the London Independent Photographers member show were shortlisted and they chose two to be exhibited in The Strand Gallery near Charing Cross. Then to round off a great year Photofusion in Brixton chose another close up portrait taken on the Victoria Line for their AMPS Salon show in December.

I want to continue with tube life images and after a brief experiment with Blurb books I want to launch a number of books on different subjects. In addition to the close up portraits, I have continued to shoot London landscapes, street and also experimented a little with traditional portraiture. I plan to submit my work to a lot more magazines and competitions, and to push my style out to as many different avenues as possible. After seeing what I can achieve in one year, and knowing I could do so much more, I can see a creatively prosperous future for my photography.

By standers / July 1, 2012 by admin

Sometimes the people I train my camera on don’t see me, it’s becoming a rarer and rarer event because I now stand very close, put my camera to my eye and wait. Even then occasionally they are too engrossed in what they are doing (usually their phones) or I can see that they have noticed my out of the corner of their eye and are determined not to look at me. Then the stars of the pictures become the by standers, they are watching me looking at my intended subject and I very rarely notice them, it’s only afterwards in processing that I will see a face in the background, watching me.

It’s interesting because they are observing me often without considering the fact they might be in the photograph, they might become the key. I don’t know why I need the eyes but there is something that legitimises a picture when I have a set of eyes staring down the lens at me. Maybe my photography is legitimised by viewers and like in my close up portraits where I get a reactions, all I’m looking for is to be seen. It’s something I have been considering for a while, that the photographer is the subject of the photograph and what the viewer sees are people’s reaction to the subject. I’ve never heard of a photographer taking this position before and it’s something I want to explore further.

My first fashion shoot / April 5, 2012 by admin

It’s that moment when you realise you have absolutely no idea what you are doing, you just have to resort to whatever experience you have gained from the last few years taking pictures without an audience or anyone standing in front of you asking you what to do. I’d said yes to a fashion shoot mainly because I’ve never done one, I work in magazines and I’m trying to get as much experience as I can in as many facets of photography possible. This was a safe environment where I knew the clients quite well, they knew my work and as it was a favour there was considerably less pressure; but there is always that moment when you are there and it’s happening.

I have no experience using lights or flash, to illustrate this I was standing there wondering why the camera wouldn’t go over 250th of a second when the flash was up. Most of you will be facepalming right now but this is the extent of my ignorance. I am busy now watching videos after being advised not to go on a course when I can learn it all online.

So armed with just a reflector, three designers, a makeup artist and a model we went to a run down artist studio in Bermondsey. As the makeup artist was working we scoped out the building and found half a dozen spots where we could get enough light and there was interesting backdrops. There were eleven outfits to shoot and about two hours of light.

The first couple of outfits took far too long, the model was quite stiff and unsure and we weren’t really getting much I was happy with. It took the first hour and a few location changes for the first good images to start to appear and from then on it felt plain sailing. As the sun went down we even got some golden shots with the sun behind and reflected light illuminating the model.

I never quite got the hang of the flash though, but next time.

Getting closer / February 1, 2012 by admin

It’s a piece of advice you’ll hear over and over again, especially in Street Photography: “Get closer and you will get a far more intimate and interesting image.” In practice it can be terrifying to raise your camera when you are within arms length of someone and there will be absolutely no doubt that you are taking a picture of them. I have been experimenting with a cheap 18-55 plastic kit lens that I got with my Nikon D50. Holding the camera against my chest with the lens wide on 18 I can get really close to people and catch them completely unaware, especially when walking through a crowd.

But recently I’ve wanted to get closer and with my 50mm f1.8 and at eye level. I tested a Nikon D7000 before eventually deciding to buy, it’s much quicker than my D80 and also the shutter is quieter, so on a journey home one evening I was getting bolder and closer. On the tube there was a beautiful blonde girl with headphones standing 3ft away. In the shot she looked straight down the lens and it’s safely the best street portrait I’ve ever taken.

The best places to do this are where the rules of personal space have been suspended due to practicality, like a tube or bus. I don’t go out of my way to spark up a conversation with them after I have taken the image, but they would simply have to say they wanted me to delete the image and I would. It’s only happened once and I deleted the image on the spot.

A couple of days later I found myself opposite a stylish black girl, again with headphones, on a bus in Brixton. This time as I raised my camera her eyes swept across me and settled top left, another perfect shot: full of attitude, style and personality.

This is the way forward. The buzz you get from getting this close, provoking a reaction and walking away with a shot that pops with the very best of humanity in it’s many forms. I’ve gone from taking pictures of buildings to taking pictures of people and wondering why on earth I bothered with buildings at all, to not being happy with wider images of people and wanting to get in so close that not only do I see them, but they see me.

Seaside / October 10, 2011 by admin

When I was a child my parents had a caravan in Norfolk, on the East coast of England. I spent up to 6 weeks a year, every year, playing on beaches in rock pools with seaweed, crabs and cold wet sand. We used to spend a lot of time at the beach, on the cliffs and around the concrete ramps and sea barriers that you can find in every single coastal town in the UK.

I stopped going when I was a teenager and have rarely been back to those kinds of places in adult life but having just spent a weekend in Margate and Broadstairs, so many memories came flooding back. The textures, smells and visuals that I had rarely thought about since visiting them last evoked that feeling you get when something from childhood that you had forgotten about surprises you; so I set about shooting.

Lots of photographers like Martin Parr have shot at the seaside and commented on the uniquely British sense of holiday but these shots are more about my memories and I don’t think they talk about that old fashioned run down feel that so many other photogs do when they cover the subject. I tried to shoot things that were not about where I was, but what I remembered. Some of them are classic seaside shots, but some are much more personal, especially when it comes to the preformed concrete that I spend so much time playing around. It seems so cold and alien to somewhere so soft as a beach but indicates quite how powerful the sea can be.

So I hope I’ve captured the beauty of the British seaside, it’s what I remember from my childhood.

Borough Market / August 25, 2011 by admin

Borough Market is well known as being a busy market in the London Bridge area of the capital. Most tourists see it rammed full of people and in full flow selling a variety of produce, ranging from everyday veg to fine pastries as well as lots of delicious food on the go; half real market - half tourist destination. I see it a little bit differently. At 9 am in the morning it’s either empty, if there is no market that day, or busily being set up by the vendors. Vans are parked in areas that will be full of people only an hour or so later, commuters are passing through on their way to work and locals with their dogs are drinking coffee.

It’s at this time that you can pick out individuals, see the workers in action, feel the build up; but it’s also very quiet, most people walking through are wearing headphones. Away from the main road it feels like an oasis.

The market it situated next to Southwark Cathedral in a very old, and relatively unspoilt part of the Southbank, which is also home to The Golden Hinde, The Clink prison, The Globe Theatre and Tate Modern: the mix of people makes for great photos. It might be one of London’s most photographed tourist spots but most of those pictures only tell one small part of the story. I plan to create a more rounded view of of the market, visiting it at varying times, specifically the end of the day and also at different times of the year.

Geometry, shadows and negative space / August 19, 2011 by admin

Last Sunday I helped paint Lucy’s flat, she has an apartment above her artist space and studio and it’s pretty big. Her living space was originally going to be an office, so it’s painted white. When we had finished it looked like a beautiful sea of white like a fresh fall of snow. So I got my camera out. The bannister's looked great, as did the white brickwork and curtain hoops all in white and when I took the contrast down even further they start to look like ghostly images.

Afterwards I was thinking about why I had taken the pictures, it’s not the first time I’ve taken images like this. In fact with an early Kodak digital camera, living in Bristol, it was the first artistic set of photographs I ever took. My bedroom had unusual ceiling plasterwork which created really interesting shapes and shadows. At the time I was going to use them to paint some pictures, but I never did. Since then I’ve shot pictures of the stainless steel ski slope roof at Vauxhall Station, motion blurred images of train tracks and quite obviously there is a whole theme of geometry, shadows and negative space going on in the images I like. Even my pictures of Spaceships are as much about the negative space they create as the buildings themselves.

I suppose my career as a Graphic Designer has a great deal to do with this, as a designer these kind of images are easy to work with if you are laying out copy or designing posters but there is something very comforting about choosing and shooting a geometric theme. The way you can get the same geometric proportions from vastly different scales and find the same pleasing space and negative space from totally random subjects is, I think, why I seem to come back to it again and again. I think it’s like slipping back into a comfort zone while I experiment and learn about new things.

Goodbye Black and White / August 5, 2011 by admin

“Give me something to do”

Just over a year and a half ago I needed a project and spoke to my photography tutor Dave Hodgkinson http://www.davehodgkinson.com/blog/. He tasked me to study Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand and other famous and influential Street Photographers.

Since then my focus in Photography has been Street because as soon as I got out there is becomes very obvious quite how difficult it is and how many mental obstacles you need to overcome to get truly amazing Street shots.

As you may or may not know, Street is traditionally shot in Black and White and I duly went about converting my images, and that is the point of this post.

I’m saying goodbye to Black and White.

It’s not because I don’t like Black and White images, it’s not because I think i still have a long way to go before I can create truly great Black and White conversions, even though I do. It’s because I feel more comfortable in colour. It feels more natural to me and after looking at images by nick Turpin and Martin Parr I just feel that moving to colour will give me more reach. At the moment I can’t imagine exhibiting Black and White images. The pictures I’m making are composed in colour and in so many cases an element on their modernity and reality seems to be stripped out when I remove the colour.

This has been whirring around my head for sometime but only really settled whilst I was in California recently staying on my brothers farm. He wanted images he could use on postcards for the people who buy organic produce from him. Obviously these were in colour and there wasn’t even a conversation about whether the pictures should be in colour, the beautiful Lavender, Cherry trees and Sunsets of the farm can’t be represented in Black and White.

However, when I went into San Francisco and shot some Street, I didn’t turn them into Black and White and suddenly felt they spoke to me through the colour. The looked modern, they looked more real and, maybe because I have become more proficient at processing my images in Lightroom, they looked more professional.

So when I recently had my photography portfolio review with Gina Glover it was great to hear that one of the first things she told me was that I was a colour photographer and she thought I should stop shooting in Black and White.

So this is a collection of the Black and White Street shots. Looking back I now realise how far I’ve come but I feel I need to continue this journey in colour. I’m sure it will change what I shoot, I think it already has and I hope it’s going to extend, enhance and expand the images I make.

Canada Water / August 2, 2011 by admin

On Sunday evening I visited Canada Water to grab some images during the golden hour. I would never describe myself as a wildlife photographer, the wildest thing I usually shoot are ferrel kids in Brixton.

Situated near Rotherhithe, Canada Water is a fresh water lake with a small canal leading to Surrey Water. It’s all that’s left of Surrey Water docks and is now surrounded by flats.

I’m interested in London wildlife and how it co-exists with us in such a large city. With so much park land it seems odd that anything would choose such a scrappy bit of water. Admittedly there weren’t a great deal of birds there but the ones that were had nested in unbelievably close proximity to human life. I could have reached from the edge and taken a Coots chick quite easily.

The image I am most happy with is the Pigeon, with the city background and the pigeon looking straight at me. Unlike most London Pigeons this one looks relatively healthy and provides a nice juxtaposition with the old 60’s tower block on the left and the new development being build on the waterside to the right.