In May 2025, I was fortunate enough to have an exhibition in London. Having some time to kill before the show, I took a short walk around the capital. Thankfully, it was a lovely, warm and sunny day, which in Britain is always something to be grateful for, and I was able to capture a bunch of images that I really enjoyed from just that single day.
It wasn’t my first time in London, and I’ve been back since, but I wanted to show the city through the lens of a single-day walk rather than something more expansive. Rather than trying to piece together a long, sprawling feature around the capital, I simply want to show what you can capture on a single walk when you are truly paying attention.
I think we often switch off from our surroundings when we put our headphones in, ignoring everything going on around us. I try my best not to do that when I go on a walk—to resist putting on my headphones and instead take in the sounds of my environment. It means I can actually immerse myself in being there, rather than just viewing the place I’m capturing through a lens.
As it happened, I was actually forced into this on this particular trip. My AirPods only have about four and a half hours of battery life; by the time I had travelled from home to the train station and caught the train to London, they were pretty much dead anyway. Being forced not to use them turned out to be a good thing. It made me much more engaged in my photo walk, and it’s something I’ve tried to practise an awful lot more ever since because I genuinely enjoyed the experience so much. Hearing the people around me meant I would often turn to see what was happening, and I think there’s something to be said for actively being part of the streets you are photographing.
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