A series celebrating the talent of our friends over in the Londonist Flickr pool. Here, they introduce themselves and share their favourite London shots. This week, Che-burashka...
I moved to London from Russia almost 9 years ago with my job. Initially, I really hated everything about it - expensive rent, cold houses, crowded tube and a strange pub culture where you drink before you have a meal. Everything was alien to me and I was not sure what I was doing here. Fortunately I was travelling a lot on business so I did not have proper time to do anything about it. Travelling was the initial reason why I picked up my first compact camera, a passion which developed slowly but with irreversible strength as I got to know the place better and better. I like the vibrancy, cosmopolitan nature, architecture and variety which London has. Also, I think it is the one of the most tolerant and opened minded cities ever. That is why it so thrilling and enjoyable to photograph this city and its people. There's a wide variety of subject areas.
My passion is street photography and something which I called "urban lyric": get up, have morning coffee, commute to work by foot or more often by train or tube; later, go down for lunch from the offices, walk along busy streets with a lot of strangers looking similar to us... we do not pay attention to the moments when beauty sparkles from this mundane environment and often we are part of it. A long shadow cast by a high building and a passer by, the light trail of a speeding train, light in the night cafes reflected on wet pavement, or people's faces merged into a constant river of movement. All this can be unforgettably touching and very poetic. That is what I want to reflect in my images.
I like to shoot in East London, especially the East End, Shoreditch and more recently Hackney. I've started to go for photo walks in Deptford - the Laban Centre on Creekside by Herzog de Meuron is the one of my favourite buildings in the capital. For photography I like places where there is a lot of human interaction such as the Southbank, markets or the Tube. I am also very much fascinated by urban waterways. I secretly dream of making a book about the Regent's Canal...
Che-burashka's photography website is in development but you can also check out her Flickrstream for more