Fishing in the Rivers of Life

Category: Rivers of Light

  • Photography: The Dying Art

    The Misplaced Focus on Art Over the Artist Reading Lewis Liu’s essay on Marcel Duchamp’s impact on the artistic world, arguing that art is simply a social construct, and his theory that AI will do the same was a revelation. A lightbulb moment when I realised he was missing the point. With so much talk…

  • One at a Time – Dog, on the beach, Margate

    One at a time – a series of posts where I will examine a single image – today it’s the turn of Margate. It’s a funny old world; of all the things I’ve photographed and all the things I’ve seen, this image ranks so near the top of my favourite photos, if not at the…

  • Real-world X-H2S testing

    The Myth of Press Photography Glamour It’s a funny old world; one where perception and reality are so often worlds apart. Take press photography, for instance. Imagine the reader, binging such films as The Bang Bang Club, Blow-Up, and Minamata. By now, they’d believe life in this universe is a dangerous, exhilarating, and glamorous cocktail—an…

  • Bearing Witness: Why You Must See the World Press Photo Exhibition

    If you do one thing this bank holiday, or even just one thing in the next three months, visit the World Press Photo Exhibition at the MPB Gallery, Here East, London. Why? Because not all superheroes wear capes. Some wear press vests in the most dangerous corners of the world. I call them superheroes because,…

  • Prawns in the curtains

    A Strange Turn in the Mirror Hopefully, I’m not going to cry, but I am gripped by a sense of melancholic failure as I’ve just suffered a quite frankly strange out-of-body experience. My life flashed before me. I was there but not really present; I was wandering like a stranger in my own world. It…

  • Heretical and Heavenly: The Leica Q3

    Wrestling with the truth How I agonised as I ummed and ahhed over how to say this, worrying whether I should pull my punches or just give it to you straight. So let’s just cut to the chase. This camera is a masterpiece. Come on, a Leica with autofocus! You’ve got to be impressed. Believe…

  • The Fujifilm X100VI – a triumph of technology and styling

    A beast of burden dreams of film As I trudge and traipse across London Bridge, grumbling like a mule and burdened like a packhorse, I recall a time before digital equipment weighed me down. And once again I find myself wishing: if only digital cameras could be more like their film forefathers. Cue nostalgia and…

  • One at a Time – Tsunami

    One at a time – a series of posts where I will examine a single image – today it’s tsunami. Vision fractured, life unbroken. A survivor of the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka sits in the small makeshift treatment centre, the same one that would later treat my chest infection caused by breathing the toxic…

  • One at a Time – Ted Fest

    One at a time – a series of posts where I will examine a single image – today it’s Ted Fest. After narrowly avoiding getting killed when the gearbox on our helicopter sprang a leak, I finally made it to the real-life Craggy Island, Inishmore, an island on the West Coast of Ireland, for the…

  • One at a Time – Morse

    One at a time – a series of posts where I examine a single image. Today: Morse. Christ, almost twenty-five years since I shot this one. But. And I hope you agree — it’s a cracker. If memory serves me right (and it probably doesn’t), this was shot at BAFTA. I’d been kept waiting ages…

  • One at a Time – Woman and Child

    One at a time – a series of posts where I will examine a single image – today it’s Woman and Child. Sunday evening, on my way back home from a shift, the light was glorious. So much so that I was compelled to get the backup kit out of the bag. That’s the thing…

  • The Leica M11 camera is like a reunion with an old flame

    Anticipation: A Bittersweet Sensation Anticipation, such a bittersweet sensation. The delicious excitement that gets the juice buds flowing. Will the moment live up to expectations, lingering on the lips forever, or leave a nasty taste in the mouth? Will you part, never to speak of this again? Who knows, suffice; it’s somewhat of an understatement…

  • One at a Time – Plant Crossing

    One at a time — a series of posts where I’ll examine a single image. Today, it’s plant crossing. Ok, man, a pot plant crossing the road. Bit of a street photography cliché. Perhaps. But did that stop me from waddling down the footpath like Quasimodo in search of Esmeralda, with my eye clamped to…

  • PR’s Monochrome Mistake: Turning Creativity Into a One-Colour Trend

    The Job of a Picture EditorPicture Editor; not a real job, is it? Paid to study snaps! How hard can it be? It’s not as if you’re run ragged in Casualty, or toiling down a coal mine. I agree wholeheartedly. Even so, life as a Picture Editor is far more stressful than you might imagine.…

  • Croydon — Walking in the Footsteps of Giants

    A Borough in the Balance Now, to answer that age-old riddle over the glass being half-empty or half-full, I’d pose a different question: does it depend on what’s in the glass? But what if, instead of a glass, the vessel in question was a London borough? This puzzle preoccupies my mind as I stand killing…