Neil Hopcroft

There used to be a tradition of taking pictures of everyone in the tree at the annual picnic. What you never see is the view from the tree.

This shot, from one of the Hampstead Park picnics, started me thinking about how photography could be an art under my control. Completely by accident the hoop framed a number of people – something I have since gotten an eye for and deliberately tried to capture.

I never really got the hang of taking pictures of people. They are too unpredictable, and don’t stay still long enough to line up the shot. This particular party, poor James (not pictured) got the raw end of my inability, with constant flashes from my repeated pointing and shooting. None of those pictures came out […]

I found a collection of photos like this, with no context to go with them. I have a feeling they were from when I was moving and looking for a house. I went and took some pictures of places where houses were advertised for rent. Given the dates they would be from my move to […]

Another piece of art at the Pompidou Centre was a Fibonacci Series. This was the second outing for my camera and I hadn’t worked out how to use it. This picture got me chased around the museum by an angry custodian who didn’t like the flash. Indeed, it would probably have been a better picture […]

Keith, you plonker, what were you thinking? It’s so easy to question. It’s so easy to say that you should have stuck around. Let me say this: Thank you for hanging in there for as long as you did. I was never a part of your jilted generation but your energy leaked out into my […]

Friday midday my Ikea delivery arrived, with 15 boxes of flat pack furniture. Some 30 hours later all boxes have their contents built and ready for use, my thumbs and knees are sore, and we have destinations for the contents of more boxes. The unpacking is progressing, all the easy wins have been done, its […]

Some years ago I shared a house with a number of people – it was a large terraced house opposite the Roman Catholic cathedral in Northampton. One of our housemates there returned to her native France where three of us would visit her. Mostly we’d pile into Daves company car and he’d drive us there. […]

On my thirtieth birthday, I met with a number of friends in London. I was, then, as now, not very organised and didn’t have a plan. We dithered and tried to find a restaurant in Leicester Square that could seat us all. So we ended up in Wong Kei in China Town. It wasn’t what […]