Helen Hooker

I’m Helen, a photographer and musician.

For more than twenty five years I’ve travelled throughout the UK as a professional recorder player, coming to photography as a hobby in adulthood.  After a few years learning the basics I began a photoblog in 2007, aiming to improve my skills by shooting every day. I intended to do this for a year but photography is a strangely addictive hobby and I ended up posting new images to my blog every day for a whole decade! My experience of the discipline and practice required to become a successful musician proved to be enormously helpful and I quickly learned that music isn’t the only skill where daily practice is beneficial.

I continue to create new photos most days, but I’ve taken my foot off the gas a little since 2018. Recently I’ve focused more on my favourite photographic genres – architecture, automotive and candid street photography and you’ll find my favourites examples of these in my portfolios.

Since 2014 I’ve been working on an ongoing project to photograph all the churches (over 50 of them!) in the square mile of the City of London. It’s been fascinating to explore the variety of architectural styles and I love lingering in old churches, looking for beautiful light and seeking out details others may miss.

I’ve developed a new obsession over the last couple of years – pinhole photography. Shooting with beautiful wooden Ondu pinhole cameras and film, I love the ethereal look produced with this technique, and am perpetually amazed at how much detail can be captured with such simple equipment. You can learn more about my pinhole photography here and catch up with my Daily Pinhole Project over on Instagram, where I have shared a pinhole image every day since the start of 2021.