Smoke of the city rising up into the sky

In Janaury when it was cold and clear in London I went round to Tony Benn's place just behind Notting Hill, to interview him with Isabella for the paper. He talked about his childhood, and his hopeful ideas for politics still today - all while clicking insistently on his lighter to try to get his pipe going. It wasn't until he got a moment before I took the picture that he finally lit it - I snapped him just as he lifted it up and breathed in deeply. The interview can be found here.  

Hemmed in by the desert

The Botanic Gardens in Cambridge are lined with incredible wooden-framed greenhouses, full of giant cacti, tropical plants and tiny shrubs. Inside, they're baking hot and full of light. We ran a feature in the paper on places to visit in the town, and so I cycled over to here to take some pictures of the gardens - I think we ended up with a big cactus on our front page, which was pretty great.

Narrow windows high up

As my exams came near I spent more and more time at home, looking out the window at the wet weather and feeling increasingly claustrophobic - alleviated only by brief trips to the library. I took both of these in moments of feeling idle - it feels slightly odd looking back at them now that my degree is finished for good. 

  

Drawing up their lines

Quentin Blake comes for dinner each year at my college in Cambridge as it turns out that he used to study English here too as an undergraduate back in the day. As he wandered through college he marvelled at how much taller the trees are now, but how familiar it all still looks. I took his portrait in a corner of the deserted college bar just as it was getting dark outside, before he had to dash off to give a talk at the Union. Below is a picture I snapped also of one of the prints he donated to us.

A curtain of blue

Aliya and I walked across the meadows that stretch out from the edges of Cambridge, dodging thistles, nettles and cows. After we discovered crossed paths a few months ago, and overlaps from years back, we realised strange similarities that culminated in both of our arrivals in Cambridge. It was great walking along the trail of the river before I took these pictures of her in the last bits of early evening sun, when the sky was hovering between resolute white with small moments of blue coming through. 

I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink

We went on a field trip to the printing press with our editorial team, setting off at 1 in the morning to catch them working through the night to get all of the newspapers, magazines and comics out for the following morning. The space was immense: a huge warehouse full of vats of ink, huge rolls of paper, and rickety stairways. We saw the paper being rushed through vast machines and emerging as fully-formed publications, and watched the ink being applied to metal plates in cyan, magenta, yellow and black; I was amazed at how physical so much of the process still was, with any computers in sight looking as if they'd been there since the early 90s.

There it shall be

These are the pictures that I took for Hot&Cool issue 2, laying out clothes in the pebbly garden of my college house in Cambridge when I was meant to be revising. The sun came through the trees and gave it all a splash of light, which looks to me a bit like water rippling over them. I looked very odd photographing the outfits, climbing on ledges and seeming a bit like I hadn't realised that no one was wearing them. I'm happy with how they came out though - and Theo laid them out really nicely in print.

Water spilt on the ground

I took pictures for the May Week edition of the paper in Cambridge. Antonia, Maddy and I wandered around on Sunday morning, climbing trees, drinking milkshakes and making stupid jokes. All year I'd wanted to do a shoot along Mill Road, which is full of creaky houses and old pubs, plus the UK's first internet cafe! Here's my favourite shot, taken in the garden of that cafe, plus another of Antonia in my back garden. 

We walk not by sight

Jess and I walked along the river in the late afternoon sun with bare legs and books, climbing over tree roots and puddles all the way to Grantchester. Just before the dusk came I took this of Jess in my favourite hat, but then we started to feel the cold and retreated inside to drink ale.

Whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together

For this week's spread in the paper we shot Becky and Shenyue in the beautiful afternoon light and on cold winding staircases around college. I wanted them to mess around, pulling faces and balancing precariously on the river in a punt. Jess and I pooled our clothes together for it, matching tartan prints and sheer dresses together. It was a lot of fun, despite the fact that I'd had very little sleep the night before and was not feeling in the best state, with my hands shivering over the camera shutter and wind blowing through my dress.

Then He put His hands on his eyes again and made him look up

These are a combination of mine and Arturo's pictures from the end of the summer term in Cambridge, and the start of the summer in Versailles. We shared a camera most of the time, so they're all mixed together on the negative strips that we got back. These were taken on sunny days before formal dinners (the Cambridge Conservative society posing for a picture on the lawn outside of my window), when we climbed on college roofs, jumped into the deserted Emmanuel pool, and rescued abandoned bikes. In Versailles we cycled through the gardens with Morgan and Fabien, squinting at the sun, staring down the endless avenues, and drinking little cups of orange juice at the end of the day.