98 http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk
Benedict Brain is a photographer and an award-winning journalist. He combines his personal practice with writing about photography and leading workshops. He is regularly asked to judge
photo competitions and he travels internationally as a public speaker talking about the art and craft of photography. See http://www.benedictbrain.com
O
n 17 April 2015,
British photographer
Quintin Lake left
St Paul’s Cathedral,
London, and headed south
along the River Thames. Five
years later, he arrived back at
the same spot where he was
met by his wife, family and a
stream of followers, journalists
and TV crews. He had just
walked 6,835 miles clockwise
around the entire British
coastline and worn through
seven pairs of walking boots.
I’ve known Quintin for many
years and have been closely
following his journey. So it was
a real honour when on a perfect
late summer’s day in September
2020 I met him at Canary
Wharf to accompany him on
the last leg of his walk. We
walked the remaining six
kilometres refl ecting on the
magnitude of the journey
and its imminent conclusion.
I cannot imagine how weird
it must have been for him. At
Tower Bridge, we were met by
devoted followers all wearing
Quintin Lake T-shirts and
together we made a merry
band weaving our way through
the streets of London to St
Paul’s Cathedral.
Quintin’s walk wasn’t just
an amble of epic proportions,
it was fi rst and foremost a
photographic art project that
saw him shoot 179,222 images.
Walking for up to nine weeks
at a time, Quintin would
periodically return home to be
with his family and continue
his work as a commercial
architectural photographer. In
total, he walked for 454 days
and has the same number of
days of image processing to
plough through – this isn’t
Final Analysis
BenedictBrainconsiders...
‘GourockOutdoorPool,Inverclyde’byQuintinLake
Photo Critique
fi nished yet. The project was
called The Perimeter and it is
thoroughly documented on his
blog of the same name (it’s
seriously worth checking out).Large-scale prints
As it was primarily a photo-art
project, Quintin carried
pro-spec Canon equipment
and several L-series lenses to
maximise on quality with the
ambition of creating fi ne-art
prints up to a metre and a half
square. He also carried all thesupplies he needs to wild camp
for up to fi ve days at a time,
with a meticulously measured
and calculated pack in which
every gram was accounted for.
He would send supplies to
himself at various rendezvous
points en-route to replenish his
food and recharge batteries.
From the get-go, Quintin
committed to the square format
to play into his acute awareness
of space and geometry, no
doubt inherited from his work
as an architecturalphotographer. The square
format also helped to create a
sense of thematic consistency
across the whole body of work.
There are so many amazing
images from this project that
it’s truly diffi cult to select one
to appear here. However, this
photograph of Gourock
Outdoor Pool, Inverclyde,
taken in April 2018, is
among my favourites.See more of Quintin Lake’s photos
http://www.theperimeter.uk