Oxford Street

If you wanted to visit London’s Soho district and the shopping thoroughfare of Oxford Street, you would stop off at Tottenham Court Road station. I’ve used it countless times. In recent years, the station and its neighbourhood have undergone radical change to prepare for the Crossrail scheme, designed to improve the city’s hard-pressed transport system.

The Central and Northern Line Tube station is now spruced up and more spacious than before. It has a modern and industrial feel, with bold, simple graphic designs. The entrance and exits are light, stark temples of glass, while you’ll find the newest Tube signs here.

But change comes at a price – the exits have been repositioned, and emerging from one I was seriously disorientated. The loss of a number of buildings and this new hub means that the familiar old station is no more than a vestige of the past.

This was also the first workout for my new Fuji XF 18-135mm zoom lens, which brought features closer and seemed to beef up my shooting power.

Click first image to view this collection

Tucked just behind the hustle of London’s Oxford Street is The Photographers’ Gallery. It’s a space over a number of floors dedicated to exploring photography as an art form. It has a shop selling refurbished film cameras, which sparked my purchase of a vintage Olympus point and shoot.

I spent time studying Human Rights Human Wrongs, a striking and challenging exhibition of landmark photojournalism from some of the trouble spots of the 20th century. But then I sat back with my camera and considered the order and beauty of the gallery spaces and observing other visitors. It became a case of taking shots of people as they were engaged in the business of looking at other photographs.

If you are in London and you’re looking for a haven of photography, I would make time for a visit to Ramillies Street.