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It was a cloudy Saturday afternoon in March, I had just left the Royal Academy in London’s Piccadilly having seen the Russian Revolution exhibition, when the skies opened and people started running for cover. The intensity of the deluge was incredible – and it took many people by surprise. Including me. But I also saw a brilliant opportunity to take a few pictures of the mayhem – and mayhem it was as the rain turned into hail sending ever more panicked Londoners and tourists alike in search of shelter. I took out my camera, which at that time had a manual focus 85mm prime lens attached to it, and started shooting both the traffic as well as the pedestrians. With no umbrella or anything to protect my camera. I threw my scarf over the top of the camera and – trying to avoid running people and double-deckers going through puddles – tried to shoot as much as I could. Manual focus right there right then wasn’t ideal (my camera was prepared for some filming later on), but we managed. And a bonus shot. Ever wondered how pigeons shelter from the rain? Here’s how: london pigeon And don’t be fooled by the sunshine and dry-looking wall. It did stop raining literally a few seconds before I took that picture. See more of my street shots: urban scenes and people vs city. #London #photography #SonyA7RII #street

Cold winter nights in London. Steamed up windows. People exhaling hot air and cigarette smoke. Love it. Here are a few pictures I took over the past few cold weeks in and around Central London. See more on my Instagram profile. #instagram #londonphotography #steamywindow #streetphotography

I met Rupert during an event organised by our mutual friends a couple of years ago. We had a long chat about films, documentaries and Rupert mentioned he’d love to create a short film too. Earlier this year we had a chat and I convinced Rupert to tell his story on camera. It’s an incredible story of personal drama, adversity, persistence and vision. This 6-minute short documentary we filmed with Rupert barely scratches the surface. His life story – out of necessity shortened here to just a couple of minutes and originally told in vivid detail and with true emotion – would be sufficient for a much longer film, perhaps even a feature. His vision for the future of the public health service is informed and shaped by his past experiences. And in itself it would make a great full-length documentary. I hope Rupert’s next dream – a TED talk – materialises soon and helps him spread the word about his work even further. For now, I’ll leave you with this incredible and very personal story told by a man who’s trying to use his own past to change the future. The Disease Service from Michal Dzierza on Vimeo. #NHS #RupertWhitaker #healthservice #documentary #michaldzierza

My first visit to the new Tate Modern extension in June was a bit chaotic. The lifts seemed a bit complicated, the art a bit underwhelming and the crowds a bit offputting. So for my second visit I chose a quiet(ish) afternoon. I skipped the art though. Instead, I tok a few pictures of the gorgeous lines, curves and angles this rather stark-looking building has to offer. Using just one 28mm lens on my Sony A7R II, I took several pictures of the interior sans the visitors. Here are my favourites. Enjoy. You can also see them on my Facebook page (and while there, why not like it to see more images and films as and when I upload them ). #London #photography #SwitchHouse #blackandwhite #tatemodern #SonyA7RII

I went to the V&A today to see Botticelli Reimagined – an exhibition charting the painter’s influence on everything – from F1 car designs, to retail, fashion, film-making, and obviously all forms of art. Outside the exhibition however, in the V&A garden, I spotted Elytra. Elytra is a “Garden installation by architects and engineers at the University of Stuttgart is inspired by the forewing shells of flying beetles known as elytra and constructed using a novel robotic production process.” There. And this is what it looks like: Spotted the random legs in the last picture? Well, they were everywhere today: #London #sonya7RII #VampA

…a subway begins. The bridge offers some of the finest views of London (in fact I think the finest view of London – I used to cycle to work across Waterloo Bridge every day, and every day it was a mind-blowing experience). But the subway – while not equally charming – can be equally inspiring for a photographer. That was a picture I took there a few years ago now and it has since then been to a couple of exhibitions. And it still remains one of my favourite London street images. I walked through the subway again a few days ago, stopped to take a few pictures again. Both the one at the top of the post as well as these are from that very brief session. I think this might be my next street (ish) project for spring. #London #urban #blackandwhite #street #streetphotography #SonyA7RII

Yesterday was one of those rare days I was able to pick up my camera and roam the streets of London taking pictures and filming for pleasure, not for money. So I shot what I love shooting: street. I wanted to use just one 85mm lens, but ended up using my Canon 70-200mm for some of the shots (with a Metabones adapter for Sony A7R II). My walk took me from Waterloo station, along the Southbank, the City, back to Tate Modern and London Bridge. Here are some of my favourite shots from the walk: #London #noir #blackandwhite #streetphotography #SonyA7RII

Hidden underneath a busy south London street is a piece of  history rarely seen by Londoners. It’s called the Crystal Palace Subway and a group of local volunteers wants to reopen it to the public. Accessible mostly during London Open Days, the subway – or foot passage – forms part of a former railway station that once connected central London to the actual Crystal Palace which stood where the Crystal Palace park is now. The 150-year old Crystal Palace Subway – while not in use and partly open to the elements – is beautifully preserved and with a bit of help from a crowdfunding campaign, it may reopen as soon as 2016. It’s a beautiful piece of design and engineering (one of the reasons the columns are beautifully preserved is the fact the architects hid some pipes inside the columns, allowing any surface or ground water to escape without damaging the brickwork). The passage has been used for many purposes since it closed to the public. It was used as a air raid shelter during the war and more recently as a backdrop to one of the Chemical Brothers’ videos. And speaking of videos, I recently worked with National Geographic on a very short film about this hidden piece of London history – here it is: To support the campaign, go to their GoFundMe page. SEE ALSO: Crystal Palace Subway (post from 2012) #crystalpalacesubway #journalism #London #video

The festival of light has been and gone. I’m sure it’ll be back, it was delightful. Mostly. When it worked. I went with a group of friends on Saturday night and judging by how popular some of the installations were – and how completely packed the temporarily traffic-free roads were – the organisers didn’t expect such turnout. Lack of organisation, sadly, manifested itself twice on Saturday evening. Once is Grosvenor Square where the fish-tank-in-a-telephone-box was shut due to – and this is the security guy’s quote – ‘too many people wanting to take a picture’. (The rest of the square hosted three or four other installations which you could see once you located the only entrance to the square.) And once in Oxford Circus where the lovely Jane Echelman’s sculpture dangled lifeless (and almost colourless) without any lights or music which – as it turned out later – were switched off due to overcrowding. In any case, I managed to enjoy a few installations in Piccaddilly, Regent St, Grosvenor Sq and King’s Cross. #art #London #LumiereLondon #streetphotography

I got a huge parcel – and an even bigger surprise – this morning. It came from the nice guys at Apple. Although to be perfectly honest, I suspected it might be on its way after Brendan Ó Sé, whose pictures – like mine – were featured in Apple’s Shot on iPhone 6 campaign earlier this year, tweeted about receiving the albums I got the most beautiful surprise when I returned home from work yesterday to discover Apple had sent… https://t.co/L1h11cySZw — Brendan Ó Sé (@Fotopunctuation) November 7, 2015 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js and wrote a post about it as well. One of the two beautifully printed albums contains all the photographs used in the #shotoniphone6 campaign, including mine. The other one – called The Gallery – contains pictures of the billboards, print ads and video screengrabs used in the World Gallery campaign. Each album is well over 200 pages and they came with a pair of white gloves. Oh yes. It still feels amazing to be a part of that – and now it’s actually humbling to see the quality of all the photographs in the albums. Some are really spectacular and seeing them in the context of the various print and outdoor campaigns is just fantastic. Included within the albums are some stats on the scale of the campaign: there were 14,000 poster sites and 857 publications. And all that with a little help from 155 iPhone users. SO lucky I was one of them. #shotoniphone6 #WorldGallery #iphone6 #apple #shotoniphone6

Well, and occasionally red or green. All pictures taken in and around London with my iPhone 6, edited in VSCO. My VSCO grid is here if you’d like to follow me there. #iphone6 #London #photography #vsco

I’m really really sorry to say that, but the new Storehouse 2.0 app is dreadful. And I know I’m not the only one feeling completely disappointed. It’s been my favourite app for months. Wonderfully easy to use, a clever way of creating rich, visual stories based on a combination of photography, video and text. It offered a really intuitive way of creating shareable content on mobile, with the ability to display and interact across multiple devices. Now, with Storehouse 2.0, a lot has changed. Here Mark Kawano, Storehouse’s CEO, describes the most important changes in a blog post: “We removed almost all of the social media features including followers, hashtags, republishing, and the timeline. When you launch Storehouse 2.0, you’ll now see just the stories you’ve created. And when you create a new story, it will only be visible to you until you decide how you want to share it. You can still share stories by text, email, or on social media. Within the app, however, you will no longer be able to view other people’s stories unless they’ve shared them with you in a space.” And that’s precisely is the problem. I’ve created several stories, but discovered hundreds more, a lot of which I stumbled across by accident, based on somebody else’s recommendations. And that – apart from the wonderfully easy way of creating and sharing visually rich, yet aesthetically clean stories – was the key element of the app, guaranteeing its prominent home screen place on my iPhone. Now the serendipity is gone and so is the app’s magic. It’s become cumbersome and I feel somebody’s idea of creating a ‘private’ space, a less social social app killed what was best about Storehouse: a seamless user experience. I’ll go a bit further: it probably killed a really promising app, so eagerly embraced by almost a million users: mobile journalists, photographers, filmmakers and anyone who wanted to share a great visual story. So what else – apart from removing the social features and the serendipity factor (that apparently – according to Kawano – “intimidated [users] from posting anything at all’) is different, what else makes the app annoying? It’s called Spaces “A space is a private way to share stories with a group of friends. You can create spaces for a vacation, an event, a place you visit frequently, or any topic that you’re passionate about. You have to be invited into a space to know about it and the owner of a space can decide whether or not members can add their own stories as well.” I don’t want to join dozens of ‘spaces’ to see what I previously saw without much effort. Let alone receive hundreds of annoying and irrelevant notifications I cannot manage or turn off. And what happens to the endless stream of invites to new spaces I don’t want to join? How do I say no? It’s either ‘join’ or, well, nothing. And there they are, dozens of invites to spaces I don’t want to join (no, I’m not interested in “Cats, of course” or “Show me your lighthouse”), taking up space and increasing my frustration. Before v2.0, whenever I wanted to see or like a cat or lighthouse story, I chose to do so. It was maybe one story in a thousand, but I liked it or otherwise engaged with it because something caught my eye, or someone recommended it. Now it feels like to see a story I need to join a space and then be bombarded with other stories within that space I have no interest in. Completely ludicrous. And even if I bought into the whole concept of spaces, inviting new users is cumbersome, time-consuming and probably annoying for those being invited, who, like me, have to deal with endless invites and have no way of rejecting them. I’ve been supporting Storehouse for a long time now, and singing the app’s praises to friends, clients and random people on social media. I want to continue doing that and I will wait for the next update. But unless some of the old functionality is restored, I cannot guarantee I’ll be doing that for much longer. And soon that home screen spot on my iPhone will be available to another app whose creators choose not to tip the baby out with the bathwater. Storehouse, over to you. #mobilejournalism #mojo #storehouse #visualstorytelling