Ed Walker Photography Retrospective 2010 - 2025 Spotlight / May 28, 2025 by Ed Walker

It’s November 2015 New York and I’m photographing the usual street fair I had in London, walking the cold winter streets, going to interesting spots with my partner and generally getting a feel for the light, the people, and the general vibe. I had gone there because 2015 had been a rotten year of freelance work and financial stress. I had a partner living there so I went for three months to get away. I would post on Instagram everyday but on the whole I didn’t give it much thought, I never thought I’d end up producing my most successful project both in terms of accolades but also in creative expression.

New York is a grid, like many US cities and it was one cold winter morning as I was walking down 5th Avenue that I stopped at a crossing waiting for the traffic that I looked to my right and right there waiting with me was an older guy in smart dark coat, collar up and holding the top button to keep out the biting wind. The sun was beating down despite the cold and it lit him beautifully. Because the sun was facing us the road leading away from us was in shadow. I took a few shots of him and that started what became Spotlight. A project that was a finalist in the 2016 LensCulture Street Photography Awards.

The time between that first shot and the award was about 8 months, in between that time I attended a class at the International Center of Photography called 'New Colour Projects' headed by Christine Callahan where I showed a lot of my recent New York shots and we studied the art of looking at, collating, and editing our work in a very analogue way of printing everything you shoot and sticking them up on a wall and living with them, passing them by every day, moving stuff around, letting them breathe. It’s the technique I now use for every project I do and it’s invaluable.

Of all the pictures I showed that one of the old guy was always the best so I went looking for that light and eventually I shot a bus tour guide who was standing on the pavement in front of the bus and somehow the light illuminated him from above, I was off and 10,000 shots later I had 20 pictures that I was happy with. By far the most photos I’ve ever taken for a project and I think it shows.

When I returned to London in late 2016 I explored a lot of other ideas, mainly night shoots at the Wimbledon Dogs and on Oxford street but eventually during a particularly bright and clear summer I returned to the concept of using the sun to spotlight my subjects. As London is most certainly not a grid it took a long time to find a spot that would work and also unusually when I found the place to shoot on Carnaby Street, I mostly took every shot from almost the same spot. Every other project I like to keep on the move but because the light was so perfect and the street is just so unbelievably busy it made the most sense.

I used a wider lens and got much more of the subject in the shot which I think helped differentiate these from the New York shots. They definitely have their own feel, probably because of the location and that certain something Londoners bring to the street. I think you could do this project in any major city around the world and I would feel different and unique, maybe I will.

Ed Walker Photography Retrospective 2010 - 2025: Typologies / May 21, 2025 by Ed Walker

What do you collect? I collect vinyl, most of mine is from the 80’s and 90’s and now I collect it not to play it but to enjoy the format, the rarity and the nostalgia. What do you remember? All the cool cars you’ve ever seen or the times you had an amazing meal? What do you notice or notice the lack of? When I first moved to London I would notice phone boxes plastered with escort flyers, or that Chicken shops all look the same, more recently Vape shops are in a similar vein. We collect memories or Typologies in our minds all the time without consciously thinking about it. I, like many photographers, take photographs of them.

People are always curious of typologies. I was hugely annoyed to discover a photographer who took pictures of everything in their home, because I didn’t think of it first. Often they are things we see every day, sometimes they are things that are hidden from us, but the repetition, whether it be in subject, composition, colour, location or all manner of different reasons is enormously interesting. Even the most banal things can be elevated to engaging by putting them side by side and inviting the viewer to observe the differences we all knew existed but never really thought about.

My first (conscious) Typology project was St Pancras Pianos. I was living in St Albans and travelling into work every day through St Pancras station and seeing people playing the public pianos, same pianos, same composition but different people, sometimes playing for an audience, often playing for themselves, in public. It was endlessly interesting to me, I can play the keyboard but not the piano and the idea of public performance is something I’d never do but the setting, the people, the concept made it fascinating. I actually contacted the artist who organises the public piano project and he replied saying the pictures made him uncomfortable as they were very voyeuristic. I was ready to do a collaboration but that’s a response I was not expecting!

Next was an idea that spanned multiple years and locations but my Spaceships project germinated from my love of Star Wars and the opening shot of the first movie where the ship transporting Princess Leia is being chased by an enormous Star Destroyer which comes into shot over our heads and keeps going and going due to it’s gargantuan size. When you look up and take a picture of a tall building, especially one made of steel and glass, and then flip the picture upside down it’s reminiscent of that enormous Star Destroyer. When you only shoot on bright sunny days when there is cloud in the sky (it reflects in a pleasing way on the glass) you notice things you didn’t even notice when you were taking the picture.

Sometimes it’s the differences that really catch your eye, in New York there is a massive culture of food carts, these are things which don’t exist in London. They take the same rough format and size but the variety is breathtaking, the lights, the LED animated signs, even the food served is different in every case and they jumped out at me when I lived there. The only consistent thing about this collection was they were shot at night because that brought out the beautiful colours.

‘Things of my life’ was my lockdown project, I bought a small lightbox from Amazon which came with multiple coloured foam sheets and I collected some items I had acquired over my life which were small enough to fit into the space. Just recently I heard of a photographer who had taken photos of everything in her house which made me furious that I hadn’t thought of it first.

And finally ‘Car Crashed’ is my latest Typology. Now I don’t commute, I try to get out for a walk every day, even if it’s only for half an hour. On my route around East London are multiple car repair shops, often under train arches and in small and cramped spaces, they have the cars they are working on parked on the street. Car ownership has changed a great deal since I was young, back in the 70’s and 80’s you’d regularly see cars being repaired and in the process of upkeep in people's drives. These days you can’t really replace much on a car yourself and the only time we see them not in pristine condition is when they’ve been in an accident. So seeing as it’s such a rare sight and the format of them side on made them an irresistible subject to capture. It’s still early days for this one but it’s been really enjoyable to capture. It’s also the first project that I’ve taken entirely on my phone.

So whilst this type of photography is not the most flashy, it can be a valuable slice of modern life and arguably the easiest type of photography to get into, what would you shoot?

Ed Walker Photography Retrospective 2010 - 2025: Low Light / May 14, 2025 by Ed Walker

When anyone asks me what my most influential photographer is I always say Caravaggio. If photography had been invented in the 14th century he would have undoubtedly been a photographer, his paintings have a low light portraiture sensibility. He picks out the subjects with intense spotlight, his characters are full of movement and often looking like they are mid-sentence, in short they are photographs in paint.

Some might argue that all my photography is low light, I never use a flash and I tend to prefer lower aperture but some of my projects are distinctly set in the dark. In these situations the dark is my accomplice, aiding the viewer in what I want their attention to be and to close in around the subject, sometimes enveloping them warmly, sometimes not.

If there is a reoccuring theme in my photography it is focus and attention, I do this with either a short depth of field or I do it with darkness, sometimes both. There is something about picking someone out of a crowd and making the rest of the scene entirely secondary to composition. In some Street Photography circles this goes against the ‘rules’ of street photography and categorises my work as Street Portraiture, I don’t think it matters whatever you think it should be called, Street Photographers endlessly argue about what Street Photography is.

Technically my London Tube shots are low light, for the first couple of years shooting, my camera was simply unable to capture them, so when I did get a camera capable I cut my teeth with a 50mm f1.8 lens which had to be on the widest aperture to even grab enough light. But it was only when I moved to Edinburgh and my partner at the time took me to an underground NCP Car Park on a Sunday morning that I really started to wrestle with darkness in my photography. It was on the 15th floor below ground and sellers would simply drive into the bays, set up a table in front of the boot of their car and sell their junk. Because of the way Car Parks are designed, with a light above each bay, it was a perfect composition. My little Fuji X100 struggled enormously with the low light despite having an f1.8 lens, over the course of the project I tried various cameras until I got my hands on the revolutionary Sony A6000 which became my work horse for many years after that.

Car Boot also became the first project I completed which had a distinct start, middle and end, resulting in a printed newspaper. Up until this point I had a rolling ‘Street’ project and had read a great deal about the power of concentrating on one particular thing and having this strict structure to focus the attention, but I’d never really tried it before. After Car Boot I always took this approach, not only because of the focus it gives you but also because it gives you respite between projects to think about them, consider the results and look to see where to move to next.

After I returned from New York I was looking for something to shoot and had always thought of going to take pictures of Greyhound racing, then I read online that Wimbledon Dogs, the last dog track in London was closing its doors in a month. I had 4 evenings to scout out, shoot and complete a project for which I knew nothing, but it turned out to be a great way to focus the mind and spend a few evenings outside my comfort zone. In the end I couldn’t get into the final evening because so many people wanted to be there but in the 3 weeks I attended the event I managed to get something I was pretty happy with. I would have preferred to have spent at least 3 months going and then it would have been a much more substantial project but the short time I had made me concentrate on the most important aspects immediately.

Moving on to Oxford Circus, when I had returned to London in November 2016 I had gone and took some shots on the corner of Oxford Circus and Regents St, mostly next to a massive LCD display that was in the Nike store, this gave me enough light to shoot with my Sony f1.8 but it was still very tricky and I never really pursued the project. Fast forward to Christmas 2018 and I had a new f1.4 lens which captured significantly more light. I walked up and down Oxford Street using the light from the shop windows, often big displays which bathed the people in various colours as they went about their Christmas shopping. Because the street was often packed with people you could get right in the middle of the crowd and wait for a gap where you could stand right in front of someone and capture them in mid flow, looking into the shops, walking with friends or just talking on their phone.

The DLR project was one of those where you can’t actually believe no one has done it before, the setup is perfect and the simple fact you can ride at the front of the trains on the Docklands Light Railway as there is no driver means you can see the upcoming stations lit beautifully with the lights of the city twinkling all around. This is probably the fastest project I completed because I only really needed two or three evenings riding the entire network of 5 routes or 45 stations all in both directions to capture the shots. I then went and took video on my phone of the stations that made it into the final selection and it was complete. However it’s been an incredibly satisfying project to complete, it combines just about everything I love about photography, urban ‘street’ scenes of people waiting to travel, it’s a typology and it’s low light. The composition makes itself and the light is stunning. It was also right on my doorstep, I’ve always firmly believed that the images I take may be of someone or something else but they are really about my life, where I am, where I go, who or what I see and this is at the crux of why I take photos, to document my life.

Ed Walker Photography Retrospective 2010 - 2025: Street Photography / May 7, 2025 by Ed Walker

I’m standing in a packed tube train, I’ve just been lent a Nikon D7000, a significant upgrade to my D60 which just couldn’t handle the low light of the tube. Over my shoulder I notice a woman with striking blue eyes, bleach blonde hair and Beats headphones on. I raise the camera, rest it on my shoulder with my other arm holding the overhead rail and take a shot of her, it takes at least half a second to focus and capture the shot but she never looks away, this moment changes my photography forever.

Over the next two years that photo, amongst many others, were exhibited in the Horniman Museum, London Independent Photographers Members show, Photofusion’s Annual Members shows (2012 & 2013), online on the Guardian’s Camera Club and eventually, a finalist in the 2016 Lensculture Street Photography Awards. To say that photograph was pivotal is an understatement, it changed my approach to photography, it changed the relationship with my camera (I bought the Nikon D7000!) and it gave me an artform I had been seeking all my adult life.

I’ve been a creative professional all my life, mainly in Web & Print Design but the biggest downside to working for clients are the clients themselves. A few are wonderful, give you the room to express the brief exactly how you feel it should be interpreted, but as design is a subjective artform, the people paying the invoice want input and when I was an angry young man, this was a massive issue. I had learnt film photography at college and university, it forms an important part of the creative process when you are a design student, but I never really took it further as a way to express myself. The process is time consuming and the printing process takes a lot of practice to master. It was a means to an end and I never really pursued it that seriously.

When digital cameras came along I dipped my toe in (first digicam was a Kodak DC 200, 3 Megapixel!) but it was only when the DLSR’s started coming down in price and I had the income to buy one that I started to get more interested. I had a Nikon D50 and I used it and loved it for over a year until I left it on an EasyJet flight to France and never saw it again. The period without a camera made me realise I wanted to explore this more so I borrowed a D60 from my friend Dave and also took his course on manual photography. At the end I asked him to give me a project and he said ‘Research Henri Cartier-Bresson and go and take some street photography’ and almost instantly I was hooked.

Initially I would take pictures of Borough Market as it was on my commute to work and on various days in the morning and evening you could see all sorts of different activity, from other commuters in the rain to market sellers setting up and breaking down their stalls, to the market porters shifting all sorts of equipment around. As you do when you start researching and becoming obsessed with Street Photography, I processed all my pictures in black and white. It was seen as the classic way to view and display street at the time, a hangover from the film days of the 50’s through to the 80’s of famous candid photographers. This all changed when I had a portfolio review with Gina Glover from Photofusion, she looked at all my B&W street but when she came to some colour photography I had done whilst in San Francisco she exclaimed ‘You’re a colour photographer’. I reprocessed my Borough shots in colour and I’ve never looked back.

It was two years shooting street before the day of the Tube photo, and from that moment on Street photography changed for me, I no longer wanted ‘street scenes’, I wanted to get closer, so embarked on a project which I called ‘Getting Closer’, this is what propelled me into being exhibited and featured in photography magazines. It wasn’t without criticism, because I initially focussed on taking pictures of women I was called ‘no better than someone who wolf whistles at women in the street’ which knocked my confidence and resulted in me not shooting for nearly a year. It was only when I saw Gina from Photofusion again who said ‘it’s what you do, so do it’ that I resumed, abiet with an updated and nuanced approach.

In retrospect, these early years were all to do with my self confidence, my relationships with women and my general lack of direction in life. Susan Sontag writes extensively in her essays ‘On Photography’ about how the camera is a shield and I would find myself adopting the ‘official photographer’ at work and social Street events just so I didn’t have to speak to anyone. I was hiding behind the camera whenever I could, I wanted my photos to speak for me and unbeknownst to me, they were speaking volumes.

Even now I much prefer to be the faceless stranger who appears before you, raises the camera to my face, takes your picture and disappears into the night and this, on numerous occasions, has raised eyebrows with people who look at my photography and almost always say ‘did you speak to them?’, when I say no they usually talk about privacy or permission and say they wouldn’t be happy if I did that to them, while they continue to leaf through the pictures and indulge in their voyeurism of strangers.

When I took these pictures back in 2012 social media was in its infancy, smart phones were relatively new and a photograph would live on a website like Flickr, hidden from 99% of the world. In the subsequent years my approach to candid street photography has softened. I no longer get in people’s faces, I choose my subjects carefully and I am aware of the reach a photograph can have. A lot of these pictures are taken on the Tube, in stations where people are in transit. In London this is obviously a big part of life and when I used to commute everyday it was a big part of mine. Things have changed, I no longer commute every day and so these types of pictures are unavailable to me. But I also used to consistently carry my camera, switched on and in my hand whenever I left the house, which I no longer do. This is because my approach to projects has changed. In those first formative years my photography was one long project that never ended. I would shoot every day on the way to work and on the way back, processing my images in the evening and posting at least one shot on my Flickr account and saving other good shots for posts on days I didn’t capture anything good.

When I moved to Edinburgh and started the Car Boot Sale project (which you’ll see in the Low Light gallery) I moved to a much more structured way of working, identifying what I wanted to capture, spending weeks or months capturing it and then collating it into a coherent project. A start, middle and end. Ever since the Pandemic I have stopped posting daily shots, the work in progress of the project, in favour of starting and finishing the entirety of the project before showing it to anyone. The reason for this is two fold, firstly removing myself from the daily commitment of social media is good for my mental health and secondly I’m only showing the world my best work. It also allows me to consider the project’s direction right up until the end when I edit it, which I think gives much more creative freedom and removes any bias I get from ‘likes’ and ‘engagement’.

I don’t know if I’ll ever take pictures like this again, it takes a lot of courage to get so close, to basically force yourself into someone else’s day and be willing to take the flack that occasionally happens when you do (even if it was a lot less often than you would imagine). They represent a time in my life where I was learning who I was, I was having therapy, understanding my mind, making peace with my past and looking forward to the future. It’s only now 15 years later I can actually look at these pictures and see them for what they are, every one of these subjects are people I wanted to be, or know or be like, I wanted to have the confidence to present my real self to the world and not be wracked by doubt, crippled by shyness and masking that with a bravado that I now see as highly unappealing. Photography has played a big part in my mental health journey and I expect that’s not dissimilar to a lot of photographers and artists in general. Expression of an art form, when done right, is an expression of our true selves and these photos represent to me as a very clear case of this.

Docklands Night Railway / November 21, 2023 by Ed Walker

Since I moved into my flat, the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) has become my connection to the rest of London. It takes me to Canary Wharf, to Stratford, to Bank and to the newly opened Elizabeth Line. The one thing that makes them different to all other public transport in London is that they don’t have drivers, kind of. They have Passenger Service Agents who open and close the doors and start the train going, but they don’t always sit at the front or wear a stylish hat. This means, like the top deck of a bus, you can drive the DLR or at least sit and pretend you are.

One night, while the train was trundling along the tracks, which are in relative darkness with the lit-up city all around, I thought about how great it would be to capture the bright stations as the train approached.

The DLR was opened in 1987 with 15 stations but rapidly expanded over the years to a current tally of 45 stations. Most DLR stations are quite mundane during the daytime, but at night, even the older-style stations take on a magical feel when you look at them from the front of the train. The light from the platforms bleeds onto the tracks, shooting out of the station like starbursts. The two platforms are brilliantly lit with the metal grooves slicing through them, and the whole thing looks like an oasis of lights in the darkness. Mostly, they are high up above the streets, they are sometimes underground, and often they are surrounded by apartment blocks, but the nighttime highlights their architecture and makes them come alive.

So I’ve been riding the DLR at night and shooting out the front window of the train, exploring the line way beyond what I usually travel. It has been really captivating and intriguing how different the stations are despite the essentially basic configuration they adhere to. Some grand, others simple, but at night, they all look beautiful.

See the entire collection here.

Canary Wharf after dark / June 5, 2022 by Ed Walker

Canary Wharf after dark, once home to container ships and tenements it has been transformed into one of London’s most sought after financial districts. The juxtaposition of money and history makes this corner of Tower Hamlets shimmer with creative inspiration for photographers and artists.

A few years ago I moved into a flat close by Canary Wharf. As I passed through the area’s bars, restaurants, and underground shopping centre I decided to document my experiences.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Canary Wharf was one of the busiest docks in the world

However, with the rise of container ships, it was no longer fit for purpose and closed in 1980. Its past is still everywhere to be seen, with a lot of the old docks' waterways still preserved along with the two marinas.

Now, it is home to some of the world’s richest companies and exclusive residential properties.

The combination of the strong architecture, superb lighting and water make it a truly unique location.

When I started this project, I decided it would run very differently from every collection I’d put together before. I no longer have an Instagram account so post on Flickr more, but the biggest change for me has been that I no longer chase the likes and followers.

This project was scoped, shot, and edited in its entirety before anything went onto social media.

I believe this has given me a stronger idea of what works and holds the collection together in a way that couldn’t be achieved if I’d uploaded promising shots to Instagram and Twitter as I progressed.

The requirement to post shots each day alters my creative process so by sidestepping all of this and waiting until the entire project is finished before promoting it, I’ve been able to create something which feels truly special.

I started shooting when the clocks went back in November 2021, taking multiple long walks around the area

I got to know Canary Wharf and the surrounding places and the spots where I could explore the intersection between buildings and people.

I learnt where the light really worked, and in the run-up to Christmas became a regular in the area during the early evening, documenting what I saw.

After Christmas, I took a short break during the coldest weather and allowed myself time to live with the shots I’d taken. I found the photos I felt had the most potential and printed them to display on my corkboard as I edited.

Out of the 50 shots which had made it out of Lightroom, I reduced the shots I was happy with down to 10.

I resumed shooting again at the end of February. This I found hard going. Initially, I was concentrating on the people of Canary Wharf. While I was cautious not to take close up shots, I saw this project as a human story. However, this made it a mixed collection and I wasn’t happy with the direction it was taking.

On a rainy Saturday, I went back and looked again at the shots I’d taken and realised I could see a bigger picture.

The interaction between people, architecture, and light emerged.

Shots I had discarded because the people were shadows and faceless suddenly felt as though they were the story. Combined with a saturated cold light edit, it all started to come together.

I identified 20 shots that told a story. The tale of Canary Wharf, a place where people live, work, commute, and eat and drink but that still feels cold and empty.

After being so obsessed with getting closer, I realised the characters of this story were merely stick figures in a mass of concrete and glass.

Out of the 20 shots I’d picked out that reflected this new sense of scale, I went back and reshot a number of them now I knew what I was aiming for.

Finally, I had a project review with the photography tutor I worked with in New York, Christine Callahan, having a completely fresh set of eyes was incredibly valuable as she has never visited Canary Wharf. She helped me edit down the collection and remove shots that were interrupting the flow and didn’t fit the narrative.

As Summer rolled around and the evenings became lighter I had to shoot later and later which changed the types and amount of people, so at this point, I decided to end the project.

I waited for the right people and the right moment which allowed the light bouncing off the architecture to engulf the scene.

I’m very happy with the result.

It’s a new view for me and a new process that I think I’ll be sticking with.

It’s tempting to say Canary Wharf is soulless, but there is a community, it’s just they inhabit a glass, steel, and water world lit by tungsten.

Some people might even say Canary Wharf is ugly, but for me, it has incredible beauty and my goal was to capture some of that within my photos.

Canary Wharf after dark

Things of my life / November 13, 2020 by Ed Walker

Often the smallest things can hold the most meaning. I bought a flat in 2019 and finally was able to have a secure permanent place for all my things I’ve been lugging around the UK. Finally, I can display my vinyl, magazines and computer games. But hiding at the bottom of a lot of the boxes of possessions are the tchotchkes, gonks, cereal toys, giveaways, presents, tools and misc items which you picked up or were given along the way. Presents from friends, promotional items given away at work or just little things you simply had to have. They span a long period of my life and while I have some of them out on shelves a lot live in the cupboard. So in 2020, the year of crazy where street photography meant photos of empty streets, I thought I’d give these memory-filled trinkets a second wind. Another moment in the sun, or rather LED lights of the small white box I bought from Amazon during the lockdown. Each one tells a story and so here we go…

Rubberband Ball

I was living with Anna and she had this rubber band ball. In the UK a lot of Postmen/women use red elastic bands to hold together letters and you can sometimes find them on the street. Anna had diligently built this ball from those very bands and I coveted it. Eventually, she gave it to me and it’s been in boxes for a lot of its time with me. Now the rubber has so perished a band will sometimes ping off when you handle it. It now lives on my shelf.

England Stamp

When I started in business with Phil we didn’t have much money to get letterheads printed. The name of the business was England Art, mainly because we just liked the sound of the word England. Companies House said that we should add something to it as just calling and company England might not be approved for nationalist reasons so we added Art to it. We inkjet printed a letterhead with our address on and a box at the top with the ART at the bottom and used this stamp to A.add some colour and B.its arty ain’t it.

R2D2

The little R2 unit stands only 6cm tall and has a battery and remote control. I bought him when I was working at Livenation and he zipped around my desk there for all of about half an hour before he broke down. Now that’s what I call dedication to staying in character. I’ve since bought a much bigger model that rotates his head and makes suitable noises, as well as the two or three R2D2 Lego minifigs I have. I like R2D2, when you see those polls voting for the best robot in sci-fi well there is no competition, just like the best space ship, it’s the Millenium Falcon obviously.

Understand Pin

In 2003 I worked at an e-learning company in Winchester and they had a piece of technology called Understand which was aimed at improving the lack of face to face tuition in e-learning. They needed a logo and I designed this incredibly generic butterfly shape and to my Senior Designers horror, the marketing people chose it. It might not be original but it makes a lovely pin badge.

Pet Shop Boy’s Play Button

This was a special edition of the Pet Shop Boy’s Electric Album that comes on a button badge that holds a little MP3 player. It only has an earphone socket on the top and some play buttons on the back, you charge it through the earphone socket with a USB cable provided. It now sits on top of my speakers in my living room. Incidentally, I was going to buy a signed print of the cover to frame but I didn’t, I wish I had now.

Pocket Watch

I’d only been dating Madly for a couple of months when Christmas came around and despite not knowing each other very well we had a bash at buying presents. I can’t even remember what I bought her but I was astounded when I opened this pocket watch. I have never wanted or even needed a pocket watch but I loved it and it will remain a treasured possession.

Eurodisney Keyrings

I’ve been to Eurodisney twice. Once in the early nineties a couple of years after it had just opened and then again in about 2008. Both times I bought a keyring with my initial, you can tell which is which. Eurodisney is a funny place. I love a good roller coaster but I’m not especially a Disney fan. I think The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was my favourite ride.

Star Wars 1977 Badge

This is an original 1977 Star Wars badge released around the same time as the movie. There are a number of designs I’ve seen on eBay over the years but this is the poster design and I love it. It was given to me by a girlfriend who knew I loved Star Wars, incidentally, when we split up she asked for it back, I probably should have given it to her but I didn’t.

Printers Magnify Glass

This goes way back to when I was 17 back in 1989! I had left school and had managed to get a place on a one year Graphic Design foundation course at Southfields in Leicester. I quickly became friend with a guy called Rob and eventually went over to his house as he was setting up a vinyl sign company. His dad was a printer and he gave me this Printers Magnify Glass, used to check close up registration and colour on 4 colour lithography printing. I’ve had it ever since and also still the little leather case it came in.

iPod Nano Fallout 3

This iPod Nano was given to me by Keith when we worked at IPC. It has the Fallout 3 logo engraved on the back. As far as I know, it still works but I haven’t used it in years. I really like the way it curves at the edges and it’s a lovely thing to hold in your hand.

Nanoblocks Panda

I was given this by Danielle while I worked at Immediate Media. I think it might have lost a couple of blocks and when you shake it there is something loose inside, maybe a baby nanoblock panda? It’s pretty dusty, it’s been around the UK and also spent a year in storage while I was in New York but it now has a forever home on my shelf next to my cardboard Millenium Falcon.

Scottish Referendum Yes & No Badges

In 2014 I was living in Livingston between Edinburgh and Glasgow and working at Freeagent in the Haymarket area of Edinburgh. During my time there Scotland was deciding whether to stay with the United Kingdom or split off into its own country. It was fascinating and I even got to vote myself but during that time I collected these two badges for the opposing sides of the argument.

Ai Weiwei Sunflower Seeds

In 2010 Ai Weiwei had an exhibit at Tate modern which consisted of millions of individually handcrafted porcelain sunflower seeds which were spread out over the ground floor. If you managed to get there early enough you were allowed to walk on them, touch them and… steal a few. They eventually stopped people walking on them because they said it was kicking up dust which might be dangerous but it probably was because people were walking away with handfuls.

Orange Earphone Splitter Robot

This was a promo item I got from Orange when I was a subscriber and the two eyes are where you put your two earphones and the head pulls off to go into whatever music source you both want to listen to. Pretty neat design and very cute object except it never worked.

Two Pound coins

These are a small collection I have of £2 coins which have designs that mean something to me. Top left is a coin about Florence Nightingale who was born on the same date at me. Next is the abolition of slavery and on the right is Charles Darwin cos science innit? Bottom left is the United Kingdom and the bottom right is Charles Dickens.

(the best of) New Order promo puzzle

I actually have no idea where I got this, most probably from my friend Mark who was a record dealer in the nineties. As a compilation, this was nowhere near as good as Substance and even the cover wasn’t as good but as far as promo items go, it’s a nice one.

Snooker Chalk

When I was a child we had a 6ft snooker table in our dining room, my dad and brother would play after tea and friends would often come over for a game. I even had snooker lessons at a snooker club on Loughborough. In later life I often played pool, especially when I worked at LiveNation as they had a pool table and would play with Tom. In 2017 I live in a Guardianship in Borough and a couple of the guys who lived there bought a ¾ size slate bed table only to find they couldn’t get it up the stairs, so it lived in our room. The chalk is from then when I would play almost every night. The table was really beaten up but Enna bought me a cue and it was good to get my cueing eye back in.

Tate Members Cards

When I worked at IPC, the Blue Fin Building was right behind Tate Modern. When I was stuck and needed inspiration I would walk over to Tate and browse the book store or see an exhibition. Over the years the members cards changed designs and some are lovely, others not, but despite that they open up a world of amazing imagery and a feast for the eyes, as well as the member’s bar ;)

Download festival programme

In 2007 I was working for LiveNation who run the Download festival in Donnington Park. This was a lanyard I designed which doubled as a festival programme, map, merch and other important information. The year before my first project at LiveNation was to design the festival skrim, which is the huge speaker covers either side of the stage, I think that’s the largest thing I’ve ever designed, you can see it here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/spooke/163851227/in/photolist-ftMga

Porsche 356 Diecast Model

I have a driving license which I got over 17 years ago but I have neither driven or owned a car since passing. I’ve always lived in cities with great public transport and never really considered having a car. But if I did, there is only one car I would consider; the Porsche 356. The most beautiful car in the world, in my opinion. Designed by Ferry Porsche, the son of the founder of the Porsche company in 1948 and based on the Beetle. It hasn’t been bettered.

Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros

The newest and shiniest thing in my collection of Things of my life is the 35th Anniversary special edition Game and Watch Super Mario Bros. I admit I was never a Nintendo boy when this came out in 1985, I was still very much into my Sinclair Spectrum but over the years I’ve found myself playing this game on emulators, my 3DS, my GPD XD and my Nes Classic. I also have to admit I’m more of a Sonic fan but this is very much the OG of platformers and this Game and Watch edition was too nice to pass up. Happy Anniversary Mario!

Move away from Instagram back to Flickr / November 3, 2020 by Ed Walker

I joined Flickr in 2004 and used it pretty solidly until 2014, by that time Instagram had become a phenomenal success and was too big and important to ignore. I operated both accounts for quite a long time until I eventually stopped using Flickr completely.

Between 2014 and now Instagram has changed considerably. It used to be a photography platform, somewhere that you could share your work and get great feedback from other photographers, whether they were shooting on DSLRs, phone cameras or film. However, it’s success has consistently diluted that benefit and its purchase by Facebook has turned it from a photography app to the visual arm of Facebook. Adverts are now rife and it’s been labelled the worst platform for young people’s mental health.

I think it’s important to stress how damaging Instagram is, scoring highly in anxiety, depression, loneliness, sleep, bullying and ‘FoMo’ (Fear of Missing Out). The reason this is so important is that second to music, photography has become one of the most readily consumed art forms and something which 15 years ago only a portion of the population took part in. Now nearly everyone owns a camera and now regularly documents their life, especially young people.

I remember a friend getting a Nokia 6600 back in 2003 which was the first time I’d seen a camera phone and at the time it seemed relatively pointless, the quality was so low and the internet was so basic there were very little uses for it but then the iPhone came along and changed everything. Our relationship with photography morphed over the next 5-10 years, Photoshop went from relative obscurity (outside the design world) to a Verb. What started with Twitter connecting us to celebrities Instagram took to a whole new level and even created celebrities; the influencer was born because of Instagram.

Now I am not the kind of photographer who bemoans the rise of the cameraphone. I love technology and think that smartphone photography is as important as the invention of the Box Brownie camera 110 years earlier. It certainly had the same effect, putting technology in the hands of people who previously could not afford photography. Whilst professional photographers have clearly seen it as having an enormous effect on their businesses in terms of the art form, iphoneography *shudders at the term* will be remembered as a milestone in photography.

So now we have 3.5 billion people with cameras and a singular platform pretty much everyone uses it can no longer remain the platform it was. It’s a commercial and data mining behemoth for Facebook and what made it good when it was launched has now gone.

I haven’t really enjoyed using Instagram for a long time. It’s just been the way you post your images but with Facebook’s clear reluctance to change and continue to erode our society and democracy it’s just too much now. As they weave together Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp so they cannot be regulated and broken up I can no longer say to people ‘I don’t use Facebook’, Instagram is Facebook with a different mask on. After 2016, Cambridge Analytica and the recent highly successful film The Social Dilemma it’s no longer an option in my mind. What started with me leaving Facebook and changing all my site logins away from FB login, cancelling my Spotify because they wouldn’t let me disassociate my account with Facebook has now moved to now calling time on Instagram. Only Whatsapp remains.

So I’m going back to Flickr, now owned by SmugMug and in need of support, Flickr was one of the first largescale image sharing sites on the Internet and has survived being owned by Yahoo! which is more than be said for a lot of the startups they destroyed. They are transparent about what they do with your data, I pay for a professional account so I am no longer the product and it feels nice to go back to a photographers site. It’s like slipping back into an old jacket which might not be most stylish or even well made but it has personality and it works for me.

Hello again Flickr!

You can find me here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/spooke/

Red Dead Redemption 2 - Saint Denis / July 17, 2019 by Ed Walker

For the past six months, I’ve been walking around Saint-Denis taking photos. Soaking up the New Orleans style atmosphere and walking the back streets, often at night, to capture the horse-drawn carriages, steam trains and the people in 19th-century dress. I’ve been using a box camera much like the Kodak No.1, but my version shoots colour, has a zoom and a shutter speed that rivals any Nikon or Canon. I’ve been out there in the rain and thunderstorms, dodging the bar brawls and getting trampled by cowboys on horseback.

But this isn’t Saint-Denis the suburb of Paris and I haven’t travelled back in time but I’ve been shooting in Red Dead Redemption 2, a PS4 game set in 1899. Rockstar, who make the game, have recreated a period city within the game and your character Arthur has a camera much like the cameras of the time (even if it’s supercharged way beyond what could be achieved in 1899). I’ve been experimenting with In-Game Photography.

A lot of photographers wouldn’t even consider this photography but if you define the art form as composing a scene and waiting for the decisive moment then this is absolutely how I would see it. In-Game Photography has been around for quite a while now, starting way back when games first were born it didn’t really come into its own until the nineties with games like The Sims and Second Life. Players would put hours in to create or develop a character and wanted to save their work for prosperity. Now there are countless In-Game Photographers out there and most big game companies hire photography minded creatives to develop screenshots to promote games. Most people just want to show off moments in games which they think are beautiful or catalogue their achievements.

Increasingly on sites like Reddit gamers are creating shots which are masterful in their composition, beautifully lit and expertly processed and these are people who’ve never touched Lightroom or taken a course in photography. SubReddit’s like In Game Photography have many examples of work that prove that photography has many facets, and you can explore and master some of those facets, like composition, while the other facets are taken care of by the device.

Red Dead Redemption is the first game that I’ve played where I really felt like I could apply my style of street photography to this medium and I’ve had so much fun taking shots around Saint-Denis of the interaction of the people, the architecture and the light. Everything you see in the pictures is ‘candid’ as in I couldn’t stop time or move elements around to create a scene. All of these pictures were captured in exactly the same way I shoot real street, by hanging around, waiting for the right subjects and revisiting areas I liked over and over again.

I shot the pictures in the game, uploaded them to the Rockstar website, downloaded them and processed them in Lightroom, playing with the colour balance, adding depth and making the images pop a little more. But essentially this is like a window into the past, I can’t go back in time and take these shots and even though this is an artistic interpretation I’ve really enjoyed my time in Saint-Denis.

As games get even more realistic, offer even more photography options (many games now allow you to freeze the frame, spin around the scene and add depth of field, change the time of day and lots of other options) In-Game Photography will be recognised outside of the niche online forums it currently occupies.

Soho Spotlight / January 13, 2019 by Ed Walker

There is a reason for why I’ve taken so long to upload the final versions of these pictures but I don’t know what it is. I also processed these shots in the autumn but again they have sat on my hard drive waiting. I don’t know why.

The first shots were taken at London Pride in 2017, with the last shot taken in September ‘18. There have been big gaps between flurries of activity and although London has many more nooks and crannies to find people in, it’s much less consistent in the kind of people I want to shoot.

If you look at my Instagram feed, you will see various versions of these images in different crops and processing. I’ve been attempting to experiment with my framing and create a collection that has a different feel to previous ones. However, when I go back and collect together the shots for the final collection I still am drawn to the centre crop. I think this might be because I want to tell a consistent story with the images and it also appeals to the typology side of my photography brain.

Another significant change from previous work has been my approach on the street. When I was in New York I was constantly on the move. In London, because of the type of people I wanted to capture and the vastness of London it because clear that I really needed to stay in a number of spots to maintain the style and quality of the subjects. The majority of these shots were taken on Carnaby Street.

You can see the entire collection here.

Brand New Work / May 19, 2018 by Ed Walker

The weather in London has been exceptionally good recently and the sun has sparked me to create some new work. It's not even on my Instagram yet but I'm so excited about it I want to show you now.

I've been thinking about why shoot the pictures I shoot and how people are coming out of the darkness into the light also that there are outlined like cartoons. The whole thing has some magical realism aspects to it.

I still don't know what it means, sometimes I think it's just because I've been a graphic designer all my career what I'm really doing is composing layouts and stylising them. But it has to be something more than that, however I still don't know what it is.

Coal Holes of London / March 24, 2018 by Ed Walker

I’m sure I’ve said it before, but I love a good typology. There is something very soothing about viewing them and similarly there is something very calming about making one. Usually they are inanimate objects which is a nice change instead of taking candid pictures of people on the street and the stress and strains that comes with that pursuit. There is also the added pleasure of taking pictures of things that are the same but different. You feel like an archaeologist discovering something just below the surface of the real world and uncovering details which most people have seldom ever thought about.

For me personally it is a palette cleanser, it allows me to take time to remember other aspects of photography that whilst in the maelstrom of creating a street project you forget, I get to use different f stops, light and composition. It also allows you to learn something different about the world we are living in and, for a moment, glimpse into other people’s reality.

Coal Holes are such a moment. I had seen these 7-12” metal plates on our street many times, often thinking I had no idea what they could be. I’ve even looked at them carefully, reading the typography and being no wiser before I decided that actually I had to take pictures of them. It was only after I had, and I started to search online for some kind of answer that I realised they are a link to London’s past that has long gone and will never return.

Placed sometimes only inches apart on the street they are chutes down to coal houses under the ground. I knew that in front of our building, under the road, were arches that were now empty. I knew this because we discovered a man living in one once but most of them have wire mesh over them now and any hints of coal have long since gone. Mainly used in the 19th and 20th century to heat and feed homes around the UK they were effectively stopped in 1956 when the clean air act forced oil and gas to be used instead.

While this is all very interesting, what really fascinates me are the designs. Different companies, different styles and (when the designs are the same) the pavement stone or concrete that surrounds them. The typography around the edges of, most probably, long since gone companies and the circles, patterns and stars that fill the centre.

So, take a look at the pictures, numerous people who have seen them have commented that they had never noticed them before but now they can’t stop seeing them as they walk around London. I am obviously not the first person to document them and probably for that reason I won’t go too deep into this project but for me it’s another lovely memento of the joys of London, one day they will all be gone and for that reason, I’ve loved taking pictures of them.

Oxford Circus Project End / January 20, 2018 by Ed Walker

So I said I was going to continue with my current project on Oxford Circus but actually I have decided to stop. The Christmas lights have come down and also the shops’ lighting conditions have changed so it would look different to the rest of the pictures. What I did do was re-crop and re-process a lot of them and you can see the final gallery here.

However, my Sigma lens works wonderfully so I’m going to explore other parts of the West End and find another subject, maybe Soho, maybe Chinatown or even somewhere completely different. The evenings still draw in early and until it’s no longer dark when I leave work I’ll use that to build upon what I’ve learned in this project.

I’ve also been remiss in writing my pieces about other photographers. I bought a book on Joel Meyerowitz and planned to write a post about how his work has not only influenced me but countless others.

I recently re-joined the London Independent Photographers. I’ve yet to go to a meeting but it’s something I need to make time to do as well as re-equaint myself to the world of Street Photography, if I have one New Year’s Resolution it’s to throw myself back into my photography. Last year was a rest and a review of what I wanted to get out of it, now I have a better idea I need to act on it.

My photography in 2017 / December 30, 2017 by Ed Walker

My photography in 2017 has taken a back seat, a new job and readjusting after coming back from New York has resulted in my output being significantly less than 2016.

The year started slowly. In February I discovered Wimbledon Dogs was closing its doors for the last time in March. This gave me four Saturday night meets to put together a project. The viewing gallery, which had seen much better days, was on the opening straight. The floodlit track gave me the perfect mixture of light and dark and I found shooting there really easy, I wished I had gone there sooner, over a much longer timespan. I could have really told and interesting story but with only four weeks until it closed it was difficult to build a story and get to know anyone. I was very happy with a couple of shots but on the whole it was a missed opportunity.

The summer months seemed to come and go quickly, this was because I had just started my job at The Business of Fashion and all of my energy was going into that. I did go and shoot occasionally but found it difficult to find the right spots and also the weather being so intermittent made it nearly impossible. Probably my best day was Pride, where I managed to get a couple of shots that really felt like a step forward from my pictures in New York. Next year I’m going to more carefully decide on locations, scout for places with the right kind of people and really double down on what worked this year.

All year I had been spying a Sigma f1.4 lens and in the first week of November, when the nights had drawn in to the point where it was dark at 5:30, I bought one.

I started a project on Oxford St which used the lights from the shop windows to illuminate my subjects. So every evening I walked up and down Oxford St for around an hour shooting people shopping, leaving work or going somewhere for a night out. There were various shops up and down the street which had really superb, bright windows and with my new f1.4 I could pretty much start to grab the kinds of images that I’d had in my minds eye for quite a while.

At first I took all manner of compositions, groups, busy images of lots of people at once, multiple layers of shoppers and very close to very wide. As the project moved into its middle stage I started to focus my attention on the single, lone subject.

This is exactly what I did last year in New York and it has started to make me think more about why this is my preferred way to shoot. There has to be something in the connection you get when you pick out one person from the crowd, stand directly in front of them and take their picture. I think I’m looking for a one on one moment, especially as these are all people who catch my eye. I’m selecting the eccentric, stylish, beautiful people. The psychology of this should be simple to decipher, it’s plain as day in front of my eyes but over the years I’ve tried to deny it somewhat, I’m looking for cool people because I want to be that way.

It isn’t finished yet, I hope to continue into January, at the moment I have half a dozen shots I’m really happy with but now I have identified (and come to terms with) what I really am looking for, I want to zero in and make the second half somehow comment on that. I don’t know how I will do that, I feel like I need to face this head on, and I know I’ve said that before, but I’m going to be looking for ways to address it.

The year was rounded off with a fantastic shoot I did with Sinéad Burke who was talking at the VOICES conference about the trouble she faces daily exploring her love of fashion. Standing at 3’ 5” she is not only poorly catered for but actually finds the shopping experience difficult and demeaning. She wanted to talk to the collected audience of fashion industry leaders about how this untapped audience was a opportunity that they were currently missing. We went to TopShop on Oxford St to take some sneaky shots of her walking through the store to illustrate how the displays of clothes were sometimes impossible for her to interact with. She was so lovely and we had a great time taking the pictures. You can see her talk here: https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/video/its-time-for-adaptive-fashion

So after 2016 in New York, this year has been very different. My view of what my life was going to be has had to change dramatically over the past year and while there has had to be some significant sacrifices there has also been some interesting movement forward. 2018 is going to have to work on that and see where I can take my photography, I’m trying not to force it but some answers to why might just show me the door to the next level. Let’s see.

A new start in November / November 4, 2017 by Ed Walker

An unpublished picture from 2016, Oxford Circus.

Last December when I returned to London, I started going to Oxford Circus to shoot in the evening. I particularly liked a spot next to the Nike store which had a LED screen which was predominantly white and created perfect Rembrandt light for my subjects.

After a couple of weeks, Nike changed the ad on the screen and it was more intermittent light, which made taking the images go from difficult to impossible. So I moved to Piccadilly Circus and started shooting under the lights of the electronic billboards but my 1.8 lens just wasn’t up to the task. Those images went unpublished and most still do. I might include them in the finished project.

Fast forward to November 17, and after what has seemed like a very barren summer, I have just bought my Sigma f1.4 lens. For around an hour after work every evening I’ve started walking up and down Oxford Street and seeing what it can do, and it does pretty well. The shop fronts are all lined up for Christmas, spewing out light and with a lovely mixture of people leaving work and shoppers, it makes for an interesting little project.

I’m still not sure what the focus is going to be, at the moment I’m just shooting everything I see that I like, the final edit will probably reveal a pattern of what attracts my eye but for now, I’m not really being fussy.

It’s only been a week but already I have some interesting shots, but that’s just the start, I plan to shoot all the way up to Christmas, stay tuned.

Losing my mojo / August 20, 2017 by Ed Walker

This year I’ve shot a tiny amount compared to 2016. This is because I came back to London in December and spent most of the early part of the year looking for a job, once I’d found one all of my concentration went into settling in and pouring all my creativity into the challenges it set me. So now in August, all I have to show for my year is a short, but successful project at Wimbledon Dogs and a few sporadic street photo’s taken over the summer months.

However, I could have shot many times since being back in London and I haven't and I am starting to think about what my photography means to me, how my time in New York affected my approach to my work and what am I trying to achieve with this?

There have recently been a few articles online talking about how the modern photography student can no longer perfect their technical and aesthetical skills and achieve success in their course. They need to have a concept, embody lots of meaning and have a 'thing' to now stand out of the thousands of graduates that pour into the field every year. Older photographers note that when they go to student shows the meaning is put before the execution. In street photography, there is a similar vein of truth with hundreds of thousands of people out there shooting. The togs who seem to gain popularity are the ones with a strong theme and novel approach to execution. Often the photos themselves are middling to average. I can think of at least two popular street photographers who have had successful shows with work that is interesting in its concept but with immature results.

So what does this have to do with me? Well, I feel really quite stuck in a rut of wanting to shoot in bright sunshine where I can position myself where people can walk into the light and I can shoot them against the shadows. It's limiting in the days I can shoot and it also makes me wonder what I'm trying to achieve. With so few days available to shoot, London being so sprawling and varied in its people my choice of subject is random at best. I've considered only visiting one area and concentrating on that but so far I've not found anywhere that gives me the right conditions and the right people and anyway, who am I looking for anyway?

A couple of years ago I wrote an angry post about how I didn't want to play the game that street photographers are forced into playing these days, chasing followers, being active in the community to elevate your status, becoming a teacher to fund your lifestyle, writing endless blog posts on the top tips for new street photographers and all the other typical ways people feed their habit. All I wanted to do is shoot but even now purely shooting doesn't feel enough. After spending every day walking the streets of New York, having enough time to properly explore the areas I wanted, find the people I was looking for and take my time soaking up the city now with a full-time job and limited energy, this is difficult.

So I'm looking for identifiable projects and it leads me back to the question, why? Why do I want to take candid pictures on the street and where and who do I want to shoot. What is the meaning of my work? Should I just hone my approach and keep doing that or should I try and nuance it with some novel type of person or specific place?

I suppose the answer to all those questions is yes because at the moment I'm doing nothing and there is nothing worse in photography than doing nothing.

I am thinking about abandoning my spotlight shots and going back to the night, especially as the evenings draw in. I've spied a 1.4 lens I want and getting out there to shoot using electronic billboards as lighting. But I'm concerned about my motivation, my desire to create this work and I really feel like I need a kickstart to get it going again. Any ideas?

Eatwell Farm Lavender Harvest 2017 / June 12, 2017 by Ed Walker

Joyce stacking the Lavender in the drying shed at Eatwell Farm

I’m at my brothers’ farm at the moment, during my visit they have their annual Lavender harvest. Over the course of a weekend the farm crew use chainsaws to cut the lavender and place it on the top of the bushes and members of the CSA give their time to come and bunch and hang the lavender in the drying room. In return they get a weekend at the farm, fed and watered very well indeed and a camp fire with smores.

I shot the event using my Sony and 35mm lens and applied the same processing as usual but with added saturation to really make the lavender pop. Please share if you like and tell me what you think in the comments.

Lilly collects the bunches of Lavender for drying.

Cameron bringing the Lavender into the drying room.

Half Way Through - Wimbledon Dogs / March 13, 2017 by Ed Walker

I’ve been thinking of taking pictures of Dog Racing for a while. When I came back to the UK I kept reminding myself to look into it and it was only at the end of February that I actually did. I found out that Dog Racing in London was in it’s last days, Wimbledon Stadium was to be demolished and made into a new football ground. After it is gone, there will be no more Dog Racing in London.

That left four meetings until that world was gone forever so it is perfect for a mini project. I had never been to the dogs before, or even a horse race, so I had no idea what to expect. However, the pictures I could see online made it look perfect for my style of work and the lighting conditions seemed ideal.

I have just processed the pictures from the second week of visiting the stadium and I am half way through the project. So it seems a good time to get my initial thoughts down and record the progress.

Week one was simply a recce to see what it was all about and what kind of reception I would get taking pictures. In this kind of situation I tend to start long and get closer and closer until I get push back. There are two parts to the stadium, the inside and the outside. Inside there is a bar and restaurant and betting facilities. There are also benches which you can sit at and drink and face out the big windows to see the action. Underneath this indoor area is an extended bookmakers area but I have yet to explore this. Outside is the terrace? Paddock? I don’t know what it’s called but it’s where most people stand, drink, smoke and bet while they wait for the next race.

When the race starts the dogs are led out and are paraded along half the length of the first straight which is, I suppose, to let you have a good look at them and decide who to bet on. They are then walked back down the straight to the traps and the lights go down inside the stadium and on the outside crowd as the betting stops. The mechanical hare comes around the corner and when it has passed the traps the dogs are off. The race lasts 30 seconds if that. Sometimes there is a clear winner, but most of the time it’s not, which leads the crowd to turn around and look up at the screens inside the stadium and wait for the winner. Once this has been announced the bookies are back on paying out the winners and the process starts again for around 10-12 races in a night.

From my point of view the most engaging area of the whole event are the bookies who stand on boxes in front of their LED screens taking the bets and giving out winnings. The red light of the screens and the overhead lights that let them see what they are doing is just crack for my style of photography. Red light pours over the people lining up to bet and the bookies are perfectly lit against the darkness of the stadium. Harsh shadows and contrasty images are a plenty and I love it.

The crowd are a mixture of regulars, stag dos, work outings, families and couples. They are great subjects as they are socialising, betting, drinking and generally having a great time, most don’t even notice me taking pictures. The ones that do don’t seem to mind. I have yet to get really close and I’m still thinking about whether I should talk to people so I can get super close.

The first week I spent shooting the bookies, the dogs and a few of the crowd. The second week I spent most of my time getting crowd shots, there were a few groups of guys in vintage suits. I have a few good pictures of the dogs but I need a different camera to get the ultimate picture and I have been thinking about what I am going to try and achieve from the final two meets.

For the first time I’ve started thinking about narrative, something that has never possessed my work before. The observation has always been key to my work and even my car boot sale pictures didn’t tell a story. This feels different though, maybe it’s because it will soon be gone. The story is about the people, the bookies and the event, it’s about the night.

So I have started to think about a shot list, another first for me. Some shots I can see but haven’t been able to get. Others I know are there but haven’t seen or been able to visualise. An example of that is the wide crowd shot, all the images I’ve taken up and over the entire mass of people have been flat and mundane. From the side they are looking out to the track and from behind they are facing away from me. The shot is from the centre of the stadium looking across the track back at them looking at me, but I won’t get that. So I have to think of a way to capture them en mass, in action.

I am also thinking about what to do with the project when it is done. There is no shortage of photographers at the meetings so it’s clearly something that is a project for many other artists. Some of them will just post their pictures on Instagram, others might try and get them published, entered into comps or an exhibition. I am trying to think of a life for these pictures after the bookies, crowds and dogs have gone.

But in the meantime, I have two more meetings and aim to get the most out of them and complete what will be for me the shortest project I’ve ever done.

Saal-Digital Photo Book Review / March 3, 2017 by Ed Walker

I recently saw an advert on facebook for a free photobook in return for a product review. I filled in the form and promptly received a voucher code and the instructions to post an honest review on my Facebook or Blog, so here it is.

The first port of call for any of these book printers is how you are going to make your book. The usual way is to provide their own software, which usually range from abysmal to awful. As a proficient user of InDesign I much prefer to be given templates to produce it in the software I know. The Saal-Digital website had only two options, download their software or use a web based system. I downloaded the software and feared the worst but in fairness it was relatively easy to use and no where near as bad as others I’ve struggled with.

I chose a 28x19 landscape book, glossy without padded cover which allowed me to have 30 pages within the £40 budget. There is no mention of paper weight anywhere within the software. My Spotlight series was all printed in high Gloss but you can choose all configurations of cover and inner finish.

Once finished you complete the transaction within the software and then leave it to upload all the images and everything went smoothly.

The book arrived about 4 days later in a cardboard sleeve and sealed in a plastic bag and the first impressions are excellent. The book is hardback bound and the cover is beautifully thick and well printed. I have used two other book printing companies before, Blurb and Bob Books and the Saal-Digital cover is a step up in quality.

The first and last spreads are bound to the cover which is obvious but when I opened the book I wasn't expecting it so it threw me slightly but what was really surprising was the thickness of the pages. I think these are the thickest pages I’ve ever seen in a photobook, they must be at least 350gsm. Printed with my almost black images on gloss they really feel superb and give the book a feel of quality I haven’t ever had from a photo book company. The pages also open flat, so if you wanted to bleed images across them they would look fantastic.

The image quality was superb, my pictures of people in New York against almost black background printed as good as the prints I had produced at Adorama and other professional printers. Deep colours, not too saturated and crystal clear.

So if you are looking for a premium photo book, and at £40 + P&P for 30 pages this is not for everyone, but if you are wanting to archive a project or give someone a very special present I would recommend Saal, I shall certainly be using them for my project books from now on. I might get some prints made too.

http://www.saal-digital.co.uk

My Photography in 2016 / January 4, 2017 by Ed Walker

New learning, new light and New York City were the main themes of 2016. I started the year in the USA and only briefly came back to the UK at the end of January, after that I spent an the rest of this intensive year concentrating on my street photography.

When I was thinking about how I was going to tackle NYC in early 2016 it was obvious that going back to school would probably be the best option. I took a course at International Center of Photography called 'New Colour Projects' headed by Christine Callahan. You can read my in depth blog post about it to find out more but it basically taught me two things, 1) Print your work and 2) Edit hard. For the course I created a pretty straight up street photography project.

What happened next, under Christine's mentor-ship was far more surprising. On my way to class one day I shot a guy against a dark background, the sun was beating down the street and he was perfectly lit while the wall was in darkness. Then on a trip to Portland I also took a picture of a vintage girl walking across the street, again she was in direct sunlight while the background was in darkness. Thirdly I was on a trip to Governor's Island and took my 50mm lens, which I hadn't used in the while, and on the way back took some pictures in Wall Street of the people leaving work. Again in bright sunlight but with the 50mm on f1.8 the backgrounds were not only dark but out of focus. These three events accumulated into 'Spotlight' a project which in retrospect I'd been building up to since I first started shooting Borough Market in 2010.

Close up portraits of stylish, interested and sometimes eccentric people, all in bright sunlight but with a dark and 'bokeh' background. It was incredibly challenging, I spent around 250 hours over the summer months in midtown attempting to capture the right people at the right time in the right light.

Not happy with making my project as difficult as possible I decided to add another element to it. For a long time I've heard that to get by in the photography business you need to also do video. I'm not really interested in making movies and so I had tried to think about what I would do if I were to make a video. When I thought about the process of getting these pictures and the outcome it was clear that no one would be able to understand the time and effort that goes into it, so why don't I use video?

The result was not only shooting for 2-3 hours a day in 100 degrees fahrenheit but also having a chest strap, stabilizing gimbal and Gopro filming all that time too. Editing was a challenge and I had to learn lots of new skills in Adobe Premier and edit the movie a couple of times to get it right; but the finished item was worth it.

I entered my series into the LensCulture Street Photography Awards and became a finalist, it was a great honour and really cemented my view that I am headed in the right direction.

After Spotlight finished in September I took a break but also used the time to think about where I could go next with my work. I didn't want to just stop doing my Spotlight series as I felt it was so different to most other street work out there, but I wanted a new angle. So I set up a new Instagram account and started throwing up all sorts of experiments with focal length, lighting and location. By the end of November I had 15 shots which represented a new project using a wider angle lens but using the same lighting.

So what a year! Full of learning and new experiences. I’m going to be moving forward and trying to capitalise on those things that have edged my photography forward in 2016 and try and add a new dimension in 2017.