Whisky Edit #1: The Sorry Princess and the Wealthy Baguette

A new way to curate photos. A storybook fuelled by charred oak and bonfire

I’ve come to a realisation. Realistically, given my current rate of editing and curating photos, I’ll only ever publish an iceberg’s tip of my work online before I die.

This is no great shame. It’s all ridiculous. But the giant jumble of unsorted photos feels like a painful, looping stutter.

I want to get more storybooks out, and over the years I've developed different ways of curating and editing my work.

I'm always looking for new ways to curate the jungle and today I developed a new one I’m calling The Whisky Edit.

Step 1. Settle into an armchair with the laptop
Step 2. Chuck on a decent playlist
Step 3. Pour a generous glass of whisky

For this, the first in the series, I went for a Lagavulin 11, Charred Oak Cask. It hasn’t had much action recently but it’s a decent dram. Burnt, thick and slightly oily. Some bonfire and molasses.

‘There Are Sorry Princesses’

This is a photo I took near a scrapyard in Canning Town. The light was like a curtain reveal and this chap whizzed past on his bike as I was framing.

I like having him in it. He’s reading the message. The light feels warm and intimate.

The practice of curating photos with your mouth on fire

The whisky is warming my throat now.

I’m curating photos by speed scrolling through my Lightroom photos until something compels me to stop.

I’m not thinking about the why. I’m just picking photos out that feel like they fit the mood.

I’m then doing a 30 second edit on whichever photo I stop on and putting it in a folder labelled ‘Whisky Edit’.

‘There Are Buildings’

The image above is from a couple of weeks ago. I was lost (as usual) trying to get back and spotted the symmetry and new / old juxtaposition.

The selection process for picking out shots for this series isn’t constrained by themes or dates. It’s more of a loose, playful state of curation.

That’s it, the whole workflow and process for this.

A gentle whisky buzz, a look at some new and old photos with no particular agenda.

I’m enjoying it because it still has a narrative. Little stories and sub-stories emerge.

‘There Are Blossoms’

There’s a tree on the road where we used to live that bursts into bloom for just two weeks of the year. It’s blink or you’ll miss it.

We were packing our things to leave for this last blossom. It’s a very urban London road. Rows of Victorian two up and downs terraced houses, brown, brutalist estates, bins everywhere.

I’ve taken shots of these blossoms before but noticed something different today.

I was in the loft grabbing some bits when I noticed that if I poked my head far enough above the window, and used a long enough lens, I could frame the naked silhouette of the tree with the blossoms.

I could leave the grey road, discarded nappies, PVC windows and patchwork of cars out of the frame. For a fleeting moment a Japanese paradise in London.

‘There Are Rain Clouds’

I nearly didn’t include this one. It feels - as I’m posting - a bit less congruous alongside the rest of the photos, less urban, less abstract.

However, the whisky insisted at the time. Whisky does that. Respect the whisky edit.

I took the photo today, about 2 hours ago. Some friends had left. A guy I hadn’t seen in 25 years and his partner. We had a few beers and it felt like only 5 minutes we’d been apart. Lovely humans.

The weather welcomed the reunion. It had been grey skies all week but the moment we left the house for a walk it was bright blue skies. When they left I noticed a black cloud swooping in from the east.

I kept checking in on its progress and that’s the shot I got.

‘There Are Flags’

Lots of Tetris buildings in London.

‘There Are Blues’

This beautiful blue is from a trailer that’s always parked on a road where we used to live. It belongs to a hoarder.

I’ve shot it a few times because I’m obsessed with the blue. I love the little markings and tatty bits.

I sometimes wonder if I'm on anyone's Ring doorbell footage photographing this stuff.

‘There Are Rectangles’

More Tetris. A timber merchant’s roof provides ship-like ballast for the two towers.

‘There Are Oranges’

I’ve taken to shooting wayward cones. This one looked like he’d had a rough night and then I spotted a guy walking past wearing a matching outfit.

‘There Are Black Lines’

Another image I shot today, I am really obsessed with inky blacks and distortion at the moment.

‘There Are Yellow and Beige Lines’

This might form part of a project I’m doing on yellow lines. I’ve taken thousands of shots of yellow lines over the years and want to stick them in a collection.

There’s a pattern of lines emerging in this edit.

‘There Are Rich Foods’

‘Eat the Rich’ is a pretty ubiquitous tag in London these days.

It’s just occurred to me that it’s an inversion of Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal, where he suggests, satirically, that the rich eat the poor.

I don’t usually go in for shooting graffiti tags or overly popular slogans but sometimes they can come in handy as parts of series. Like, for example, if I was able to pair it with another foodstuff.

‘There Are Baguettes’

And here is that foodstuff. The abandoned baguette.

The process of taking this picture was, like many of my odd street photos, quite fun.

Normally when I get my camera out and take a picture in London someone will slow down and think about whether they should take one too, even if they’ve no idea what I’m shooting.

Humans are naturally curious and fearful of FOMO. What if I’m missing THAT moment?

I enjoy their baffled eyes quizzing the back of my head when they realise I’m just taking a picture of a baguette stuck next to a piece of metal surrounded by piss.