I was there after a morning meeting, part of the routine marketing work that freelancing tends to require, now walking through central London on my way to the tube station with less urgency. It was a few years ago, during one of those unusually warm summer days that now appear more often in London than they used to. You adjust without noticing, with slower steps and narrowed vision. You walk in the shade where you can, as if in a Mediterranean climate.
The senses feel overwhelmed. The hard light of the summer day is the first pressure. Pavements glare. Glass reflects more glass. Then there is the noise as accumulation. Traffic. Compressed air from buses. Tyres passing over tarmac.
The street becomes a field of overlapping signals. Around Tottenham Court Road station this becomes especially visible. There are several “Londons” overlapping: commuters stepping out into the sun during lunch break, tourists, retail spaces, souvenir shops, traffic lights, and signage. All seemingly occupying the same space at once.
In this part of town, London constantly tries to organise you through signage.
A man is at the edge of movement, shading his eyes against the assault to the senses. The gesture seems to contain the logic of the place: to move, you must first find your bearings and interpret, to interpret, you must select, and then decide. It is a place of transit.
I used a Nikon Coolpix A, an APS-C compact (with the same imaging sensor as the D7000 DSLR camera), set to aperture priority. It has a fixed wide-angle lens, 28mm equivalent in 35mm terms. I mounted an SB-800 flash unit on the hot shoe. It is relatively powerful for the size and recycles quickly as fill flash, which works well if you need to photograph in quick succession. But it is almost the same size as the camera, so you need to hold on to the camera because the combo is not at all well balanced.
The photograph, by imposing a frame, edits the space, and the fill flash ensured the man in the picture was not rendered as a silhouette.
The other half of this pair of “One Shot Stories” considers a different season (winter), where the city is “reduced” “simplified” under a blanket of snow, rather than “over-determined” by the architecture, the signage, and the street furniture.
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Ibraar Hussain on The City Speaking All At Once – A One Shot Story
Comment posted: 11/05/2026
I know the area well, Fitzrovia was where I misspent my days in the pubs and bars around there as my university (Univeristy College) was close by
I wish the warm weather would return, it's been cold since August and rain rain rain.
Comment posted: 11/05/2026
Comment posted: 11/05/2026
Comment posted: 11/05/2026
Charles Higham on The City Speaking All At Once – A One Shot Story
Comment posted: 11/05/2026
Comment posted: 11/05/2026
Walter Reumkens on The City Speaking All At Once – A One Shot Story
Comment posted: 11/05/2026
Comment posted: 11/05/2026
Comment posted: 11/05/2026
Gary Smith on The City Speaking All At Once – A One Shot Story
Comment posted: 11/05/2026
Comment posted: 11/05/2026
Jeffery Luhn on The City Speaking All At Once – A One Shot Story
Comment posted: 12/05/2026
That photo has a lot of funny caption possibilities. I like it!
Comment posted: 12/05/2026