Walls and Bridges:
by Joel Meadows

It's amazing how having a camera and taking photos regularly changes the way you look at things. I've had my digital since August 2004 and I rarely go out without it now. Because of the nature of my work as a freelance sub editor and copy editor, you never know when you get a spare moment to capture something you may never see in the same light again quite literally. I used to hate winter over here: getting light late and getting dark early used to really depress me. But since I've had the camera, I've begun to appreciate winter's unique light. I've got a lot of very crisp shots that are only possible in winter sunshine here. Recently I found that having my camera on my person was very useful indeed: I did a day's work at Time's London offices last Wed (25th January) and because they were shifting desks around, I had the choice of either sitting around until they were finished or heading out for a half hour break. So I popped out and managed to get some great shots since the weather was crisp and cold with perfect blue sky. I walked along the embankment past Cleopatra's Needle and got some exciting new photos of that marvelous ancient monument and some very elegant photos of Somerset House.

It's so much fun to rediscover things and places that seemed overly familiar before and look at them in a new way. It's hard to beat the Victoria Embankment on a bright winter's day. This is why I live in London…

Last weekend was also great for taking photos. Finishing off the bridges I needed photographed took me to Wandsworth Bridge. Not my favourite area and it took over an hour to drive there from me because of the traffic, even on a Sunday. But the funny thing is that, even though the bridge looks hideous (like a pantone colour strip brought to life) with crisp blue sky, the shots came out perfectly. When I first got there, I thought it was going to be difficult to get decent views of the bridge but I found a PC World car park, from where I got some perfect shots of the bridge. The strange thing about Wandsworth Bridge is that it doesn't even look like it belongs in London. If you look at the couple of shots here, you'll see that it looks nothing like the other bridges on the river. But it bodes really well for the book project…