When the City of London’s workers clock off at the end of the week, this hive of financial activity buzzes for a few hours with loud throngs outside the bars and pubs. Then they trickle off to the nearby Tube and train stations. The weekend is two long days of calm.
The City has become something of a mecca for London photographers on the weekends. Monumental architecture of steel and glass catches and reflects the light in pleasing pools. The occasional figures padding past the closed shops help give it human scale.
Increasingly, it’s a place I head to when I have cameras to test for my shop. All that glass and metal creates fantastic backdrops you don't get in London's older neighbourhoods.
This day, I was testing a Pentax PC-303. If you've never heard of it, don't worry – it's not a camera that crops up on many "must-have" lists. Pentax's PC range of compact cameras started with the flagship (and very impressive) PC-35AF and PC-35AF-M models in the mid-1980s, before morphing into a more budget-minded range in the late 1980s. The PC-303 is pretty typical of them, with a single shutter speed and a switch on the bottom for ISO 100, 200 and 400 films.
Sophisticated it is not, but it's tougher than a lot of its contemporaries and comes with an excellent 35mm lens. I sell a lot of cameras like this, and I've learned to enjoy shooting them for what they are – fuss-free ways to get a photo in good light.
It was also that most important of cameras – the one I had on me at the time. I try to keep a camera like this on me as much as possible. You never know what you might see turning a corner, even if it's a quick trip to the shops for a pint of milk.
The car was parked on the shady side of the street, the strong sunlight reflecting onto it off the walls behind me. The three figures, engrossed in a conversation I couldn't hear, anchor the other side of the shot. The cool of the shadows is offset by the bright, stark summer sunlight. It was the perfect city corner to stumble across with a camera in hand.