Reflections of nothing: Walking the Leeds Liverpool canal.

“The linear motion of photography” is a phase I had reverberating around my head whilst on my latest canal walk. I started photographing the Leeds Liverpool canal three years ago at the start of my photography journey. After a particularly drunken evening with my friend and fellow photographer Merritt, it was decided that evening that in the morning we would set off and see how far we could walk, turns out we made it to Bootle and back.

Over the next few months we tackled the canal in stages, usually ten to fifteen miles per day, spending the day talking and snapping away before getting to the nearest distant train station we could find and excitedly pawing over the days captures, as the title suggests, it was usually reflections of nothing.  We never made it to Leeds.

Cut to 2025, Merritt is now living in Mexico and I am once again attempting to walk and capture the canal. Starting in early January in the sleet and snow and moving through the seasons to summer, as I write this I’ve just reached Blackburn (58 miles).

“The linear motion of photography”. The thing that I admire about canal photography is the singular path you must tread to reach your goal, sometimes you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere, lost in the world with no real reference points to know where you are but you have a path to follow and a place to be and you must keep moving forward.

This is also a heavy handed metaphor for my journey through photography and how much I feel my skill set has improved, and at times when you feel lost in what you’re creating it’s important to not lose focus and keep taking those steps to improve your skills, it’s a path with hopefully a good pub at the end.

The idea of the 2025 walk is to try and capture modern U.K life through this old network of waterways. From old industrial powerhouses to quiet hamlets and everything in between. All the while whilst moving forward and not returning back to a shot if I feel I’ve missed it, I feel this is an important part of the process and a fun challenge.

I still have about 65 miles left to walk and this time I’m determined to actually reach Leeds, but if I don’t that’s ok, because it’s all a part of the journey and a good time spent in the countryside reflecting on nothing.