The Photowalk

Latest Episodes:

#555 You can start again! Nov 06, 2026

Show notes

What happens when you've already reached the heights of your profession, but find yourself searching for a new sense of purpose in something you've spent much of your life doing?

This week, I'm walking again with my dear friend Giles Penfound, a photographer who once worked at the very highest levels of his profession, documenting conflict and life in some of the world's most challenging and dangerous places, before his life and relationship with photography changed considerably. One moment he was making important legal documents with his camera, and the next, a 'deafening' quiet descended. What followed was more than a decade of trying to find his way creatively again, exploring large-format landscapes, printing, commercial photography, workshops, travel and wedding photography. But the more he searched for a new direction, the harder it seemed to become to reconnect with the very thing that had drawn him to photography in the first place.

Giles has now discovered being a photo tourist, an idea that has changed how he approaches photography and the world around him. It's about staying curious, finding interest in places we might otherwise overlook, not labelling yourself, being free to make photographs without feeling they have to belong together as part of a larger body of work or story, and approaching somewhere familiar with the same enthusiasm we'd bring to a country we've never visited. As we walk, we talk about ambition, reinvention, the expectations we place upon ourselves and what happens when the career that once defined us is no longer the whole story. And perhaps, after years of trying different doors, Giles has found one that feels worth opening.

Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond.

Links to all guests and features will be on the sh ow page, my sincere thanks to our Extra Milers, without whom we wouldn't be walking each week, DxO.com and Arthelper.com, giving photographers smart tools to plan, promote, and manage your creative projects more easily.

#554 Homeless in a heatwave Oct 30, 2026

Show notes

What happens when you have a full-time job, a regular wage and a perfectly ordinary working life, but suddenly find yourself without a home? Photographer, advocate and writer Sam Singleton joins me to share the story behind No Fixed Address, a deeply personal photographic record of 23 nights spent living first in his car and then in a tent, while continuing to work as a mechanic. We talk about the practical and emotional realities of hidden homelessness, the assumptions we make about people facing difficult circumstances, and why Sam chose to document his experience through photographs and words. His work has since appeared in The Big Issue, Invisible People and The i Paper, and his story offers a rather different perspective on what homelessness can look like.

The Friday mailbag returns after our travels through Mongolia, with more of your photographic whys from Simon Blakesley, Drew Brown and Alex Mealin. Richard Oldroyd tries to bring some order to my life, Bill Rigby shares a moving story about who he would choose to shoot his portrait, Glenn Sowerby makes a persuasive case for a journey north, and Gary Williams and Kim Frank share memorable moments from photography and life.

Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond.

#553 THE MONGOLIAN ADVENTURE SPECIAL Pt.2 Oct 23, 2026

Show notes

This week, we return to Mongolia for the second part of our journey, flying west to Ölgii and travelling into the Altai Mountains, where we meet Kazakh nomadic families and discover the extraordinary relationship between eagle hunters and their golden eagles.

Along the way, we share meals and traditional toasts, photograph the beautiful landscapes around Lake Dayan, and travel to ancient petroglyphs near the Chinese border, where people were making pictures thousands of years before the invention of photography. You'll also visit the Sagsai Eagle Festival, experience remarkable horsemanship, enjoy traditional music, and take on a few personal challenges.

With our fellow travellers and local guides, we explore the culture, traditions and hospitality of western Mongolia. Recorded on location, with the conversations, laughter and sounds of the journey, this is the concluding part of our Photowalk adventure in Mongolia.

Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond.

Links to all guests and features will be on the show page, my sincere thanks to our Extra Milers, without whom we wouldn't be walking each week and Arthelper.ai, giving photographers smart tools to plan, promote, and manage your creative projects more easily.

#552 THE MONGOLIAN ADVENTURE SPECIAL Pt.1 Oct 16, 2026

Show notes

This week, we're taking you to Mongolia, travelling across the vast open steppe in Russian UAZ vans, meeting nomadic families, and discovering a way of life shaped by the land, the seasons, and the animals that depend on it. Along the way, you'll find traditional Mongolian hospitality, yoghurt vodka, ancient standing stones, wild horses, and a fair bit of bouncing around on roads that barely deserve the name. With our fellow adventurers and local guide Shuren, we explore ruined monasteries hidden in the mountains, hear extraordinary stories of Chinggis Khaan and visit places where Mongolia's remarkable history has left some painful reminders. Recorded as we travel, with the voices, laughter and experiences of the people alongside us, this is a Photowalk adventure through one of the world's most extraordinary landscapes.

Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond.

#551 The courage to be afraid Oct 09, 2026

Show notes

This week, my guest is Kim Frank, an American writer, editor, photographer, filmmaker and explorer who set off for The Himalaya in 2018, determined to find a story worthy of National Geographic, despite knowing very little about the region. She discovered a growing conflict between people and endangered Asian elephants. Ancient elephant migration routes now cross farms, villages and railway lines, with devastating consequences for both humans and elephants. Kim kept returning, documenting the lives of those caught up in the conflict and the efforts being made to help both species live alongside one another. Those journeys became her book, Elephants in the Hourglass, and the documentary Where the Forest Roars.

We talk about the personal circumstances that first sent her travelling, the extraordinary encounters along the way, storytelling, photography and finding the courage to do things that frighten us. And Kim, despite everything she's achieved, admits she's frightened of almost everything.

Also on the show, a curious case of mistaken location involving a library and a laundry room; Pascal Bernardon discovers photography and the wider world it opens up; Matt Goff talks about neurodiversity as a creative superpower; and Dreich McCrabbit downsizes his camera kit as winter approaches in Clashnessie. Plus, Ewen Bell shares a moment about travel, and Kim Frank returns with her own moment of wonder.

Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond.

#550 What have we become? Oct 02, 2026

Show notes

Marc Asnin joins me to talk about ACT 1: A Century in the Making, an ambitious book and exhibition looking at the first twenty-five years of this century through photography. More than 100 photographers, six continents, nine major themes and work by names including Eugene Richards, Platon, David Burnett and Albert Watson. We talk about what those photographs reveal about the first twenty-five years of this century, and what Marc discovered when he began looking at them together as a record of the times we've lived through.

We also explore Marc's own documentary work. Uncle Charlie grew into an almost thirty-year portrait of his uncle and godfather, Charlie Henschke. Final Words collected the last statements of 578 people executed on death row in Texas, later developing into We the People Confess, bringing photography, sound, testimony and historical material together to examine capital punishment.

In the mailbag, Matthies Wesche wonders whether making videos for YouTube is getting in the way of making still photographs. Lauren McClanahan writes about unplugging, younger people and AI, while Phil Ferris has been learning when it's time to shut doors.

Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond.

BUY THE 1st AND 2nd EDITIONS OF OUR ZINE: REFLECTIONS

#549 "I admit my addiction! and..." Sep 25, 2026

Show notes

My guest today is documentary photographer Ed Kashi, who returns to The Photowalk. Across a career spanning more than four decades, Ed has photographed some of the most powerful and major social and political stories of our time. We talk about the power of mature storytelling eyes, returning to photographs made decades ago and seeing them differently, and what experience changes about the way you work. Then we turn to something photography is increasingly facing: trust. If AI can make a convincing photograph of an event that never happened, and even construct a believable photographic history around it, what happens to our belief in the photograph as evidence or reality? Ed has spent his working life documenting real people and real events, so I wanted to know how he sees what comes next, and far from a gloomy outlook, he has hope for the medium of photography for the decades to come.

Also today, Rob Lee discovers ethnography after losing his enthusiasm for photography, David Higton finds a kitchen table with a story, Richard Rawlings goes looking for pools of light, and our growing collection of Moments recordings brings words on silence from Adriano Henney and beauty from Ewen Bell.

Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond.

BUY THE NEW SHOW ZINE, REFLECTIONS

#548 "Photography is a powerful microphone!" Sep 18, 2026

Show notes

My mother kept an old biscuit tin in the larder. Inside this tin was the sort of collection that somehow accumulates over a lifetime: old coins, buttons, nuts and bolts, stamps that were no longer worth whatever was printed on them, keys that probably opened something once, and assorted little objects nobody could quite bring themselves to throw away. Years later, the idea of this tin, has found its way into The Photowalk. Mine, though, contains questions.

This week, I open it with one of the show's great friends, David duChemin, an award-winning wildlife and humanitarian photographer, author, teacher and, for many photographers, a mentor. He tackles questions from the tin, and there are a couple of bigger questions I want to put to him this time about resilience and relevance. Where does resilience come from, and what keeps a creative person moving when confidence disappears, plans go wrong, or life simply gets in the way? Then there's relevance. As photographers, how much should we care about remaining relevant? Relevant to whom, exactly? And what happens as we get older, as the industry around us changes and our reasons for making photographs change with it?

Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond.

BUY THE NEW SHOW ZINE, REFLECTIONS

#547 Twenty-five years Sep 11, 2026

Show notes

Twenty-five years after September 11th, a generation has grown up knowing that day through photographs, television footage and the recollections of those who were there. In this special edition, I walk with my friend, photojournalist Jason Florio, who at the time of recording, was preparing to return to New York, where in 2001 he found himself running up Vesey Street as one of the towers fell behind him.

We talk about going back, what remains clear after a quarter of a century, what has blurred, and the importance of first-hand memories as an event passes further into history. Also in the programme, filmmaker and photographer Paul Berriff recalls filming alongside New York firefighters when the South Tower collapsed, knocking him unconscious while his camera continued to record. Two photographers who witnessed an extraordinary moment in history, and the stories behind images that, twenty-five years later, remain with us.

Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond.

#546 Honesty, vulnerability and inspiration Sep 04, 2026

Show notes

There have been some extraordinary photographers walking with me on The Photowalk over the years, sharing their work, their lives, what they've learned and the reasons they continue to pick up a camera. But this programme has always belonged to you as well. Every week, photographs and stories arrive from around the world: places you've stumbled across, people you've met, pictures that have come to mean more than you expected, and walks taken because you simply needed to get out for a while.

The Photowalk became as much about what happens while we're out there as the pictures we bring home. Photography gives us a reason to look, and walking gives us the time to notice. From there we find ourselves talking about creativity, friendship, family, loss, confidence, getting older, curiosity, mental health and all the other stuff that finds its way into life. I've always been more interested in why you pressed the shutter than which button you pressed to do it. Why you stopped. Why something caught your attention. Why you went out that morning with a camera in the first place. So today I'm handing the show over to you: your pictures, your letters, your walks and the things you've noticed along the way.

Read more about our photographic adventures on our photography travel website, The Journey Beyond.

BUY THE NEW SHOW ZINE, REFLECTIONS

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected