Exploring Second-Hand Photography Books Part 2

A little while ago I wrote about my passion for second hand photography books and I shared a few of my favourites with you.

I have so many photobooks though (more an obssession than a passion perhaps) so here’s another one. This is going to be more of a deep dive into the book as I felt more drawn to this photographer. There was something about their work, their process and style, and their choice of subject matter which resonated very deeply with me.

As before, the book was discovered browsing through a second hand bookshop or charity shop (I am afraid I can’t remember which one in this case). I note that this book is also currently still available from the publisher, Silverhill Press

“From the photo-diaries of Mick Williamson”

Mick Williamson 2023

From the Photo-diaries of Mick Williamson

The project has been ongoing since the 1970s and has accumulated over two million photographs!

Mick Williamson is a professional photographer and educator. He first picked up a camera in the mid 1960s and started working in photography in the early 70s. As well as a photographer he has taught in various colleges and has served on numerous committees and boards. He has given to the art and craft of photography over his career.

The photo-diaries have been an ongoing project for him since the 1970s, around the birth of his son. He is an habitual and almost daily photographer (I understand that if he forgets to take his camera with him he will go back to get it – I know he feels!).

For this particular project he has taken over two million photographs! And it is worth bearing in mind he is using a film camera rather than digital.

I am fascinated by his work not just because of his breathtaking ethereal images but because some of his ways of working resonate with me. I have tried to a photograph a day as part of a mindful process to observe the world around me, although I am not always successful.

I have also been conscious of just how many photographs I have taken over the years. I have had a digitial camera for well over a decade now and I have no idea how many photographs I have created, most of which live on various hard drives and never see the light of day – just the quantity of photographs can seem overwhelming. Perhaps this could be a subject for another post.

Williamson has used the same camera for the whole project. His way of working with it has become instinctive.

As mentioned, Williamson photographs on a film camera. His choice was an Olympus Pen, a small half frame camera: that is it would take two photographs for each frame of a 35mm film. 36 exposures would become 72. He has used the same camera for many years and knows how it will work and what it will see. As a result his photography is intuitive. Very often he will take his photographs without even looking through the viewfinder. He tends to work in a very instinctive way responding to what he sees. He does not impose himself on his subject.

The driving force of the project was the birth of his son in the mid 1970s. I have never been a father but I could imagine how watching the moments of your child’s life could make you more conscious of each second and perhaps want to capture them. As mentioned in the introduction to the book his compulsion was “borne of a desire to seize the ever-vanishing seconds.”

His choice of subjects are from the everyday, a fleeting moment, through carefully composed landscapes.

Many of his images are of the domestic – cups of tea and pints of beer; chairs, tables and other everyday objects that have caught his eye. Perhaps it is the way the light falls upon them or simply giving prominence to something that is often overlooked.

Some of the photographs are more like family “snaps” of his children and friends on holiday and at play, although they are more than that. The ethereal quality of the lighting renders them as something more than a simple family photograph.

As with many ostensibly personal photographs some of the images can seem a little surreal to a third party. For example there is one image of hands holding a cup of tea, and in the background a hose snakes across a gravel surface and through a wooden fence. What is going on? A family photograph out of context?

Some of his images look like the quiet scenes from a movie.

Many of the photographs are displayed in a sequence as they were taken on the film with the sprockets and numbers visible. It is always fascinating to watch how a photographer comes to their chosen image. Somewhere in my collection of second hand books I have a copy of the book of contact prints from photographers working for the Magnum photograph agency – they show how some of the most classic images of all time were arrived at. In this case, though, Williamson is showing a series of moments for example curtains blowing through an open window in a hotel room, or a child walking around concentric circles drawn in the sand. It is almost as if they are scenes from a movie, perhaps a moment of calm between the action.

A lot of the photograph are taken at unusual angles and focus in on details, perhaps a hand holding a cup of tea. Many of the people in the images tend to be viewed from behind or from a distance or against the light, or perhaps just a part of them is visible.

Apart from the photographs of people and everyday objects there are also landscapes, typically of woods, lakes and mountains often under dark skies. These are the more formal images possibly where he has composed the image through the viewfinder. A longer moment recorded, they feel different to the instinctively photographed moments.

Above all there is childhood and a sense of fleeting moments.

Above all there is childhood. Running, playing often in sunlight. Throughout the images Williamson makes a great use of light. It flares and glows, casts shadows and ripples on water and through glass. As a result the photographs have an ethereal sense. There is a positive feeling of the moment captured but the glare of the light emphasises its transience and we are returned to the driving force for this project – to capture fleeting moments

Unlike many of the other second hand books I have collected this one is still in print (just!). You can purchase copies of it from the publisher, Silverhill Press.

Stack of books on photography and literature, featuring titles by Bill Brandt, Fay Godwin, Edwin Smith, Walker Evans, and Ansel Adams.

This is the second of a series of posts on some of the second hand photobooks I have purchased. I hope that you have found it interesting and it encourages you to seek out photographers’ printed work in your local second hand and charity bookshops.

If you discover any interesting ones let me know in the comments below.

Spring Equinox – a cycle ride through the Fens

The Spring is one of my favourite times of year. Such promise!

At the Spring Equinox when the night begins to retreat and the days grow longer I went out for a cycle ride through the Fens north of Cambridge, one of my favourite places to visit. I like the open expanse of the sky and the land. Everything feels so open.

At this turn of the year all around me the dark earth had been turned to await new growth and in some cases green shoots were already beginning to show through. Here and there the recent heavy rain that had marked February lingered in deep puddles. On the horizon the trees were still in their winter garb but their edges were beginning to soften in the light.

Here are a few of the photographs I took on the day.

If you would like to follow the route I took you can do so on Komoot

Discovering the signs of Spring

Slowly, slowly the world wakes up.

My last post was all about searching out snowdrops in an in old churchyard. This time I was looking for other signs of Spring. I found them within the smelling distance of a landfill site! To be fair, a part of it is also a nature reserve.

Here are a few of the details as the new leaves slowly bud and unfurl. In one case, a few of last year’s sloeberries still hang on, looking backwards as the year moves forward.

A close-up of a thin branch with small buds against a blurred natural background.

Close-up of a branch with buds emerging, set against a blurred background.

Cycling out of London towards Spring

A line of snowdrops against a dark flint wall. Amongst them are the early shoots of wild daffodils

The other Sunday I needed to get out of London. It had rained non-stop for days, and not a clean rain but dirty, covering everything in a greasy grey dullness: the streets, the buildings, the people. Anything bright or joyful had washed away. Even life seemed to have been lost – no bird song, no leaves in the trees, grass turned to mud.

Sunday was the only day when there seemed to be a break in the drab clouds, so I got on the bicycle and cycled north out of town. I had a gentle tailwind to propel me along. The wind is to cycling as light is to photography. Great light can create a beautiful photograph and the wind on your back can create a wonderful cycle ride.

A low view of a mass of snowdrops, some of the foreground ones out of focus

As I slipped through the northern suburbs of London, I always have the feeling that I am shedding off layers of the city. It can take time. There are false starts as tantalising fragments of countryside are encircled by housing, busy roads, or industrial estates. Eventually, though, London and its acolytes were behind me.

My destination was a churchyard without a church. There had been one once, but it was long gone, moved up the road closer to the living congregation, leaving the older members of the parish to their last resting place.

Between their memorials snowdrops were scattered across the ground, sometimes in ones or twos but often in great swathes, hugging the ground, testing the air, and pushing through the memories of autumn, the fallen leaves. Around them was the promise of later spring as the first shoots of wild daffodils were beginning to show. This was what I had been seeking out. After the old dark drear winter, a promise that things would turn.

A cluster of white snowdrop flowers growing at the base of a tree, surrounded by fallen leaves and green grass.

I set about photographing, getting down close to capture the flowers in their surroundings. If any passers by had seen a man in full cycling kit sprawled across the ground this was what he was doing! As I photographed, the clouds gradually broke and the sun, still a little watery, appeared. Overhead in the tops of the trees I could hear the sounds of bird song. The delicate white flowers seemed to glow.

A cluster of white snowdrop flowers with green leaves, set against a blurred background featuring a stone cross.

If you would like to view the route I took out of London check out Komoot

Exploring Second-Hand Photography Books

I like looking at the work of other photographers almost as much as I like taking photographs. It’s a great way to get inspiration, perhaps try something a little different.

There are lots of different ways to seek out photographers’ work. There’s social media, of course, but sometimes it’s hard to find good work amongst all the clutter in your feed and you can’t really appreciate the image looking at a tiny version of it on your phone.

In any case I am a big fan of printed work, its physicality against the ephemeral nature of a digital image briefly seen on Instagram or similar. This is especially the case if the original was a print, created from a negative in a dark room.

If, like me, you’re lucky enough to live in a place with galleries and museums, you might be able to see prints of photographs in exhibitions. If not, there is an alternative which is not as expensive as you might think.

Buy second hand photo books. Sometimes you can find an eclectic mix of books of photographs in second hand and charity bookshops. It offers a very much less expensive way of buying photobooks.

I am an inveterate browser of second hand and charity bookshops. There is nothing I like more than spending half an hour so looking along the shelves and finding new discoveries.

So here a few of the books I have purchased over the last few years. Each of them were discovered by chance. In some cases I had heard of the photographer but sometimes they were new to me. The key things that drew me to a book were did I like the photographs and did the subject matter resonate. Oh, and was it cheap? None of the books listed here were more than a tenner!

“Luminance”

Linda Connor 1994

Linda Connor is a landscape photographer, active since the 1970s. She has also appeared in another book I have; “Darkroom”, interviews with photographers about their processing and printing techniques, published in 1977.

The photographs in “Luminance” were taken with a 10×8” view camera described by Rebecca Solnit in her introduction, as a “temple of light”. As the title of the book would suggest the photographs are all on the subject of light – daylight, the sun, candlelight – and how it falls on objects, illuminating them, defining them and sometimes hiding them. It is fitting, therefore, that the prints reproduced in the book were themselves created with sunlight, using printing out paper exposed directly to the sun.

This is one of several books I bought in my favourite charity bookshop – the Oxfam shop on Upper Street, Islington. There is a tiny section upstairs devoted to photographic books which I always head to when I have the chance.

I chose this book simply because I loved the beauty of the photographs – the play of light and shade. In her photographs the light falls across deserts, through windows and deep into caverns. I linger over each page and I marvel at the process used to create these images.

“New Topographics”

Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, 1981

This is the catalogue for an exhibition at the Arnolfini Art Gallery in Bristol in 1981.

New Topographics was a new way of looking at the landscape. The photographers took a long cool look at their surroundings and created images with neutral tones, in contrast to the work of earlier landscape photographers such as Ansel Adams. The photographers were particularly interested in the human interaction with the landscape and how development was radically altering it. The photographs show empty space save for a trailer park or a half-finished housing development.

The original exhibition had taken place in the mid-1970s at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York. New Topographics was the name given to the exhibition, but it became the name of a photographic movement which still has resonances to this day – some of my landscape photographs tip their hat to this particular style.

This purchase has double memories for me. I remember when I bought it in a charity shop in Bristol in the summer of 2025. I was there with family and friends to see a photograph of mine (the Shoeburyness Boom), party of a travelling exhibition organised by the Landscape Group of the Royal Photographic Society. Afterwards we went for a walk around the city and that was when I found the book.

And I remember when I bought it for the first time. It was when I saw that exhibition at the Arnolfini all those years ago. My brother was at the University of Bristol and I was visiting him. This was when I first became interested in photography and I think this might have been one of the first photographic exhibitions I ever went to. Somewhere along the line my earlier copy of the catalogue disappeared so I was so pleased to find it in the Oxfam bookshop in Bristol.

Andre Kertesz

This is a short collection of the works of the Hungarian photographer, Andre Kertesz, and an essay on his life and career as a photographer. It was published by the Arts Council on the occasion of a major retrospective exhibition of his work in 1979.

He was born in 1894 in Budapest and, from an early age, he became interested in photography. For a long time he did not actually have a camera but his time visualising images, composing them in his mind. This method helped him become one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century, creating striking images.

My favourite photographs are those taken from overhead of people walking in the street. It is almost as if they are actors on their first mark. The most striking one for me was taken in Japan and shows a line of people walking in the rain with their umbrellas up. Their reflections run ahead of them along the wet road merging with an arrow painted on the street. It is a perfect combination of the objects and lighting, creating a dramatic and dynamic image.

This is the first of a series of posts on some of the second hand photobooks I have purchased. I hope that you have found it interesting and it encourages you to seek out photographers’ printed work in your local second hand and charity bookshops.

If you discover any interesting ones let me know in the comments below.

Discovering Winter’s Hidden Colors

A hawthorn bush resplendent with red berries stands against a blue sky illustrating how much colour there can be even in the depths of winter.

Winter can be a dark time of year. The days are short and the sky can be overcast and grey. Colour drains from the land. Everything seems to have turned monotone.

Yet there is still colour. There will be days of blue skies and bright sunshine. There can be glorious sunrises and sunsets (and with the shorter days you don’t have to get up too early to catch the rising sun!) And there can be colour in the details too – the berries, the lichen, the last of the leaves hanging on, even a cluster of snails!

Here are a few of the images I made over Christmas 2025 celebrating the colours of winter.

A close-up detail of red holly berries and glossy green leaves in woodland in winter. A photograph to illustrate how colourful even winter can be.

The berries of deadly nightshade against a dark green background deep in woodland on a winter's day, demonstrating some of the colours that exist in the depths of winter.

A cycle ride on the day the clocks go back

The day the clocks go back is a strange kind of day. It starts in a disorientating way. What time is it? Have all the clocks changed or are some of them still showing yesterday’s time? And then, as the day ends, where has it gone? Why has it gone so dark outside when it is barely past teatime?

I woke up planning to go for a cycle ride but I was struggling to get out of bed. The day didn’t help but I had also been suffering from a cold which meant I did not feel like doing anything even though I felt I ought to; getting no exercise seems to add to the sense of weariness a cold brings, but then the weariness can make it hard to motivate myself. It would have been so easy to stay where I was all day. But then I would have regretted it. So I got out of the house and onto the bike.

A black and white image of a quiet roadside with a small bus shelter surrounded by trees and a cloudy sky.

I took the train out to Hitchin in Hertfordshire and my plan was to visit the ruins of a church. There is something I like about old buildings; the way they sink into their surroundings. It is a subject I have returned to time and time again. And it is more than just the building; it’s purpose and the people who lived, worked or worshipped there have become a part of the landscape as well. Not in the sense of ghosts – anything of the people are long gone – but in a way they do still haunt the place. Each time I visit somewhere and raise my camera to my eye I am feeling I am reaching back through all the centuries. taking with them their storied past.

A large, twisted yew tree with several gravestones partially buried beneath its roots, captured in a monochrome style.

This particular church stands on a hill at the edge of a village called Clophill. Before that I visited another church, St Mary’s at Church End, Haynes. Haynes is a village made up of smaller villages: West End, Church End, Silver End, Northwood End and Deadman’s Cross; scattered over four miles. In the churchyard there stood a spectacular many limbed yew tree sprawling across some of the graves. It looked like some work had been done recently to clear the undergrowth and some old gravestones had been left propped against the tree. I was also drawn to a waterbutt and watering can around the side of the church, as a part of my ongoing and occasional series of photographs of the quiet corners of English parish churches.

A metallic water butt positioned against a stone wall of a church, with a window featuring leaded glass in the background.

Ruins of a stone church on a grassy hill, surrounded by trees under a cloudy sky.

The old church at Clophill had been built around the middle of the 14th century and grew with the community around it. However it’s isolated spot away from the village meant that its days were numbered. Not the first time a church has found itself in this situation. In the middle of the nineteenth century it was replaced by a new church in the centre of Clophill. And so began the sad decline of the old church. Parts of it were used for the new church and the remains were left to fall into ruins. The place was afflicted by grave robbers and later, and more bizarrely, satan worshippers. It also suffered from plain old vandalism and flytipping. Work has been done to restore what remains – it’s now possible to go up the tower to view the surrounding landscape.

However, as a result of its sad past one of the key features now are an array of cameras around the tower. I can appreciate their purpose but they made my visit slightly unnerving and I did not stay long.

A black and white photograph of a tall, cylindrical water tower standing alone in a flat field under a cloudy sky. Trees can be seen on the horizon, adding to the rural landscape.

In any case, the short day already felt over. It had been sunny to start with but the clouds had rolled over as the day passed and the sun, perhaps as a result of the shorter days ahead, had taken to sulking behind their veil.

For the last part I was blessed, however, with a tailwind – one of the joys of a cycle ride (although usually accompanied by its opposite state – a head wind). There had been a strange mood about the day – my lingering cold, the change of the clocks and the thought of shortening days ahead had created a certain lethargy but at end of the ride my mood was lightened as I found myself propelled along all the way back to Hitchin and the train home.

Getting out on the bicycle into the countryside had been the right thing to do on the day that the clocks go back.

A bare tree with large clumps of mistletoe, set against a gray sky.

Embracing Uncertainty Through Flower Photography

I was not sure about making a calendar for 2026. It is something I have been doing for almost ten years and each time I have seen it as an act of faith for the future – a promise for what will come. I imagine the calendar hung upon people’s walls filled with parties, holidays, dentist appointments, and visits from the plumber, representing the highs and lows of owner’s life throughout the coming year – the exciting and the day-to-day. It is these highs and lows of the future that I have always had faith in.

Right now though my faith in the future is less certain. Everything feels more shaky so I spent a long time thinking about whether I would produce a calendar or not for 2026.

I did come up with a few ideas: The skyline of London seen from its distant edges; the city at night; more seaside resorts. I took a few photographs for some of these and maybe one day you will see them. In the event, though, I could not plan any of them; I could not get past the present. The future, as I said, felt shaky.

So I didn’t do anything.

Until I was asked to do a short workshop on flower photography. As a result I began to look at flowers in more detail, and I recognised in them their brief but defiant moment of glory. I had found my subject for 2026. More practically I also discovered that I already had a back catalogue of flower photographs so most of the work was done!

The thing about flowers is that they live for now, only having a brief moment in the spotlight: all the subjects in the photographs for this calendar are long gone. But they also offer their own hope for the future: in their own time they will very likely reappear from the earth they grew in. And, when they do come back, they offer a defiant act of beauty, sometimes in the most inhospitable of environments.

In the end I turned to the humble flower in these uncertain times and I present to you my calendar for 2026.

Rose Garden

At the end of summer garden roses enter their last phases, the petals drying out and falling away.

My Photography Experience on World Photography Day

Today – 19th August 2025 – is World Photography Day, a celebration of photography – its art, craft and science.

At the beginning of the day I thought I would take the opportunity to go out and take some photographs with my camera. It’s certain I used to do quite regularly but I fell out of the habit a long time ago.

There’s a park nearby which I thought I would visit. Initially I wasn’t sure what I was going to photograph. Am I a street photographer today? Eventually, though, I wandered up to a quiet corner of the park where there is a small pond.

Drifting around its edges were these purple tipped reeds spraying out almost as if they were fireworks. For a while I lost myself in the subject, trying different ideas to capture how I felt about them. Changing focus, composition and waiting for them to stop trembling in the slight breeze. Eventually I had created the image I liked and I surfaced.

Before I headed home though I came upon the teasels and dived straight back in. Once more I was in a small bubble which consisted of nothing but myself, my camera and the thistles. I looked at them from different viewpoints through the lens and directly. I carefully chose one particular thistle – this one – because it was the right height for me to look down and, of all of them, this was the one with the most pronounced strands swirling around its head. Then I lifted the camera, taking a few photographs, changing the composition and focus.

Once I had finished it was like the moment rising from the sea – underneath everything is muffled and the world is confined to the small space I can see ahead of me; all I do is concentrate on holding my breath and pushing forward for as long as I can. Then I break the surface and the world crashes in around me. The dog walkers, the people heading to work. It was time for me to head home and start work for the day.