Author: David

Helmut Newton never hesitated. His portraits looked straight back – cool, self-possessed, and often half-dressed. He photographed women with force, desire with geometry, and fashion with a kind of playful danger that has never been matched. Newton didn’t follow the rules of commercial photography; he quietly dismantled them, then rebuilt them on his own terms. Today, he’s remembered for the big tools: Hasselblads, Rolleiflexes, and the sculptural square frames they produced. But Newton was never tied to a single system. He used whatever camera gave him speed and clarity in the moment – Nikons, Pentaxes, Konicas, Leicas, and yes, Olympus.…

There are reasons we pick up a camera that have nothing to do with photography. For some, it’s expression. For others, escape. For me, it’s memory. Film has always been more than a medium – it’s a form of proof. Proof that moments existed before the world moved on, that light once fell across someone I loved, that I was there to see it. Shooting film slows everything down; it gives weight to time. You choose a moment and trust it, knowing you won’t see the result until much later. In that delay, something sacred happens. The act becomes about…

David Bailey didn’t just change photography — he changed what photographers looked like. Gone were the stiff suits and polite distances of the ’50s lensmen. Bailey swaggered in with a leather jacket, a camera and a working-class accent — and made being a photographer look cool. He shot The Beatles, the Stones and Warhol with the same raw energy he brought to Soho models and East End gangsters. And while he may be better known for his Rolleiflex, his partnership with Olympus during the 1970s and ’80s brought a swagger to the brand that no amount of spec sheets ever…

Portsmouth is five minutes from Gosport by ferry. I’ve made that crossing more times than I can count – on the way to school, to meet friends, or just to clear my head. I used to pass Warrior every morning. A mate even had his wedding reception on board. And yet, I hadn’t properly set foot in the dockyard since I was eight. So I went back – with the OM-2n, two Zuikos, and no particular plan. Just film, the heat, and a handful of hours to see what the city would give me. Warrior: iron lines, memory, and a…

In photography, time does the heavy lifting. A quiet shot of a street corner or a café queue might feel forgettable the moment it’s taken. But fast forward ten, twenty, fifty years, and suddenly that same image becomes a document — not of the extraordinary, but of the way things were. That’s the idea photographer David Hurn has long championed: the best photos often aren’t the ones shouting for attention, but the ones that quietly outlast everything around them. Photograph What’s Now — For Who’s Next We’re told photography is about freezing a moment before it slips away. But the…

There’s something beautifully unassuming about the Olympus XA3 – like a paperback in a room full of tablets, or that mate who never brags but always delivers. It doesn’t try to impress. It just is. And on a boiling-hot London afternoon, this £18 charity shop find turned out to be the best decision I’ve made in a long time. Yes, £18. Pulled from a forgotten shelf in Barnstaple like a relic with potential. It looked more like an old Dictaphone than a camera, but there was something about it – that chunky sliding cover, that square flash port, the word…

It’s difficult to overstate how much Kodak once meant to the world. For much of the 20th century, if you were photographing anything – from a moon landing to your Aunt Sheila’s third wedding – it was probably on Kodak film. Weddings, holidays, riots, revolutions, Elvis, the moon, and your mum’s bad 1980s perm – all caught on those familiar yellow boxes. Kodak was photography. And then, quite suddenly, it wasn’t. This is a tale of golden empires, spectacular blunders, chemical magic, digital denial, and a phoenix-like resurrection no one quite expected. It’s also a love letter to grain, to…

Jane Bown didn’t need a studio. She didn’t need assistants. And she never needed a second shot. Armed with a compact Olympus OM body, two Zuiko primes, and a few rolls of Kodak Tri-X, she quietly produced some of the most enduring portraits in British photographic history. Her approach was minimalist in gear, maximalist in intent – letting light, presence, and timing do the work. Over more than sixty years with The Observer, she photographed everyone from royalty to revolutionaries: Samuel Beckett, Queen Elizabeth II, John Lennon, Orson Welles, Cartier-Bresson. No entourage. No artifice. Just presence – and an unshakeable…

The FA Cup starts early. Not with pyrotechnics or glitzy coverage, but on quiet pitches tucked behind working men’s clubs and chain-link fences. It’s the oldest competition in football, a sacred institution of English sport. And for a while, I thought I’d capture every round of it – on black and white film. It wasn’t about nostalgia. It was about honesty. A desire to slow things down. To shoot football in a way that isn’t done anymore: unpolished, imperfect, and maybe a bit braver for it. A Different Kind of Project I’ve always been drawn to timeless photographs. The kind…

If you’re shooting black and white film in 2026, you’re doing it for the right reasons. You’re not after perfection. You’re not trying to impress anyone on Instagram. You’re in it for the weight, the grit, and the moments digital can’t fake. But picking your first (or fifth) black and white film can feel like guessing what’s behind a locked pub door. Some will open to poetry. Some will open to a punch in the face. Here’s what’s still worth loading — and how to get the most out of it without making it more complicated than it needs to…