Photography
The interaction of the physical object with its environment began to really interest me. Daylight was just a wash across everything. Uninteresting. Overlit.
I’m not a photographer in the true sense. I know a few of those and they are remarkable people. They own things like lenses and talk about ISO and aperture; frankly, a walk around their homes and you begin to wonder if it’s all a cover for an underground spy ring. I subscribe more to the old adage that the best camera you have is the one in your pocket. For me this meant an iPhone, and they have just got better and better over the years.
So equipped - and being a bad sleeper to early riser - I have often found myself awake in the small hours, and love nothing more than heading out into town to catch what I can of the night and then sunrise. Particularly in winter, you really don’t have to be up all that early to see something amazing.
I think one of the main reasons for falling in love with night-time photography is that as I directed more plays, I stopped viewing the set design and lighting department as two functions, but as two sides of the same function. The interaction of the physical object with its environment - with the light - began to really interest me. Daylight was just a wash across everything. Uninteresting. Overlit. But LED lights strapped to brutalist architecture in the dark - now we’re talking. 200-year-old lamps on the South Bank framing modern buildings - perfect. And always without people as far as possible. I do love people, I promise, but these amazing spaces resonate quite differently empty than, well, full. Having a space with people in it is a statement in and of itself.
There have been a lot of places over the years that I have declared my favourite for watching the sunrise, but a random conversation with a lady working on the Thames Clipper a couple of years ago changed my world, and gave me a new, extremely high bar for the best sunrise in London. Here is what you do:
- Get up early enough to be on the Lizzie Line in Ealing Broadway (my home stop) before 6am. It whizzes through town at that time of day. You should make it to Woolwich before 6:30am with a little luck.
- Have a walk around the metal men near the river, Punchdrunk’s HQ and the amazing old gun factories. You’re looking for that first indication dawn is on the way. Keep an eye out east - to my eye dawn isn’t grey; it’s a shift from black to a very steely dark blue. Grab a coffee.
- Get on the next Thames Clipper into town; they should be running by now. Make sure you hold that coffee tight - you’ll need it. Sit out on the back of the boat in the partially covered bit. You will likely have this whole section to yourself at this time of the morning particularly in the winter, but it might be chilly. I refer you to the coffee. A drink. A small portable heater. Is there no end to the marvels of coffee?
- You’re now looking out east on a boat that will make its way past some of the best landmarks in London - Greenwich, the O2, the Thames Barrier, Tower Bridge - the list goes on - and framing all of them on the horizon is the sunrise...........
Scattered across this site we have photographs, many of which were taken across London at night, mostly shortly before or during sunrise. Often on auspicious days; as if somehow bottling the sunrise of the 1st Jan in a specific year, or the sunrise of the first day of a new chapter of your life felt important. Looking back on it gave a feeling of perspective and connection. Buried in this site somewhere is the last-but-one sunrise my father ever saw. Perhaps not quite the kick of the last, but I had other things on that day.
