The People You Meet Along the Way

These days, most of my journeys involve a bus, a timetable and a destination. Back then, a journey could mean a motorcycle, a camera and absolutely no idea who I might end up talking to. Sometimes, the best part of going somewhere isn't what you find through the viewfinder, but who happens to wander into the frame.

What I had my eye on that day... Two pieces of industrial infrastructure, seen from a slightly different angle at the Port of Leith. Photograph © John Gilchrist.

There are some days when you head out with no particular plan other than to get out.

Back then, it was often the bike and the camera. No great agenda, no deadline, no particular photograph that had to be taken. Just a day out, a bit of fresh air, somewhere with a decent view, and enough time to stand around and see what happened.

And sometimes, what happens has very little to do with the photograph.

You can spend a surprising amount of time simply minding your own business, watching the world go by, when someone starts a conversation. Perhaps they have noticed the camera. Perhaps the bike. Perhaps they've simply recognised a fellow enthusiast.

Whatever the reason, the conversation starts easily enough.

Motorbikes lead to motorbikes. Cameras lead to cameras. One story leads to another, and before long you're down one of those wonderfully pointless rabbit holes that only makes sense to two people who happen to share the same interests.

I've always liked those encounters.

There is something quite natural about like-minded people finding each other. You don't need an introduction, a mutual friend or some carefully arranged networking opportunity. Sometimes all it takes is standing in the same place with a camera in your hand.

This was one of those days.

I'd gone out for a bit of time on the bike and ended up at one of the city's better vantage points, doing what photographers have done since cameras were invented, standing around, looking at things and pretending there is a perfectly good reason for it.

Then another photographer introduced himself.

Nothing particularly dramatic. Just one of those casual conversations that could quite easily have ended after a few minutes.

Except it didn't.

We talked. Photography came up, as it inevitably does. Then came cameras, places, photographs, the city, and the people and moments that make photographing it worthwhile. The conversation wandered around in that wonderfully unstructured way that good conversations often do.

And then, somewhere towards the end, came the realisation.

I knew his work.

Not just vaguely. This was someone whose photography I had come across years earlier, back when I was properly immersed in my own photographic world. I'd followed his work from a distance, admired what he was producing and quietly filed him away in that mental category occupied by photographers whose work made you stop scrolling and actually look.

And now here he was.

Standing beside me.

Having a completely ordinary conversation.

There was something slightly surreal about that.

You sometimes build people up in your head without ever meaning to. You see their photographs, recognise their style, admire their eye and perhaps wonder what it must be like to produce work like that. They exist, in a sense, at a distance — someone whose work you know, but whose person you don't.

Then suddenly the distance disappears.

The name connects with the face.

The photographs connect with the person.

And there is that little internal moment of, hang on... is this actually the same person?

It was.

What I remember most isn't even the photography itself. It's the unexpectedness of the encounter.

Years later, I've ended up doing something completely different with my working life, and photography has become a different part of the story. But those old connections with the photographic world still mean something.

Perhaps that's one of the nicest things about having genuine interests.

You never quite know where they will take you, or who they will introduce you to.

Sometimes you go out looking for a photograph and come home with a story about a person instead.

And, occasionally, you discover that the person you've just been chatting to is someone whose work you admired long before you ever knew you'd one day be standing there having a conversation with them.

Those are the encounters worth remembering. 

Not because they were planned.

Precisely because they weren't

I forgot how fab their work is, check out their work here...

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Meta description: A chance meeting with a photographer once admired from afar becomes a story about shared passions and unexpected connections.

Keyword set: photography, photographers, photography connections, chance encounters, shared interests, motorbike photography, city photography, photographic community, meeting photographers, photography memories, unexpected connections, creative people, camera and motorcycle, city life