Window Cleaning

Now here's a picture that may at first glance not seem all that interesting (though personally I am always intrigued by blocks of flats and how each identical apartment and balcony present themselves so differently). We're in the residential area of a coastal town in southern Albania, of all places, and though there is enough blue sky to tell us that it's a bright summer day little sunlight manages to reach this rather confined little backstreet. But look up at the top of the picture and you'll see something unusual, if not downright disturbing! A young woman is cleaning her windows, and to do so she has climbed out of one to reach the other and is hanging on to the side of the building, unsecured, with a sheer drop of at least five floors below. Now I know all about wanting to have clean windows and how it can become an obsession, but observing this manner of going about things made my stomach turn. And until I saw what she was actually doing I was worried she was about to throw herself out of the window. Yet she seemed to be in total control and unaffected by the height or potential danger of her undertaking, and who knows, maybe this is the preferred way of cleaning windows in Albania –either that or she's an off-duty acrobat. Personally, I would rather use a very long squeegee! Location: Saranda, Albania

West End in the Rain

I've a thing about London in the rain, and looking back on photographs I have taken there I realise that so many of them have been taken under wet conditions that one could be forgiven for thinking that it always rains in London – but that, of course, is not true, and one day I promise to prove it by sharing some pictures taken while it's sunny. But in the meantime here's another one in the rain! There's something about reflections in puddles and on shiny pavements that awakes a sort of romanticism as well as creating interesting textures and pattens of fractured colour and light. Here we are in the heart of theatre-land, alongside the Noël Coward Theatre, which used to be the Albery Theatre, and before that the New Theatre. It is an area seeping qwith theatrical history and it is one of my favourite areas of London; the absence of cars here makes it doubly interesting, and at the end of the lane is a favourite actor's pub –The Salisbury, and across the road, on the corner of the lane leading to Covent Garden, is another: The Angel & Crown, both nearing closing time as the clock says 11, but there may still be time for one quick drink if you hurry... Location: London, England

A View Over Oslo

I often like to -as it were– "frame" photographs within themselves. A view from a window may be interesting, spectacular, stunning or grand, but sometimes a more interesting effect is created by stepping back a little and including the window itself. Admittedly, here there is no actual window, for this is a glassless opening in the side of one of the towers of Oslo's City hall, but effect is similar. We are inside a cool, dark space looking out on a glowing, warm city, bathed in evening sun. It's perhaps not a particularly outstanding view in itself (most views of Oslo will typically face the other way, towards the west, or out across the fjord) but we're high above the streets and can see out in to the suburbs of the hills in the distance. For me, the dark frame represents the winter that has finally disappeared, opening out onto warmer days of spring and summer –which have been most appreciatively enjoyed over the last few days. And it's always fun and intriguing to be able to look down through other people's windows, even though they're far away. Location: Oslo, Norway