Best wishes for the holiday season to those following my work, or to anyone who has just stumbled across it. This is a selection of Christmas-themed photos that I’ve taken over the last month during my journeys around London, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, which I began in May this year.

This is the 69th set of my London photos, and it was fun to go through all the photos I’ve been accumulating from my almost daily journeys, large and small, over the last month, picking out those with a Christmas theme — from locations in north London, in central London and the City, on the Isle of Dogs and at various places in south east London, where I live — including my home in Brockley, and also Blackheath, Camberwell, Deptford, Greenwich, Honor Oak, Lewisham and Rotherhithe. Read the rest of this entry »

As part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike — and specifically as the last part of five photo sets recording various autumnal journeys around my home in Brockley, in south east London — the photos collected here record a journey I made on the evening of November 12, 2012, for around two hours, from 9 to 11 pm. This is the 65th photo set in my project, and see here, here, here and here for the previous four sets.

Beginning at my home in Brockley, I cycled down the hill through Lewisham and the edge of Deptford to Greenwich, and then down to the River Thames at Cutty Sark Gardens, along the Deptford shoreline, past Deptford Green, and on to the derelict site of Convoys Wharf, where there are horrible plans to build a £1 billion mini-city for the rich. I then travelled inland to Evelyn Street, the main road that runs to Surrey Quays. Read the rest of this entry »

As part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, my most recent photo sets — with the exception of the set featuring images from Saturday’s massive demonstration in Lewisham to resist plans to close the hospital’s A&E Department — captured a journey I made through south east London, and then along Commercial Road in the East End and back home via Canary Wharf, on a blazing hot day in July. That was exhilarating, and a lovely reminder of the joys that summer can bring, but here and now, as the days get shorter, and the leaves continue to fall, heralding the full-blown arrival of winter, I thought it would make sense to post some more recent photos.

This set — the 61st London set — and the four to follow capture some of the delights of autumn, in and around my home in Brockley, in south east London, and also including Deptford and Greenwich. This first set, however, returns to my local park, Hilly Fields, on a hill commanding wonderful views of Blythe Hill, looking over to the wooded expanse of Forest Hill, where the last vestiges remain of the Great North Wood that once covered most of south London. There are also glimpses to be had of Canary Wharf and the O2, as well as views over Blackheath to Shooters Hill, down to Lewisham and all the way out to Kent. Read the rest of this entry »

The 55th photo set in my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, which I began exactly six months ago, focuses on Brockley Cemetery, one of a pair of Victorian cemeteries just down the road from where I live in south east London, and a visit I made as the sun was beginning to fall on a weekday evening in October, casting a golden light on the gravestones and on the wonderful trees that are part of the cemeteries’ attraction.

Located between Brockley Road and Brockley Grove, in the neighbouring area of Ladywell, the 37-acre site of Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries (formerly known as Deptford and Lewisham Cemeteries) opened in 1858, and the two cemeteries were separated by a wall until 1948. They are now just separated by trees, and a low bank, but each has its own distinctive character. In fact, there is only one official entrance between the two cemeteries, which I didn’t find out until after I had visited Brockley Cemetery on many occasions, and which, as a result, was something of a Narnia moment for me (from the wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, which was one of my favourite books as a child, along with the rest of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series). Read the rest of this entry »

With the wheel of the year turning from autumn to winter, the days getting shorter, the cold settling in, and the leaves first of all turning from green to yellows, oranges and reds, and then falling from the trees, I wanted to make sure that I made available some of my photos capturing these changes before winter firmly takes over.

In my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, in which I recently marked the publication of my first 1,000 photos in 50 sets, I have been out and about relentlessly as the summer gave way to autumn, and now as autumn is giving way to winter, but I have found it impossible to upload the photos to keep up with my productivity. I now have 217 sets of photos to upload — over 4,500 photos in total — taken from mid-July to yesterday, capturing this extraordinary city in bright sunlight, in the rain and the mist, in the early morning, at noon, in the late afternoon and at night, and at all points of the compass, to add to the 1,000 already posted. Read the rest of this entry »

As part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, I recently reached a small milestone, as the last set I uploaded, “The Open-Air Street Artists of Ashby Mews, Brockley,” was the 50th set I have uploaded since I began this project in May.

Those 50 sets contain my first 1,001 photos, and although it will take tens of thousands of photos to try and capture in any meaningful sense London’s streets and buildings, its houses, shops and offices, its parks and rivers, its skies and its forgotten places, and the movements of the people who bring these places to life or are crushed or belittled by them, in all 32 boroughs and the City of London, I have another 213 sets that I have photographed over the last three and a half months, but haven’t yet had the time to upload, containing over 4,500 more photos from the trips I have been making on an almost daily basis, so I do feel that I am making some meaningful progress. Read the rest of this entry »

Before Brockley, in south east London, was mugged by the selfish and arrogant forces of gentrification, with the arrival of the upgraded East London Line, it had been a haven for Bohemians for many decades — with artists, writers and musicians all taking advantage of its leafiness and its affordability.

At the heart of Brockley are broad, tree-lined Victorian streets, mostly built in the 1880s and 1890s, when the former fields of Brockley were opened up to developers with the arrival of the railway. These roads form a conservation area, first designated as such by Lewisham Council in 1973, in recognition of the area’s “special architectural and historic interest,” which was extended in 1991, 1993 and 2005. Read the rest of this entry »

My 42nd photo set in my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by  bike brings together a few disparate elements, photographed in July, and united under the umbrella title of “Green London” — firstly, a few photos from Mudchute Farm and Mudchute Park, on the Isle of Dogs, which I had put aside when I posted a set of photos of a journey around Canary Wharf to which these were the green prelude.

The second group of photos — 12 photos of Crystal Palace — were taken on a rainy afternoon, and had been sitting around until I decided to join them up with the “Green London” photos — not just the Mudchute idyll, but also some photos taken locally to me — in Ladywell Fields, a popular spot by the River Ravensbourne, which, further downstream, feeds into the River Thames at Deptford Creek, and on Hilly Fields, the wonderful hill-top park near my home, with its wonderful views out over south east London and beyond, and, at strategic points, its glimpses of Canary Wharf and the O2. Read the rest of this entry »

“Little fluffy clouds,” famously, was a quote in an interview with the wonderful singer/songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, which was sampled by art pranksters The Orb for their 1990 single of the same name. This is the exchange:

Interviewer: What were the skies like when you were young?

Rickie Lee Jones: They went on forever. We lived in Arizona, and the skies always had little fluffy clouds in ’em, and, uh, they were long and clear and there were lots of stars at night. And, uh, when it would rain, it would all turn — They were beautiful, the most beautiful skies as a matter of fact. Um, the sunsets were purple and red and yellow and on fire, and the clouds would catch the colours everywhere. That’s, uh, neat ’cause I used to look at them all the time, when I was little. You don’t see that. You might still see them in the desert. Read the rest of this entry »

These photos are the latest contributions to my ongoing project, on Flickr, to photograph the whole of London by bike — the sixteenth instalment in what will eventually comprise many hundreds of photos sets. I currently have 60 sets to post, mostly taken in a very busy month before my summer holiday in Italy, so please bear with me. I have also been adding the photos to an interactive map, which can be found here, and I am also engaged in bringing the photos together in collections, for which maps also exist, which I hope help to contextualise the photos. Tags may also be a good way of seeking out photos, and tags are available here.

The project is my way of getting to understand London, the city that has been my home for the last 27 years, and came about because I needed — for reasons involving my health and what I think can accurately be described as my spiritual existence — to combine exercise, exploration and my neglected love of photography. Read the rest of this entry »