Rain, Reflections & Walking London with a Leica M11 (28mm)

Last month, I returned to the outskirts of London to drop my daughter off at university. This trip gave me a few extra days to wander and take in the sights. The weather was quintessentially London—cold, grey, and raining most days—but that’s part of what I love about photographing there. The city just feels moody.

I kept things simple: just my Leica M11 + a 28mm and lots of walking (and riding) around. London rewards this slower pace—if you’re observant, it offers up scenes nonstop, often in the most common places.

At my daughter’s university, one of my favorite shots is of a plain light fixture in Farnham. There’s nothing fancy about it—just a clean bar of light—but photographed the right way, it becomes a graphic, almost floating shape.
In the city, I shot many of these images from the top of a double-decker bus. Rain on the windows, reflections layered over the street, people moving in and out of the frame—it’s messy in the best way. There’s no time to overthink. If a moment appears, you grab it, and then it’s gone.

At the V&A, everything slows down. Quiet rooms, framed works on the walls, and these brief moments when someone leans in to look. One shot is essentially a photo about looking at photos, which felt fitting.
Stonehenge had a completely different energy: a vast sky, massive stones, tiny figures in the distance. It’s astonishing how ancient it feels and how modern it still appears. I even caught a couple of frames with birds passing through the scene—a subtle, playful moment from the landscape itself. Waverley Abbey is also a wonderful place to visit. Remains of vaults, columns & walls of a 1128 Cistercian abbey, also used as a movie set, and a fabulous pond, mostly iced over.

The snowscape scene I photographed at one of my favorite filming locations. Bourne Wood.
Back in London, Chinatown was the opposite of that calm—lanterns, wet streets, bright colors against brick and grey skies. I love London in the rain; it makes everything shine a bit more, and people move differently, as if everyone’s on their own small mission.

These are simply personal frames from the trip. Just moments that stayed with me, captured between family time and a few days of wandering with the Leica. More on my street gallery.