Spitalfields, London, 6th June 2009

This was shot as part of a project I’m doing about double yellow lines called ‘No Parking’. For some reason since shooting digitally, I found myself taking these across the street type compositions and when I realised I’d taken a few of them with these double yellow lines running parallel to the bottom of the frame, it gave me the idea to pursue a series of them. I like the idea of having a set of pictures, whose only link are the lines that run throughout them. Maybe it’s not a project that is going to change people’s opinions about current issues but it’s just a different way of looking at the world.

Notting Hill Carnival, London, 25th August 2008.

I hadn’t been to the carnival in years and thought it would be fun to go down there for a change. I noticed this family group standing outside a yellow doorway trying to gain a better viewing angle of the parade and knew I wanted a complex shot and decided to include other people in the left half of the image. Unfortunately my lens wasn’t that wide (17mm on a D300) so I had to stand further back and have lots of people walking in and out of the frame. The good thing about this was that I was working from more of a distance so people didn’t take much notice of me and I was able to shoot about 20 odd frames. I really like the  way the little girl is using her fathers crossed arms as a support and the mother holding her daughters arm to the left of the frame looking the other way.

Marble Arch subway, London, 23rd August 2008.

It’s funny how fate can often determine whether or not you happen to stumble across a great picture opportunity like this one. I was with Tiffany Jones in Hyde Park just a couple of minutes from here, when she started to feel unwell and needed to go to the toilet. So we came through here and while I was waiting for her outside I noticed this boy playing his football. There were lots of people walking past and I only managed to run off ten frames so I was kinda lucky to get this one as all the others were terrible or so-so. I didn’t pay too much attention to the security camera at the time as I was more interested in using the two lamps to balance the composition. The graffiti sign “WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT ?” is perfectly placed opposite the broken CCTV camera and the ball going right in between them appears to be at the peak of its bounce.

Oxford Street, London, 5th August 2006

There are various locations that for one reason or another will hold a certain appeal to photographers. One such spot is this corner of Tottenham Court Road tube station. The woefully inadequate pavement space for such a busy corner combined with the great lighting of the late afternoon makes for great crowd scenes. Despite the fact I love this spot, I’ve never been able to take a picture there that I’ve been truly satisfied with.

Cardiff Bay, 5th August 2007.

When I was a student at Newport I’d make frequent trips to Cardiff and had even tried to make a picture story about the Bay area which was undergoing a huge redevelopment program at the time, rather like London’s Canary Wharf. I was invited down there a couple of years ago by Joni Karanka and Maciej Dakowicz and was interested to see how it looked twelve years after I was last there. This water sculpture really caught my eye as it had a beautiful shimmering reflective quality and people would come right up to it and view it from unusual angles. It was fortunately a sunny day which I think is much better for taking pictures of reflective surfaces.