LONDON: LAUNDRETTE

PHOTO: M HODGSON

My friend Alex spotted this laundrette near Russell Square tube and suggested I take a photo. A 20 second exposure did the trick with the lighting, but I hadn't expected the old woman sitting on the bench to be in the photo at all. If I'm honest, I barely noticed her when I took the shot. The strange blurring lends her an ethereal quality that might lead a more superstitious photographer to believe she was never really there at all.

This taught me an invaluable trick: a panoramic camera without a lens captures much more of its surroundings than the casual observer might expect. If we spy a photographer pointing a camera, we assume quite reasonably it has a lens and is focused on a particular point at some distance. I've discovered that it's easy to stand right next to a stationary subject with a pinhole camera - feigning to shoot past them without offending their perceived personal space - when in fact the whole scene is exposed to the film, their curious or oblivious face included.

LONDON: VOLVO

PHOTO: M HODGSON

This Volvo Amazon was captured at Strand on the Green, Chiswick. I'm usually the last person to swoon over classic cars, but my parents once drove a Volvo 340 and I was surprised to see living proof they weren't always so ugly.

My grandmother was born a couple of terraces from here, when the cafe on the left was still a pub. She and my grandfather held their wedding reception here in the '50s. "The Steam Packet" is just visible in flaked letters on the side wall.

Strand on the Green was once a fishing village and several of my grandmother's older relatives worked on the river. The site of an old repair dock is still obvious by way of the great beams of wood on the river bed nearby.