BLOG is an ongoing random selection of my exhibition, publication and project work, alongside photographs, documents and discoveries uncovered from my archives in one long scroll. Most of the images are on a slide show.
Sea and Light.
I love the light by the sea and how it changes throughout the day. There’s something about the way it reflects off the water that makes me want to try different ideas and approaches. It’s a calm place to work, and the shifting conditions give me plenty of chances to experiment and see what happens.
Editorial Tear Sheets
A few examples of editorial and advertorial tear sheets from assignments throughout my photography career. These represent only a small selection, as hundreds of my photographs have been published in these sort of spreads over the years. For various reasons, these are the copies I have managed to retain.
Editorial commissions are often carried out within very tight timeframes, with as little as 15–30 minutes available to produce a range of images to meet the picture desk's requirements. In many cases, you are working quickly with both the subject and location, making decisions on the spot and adapting to whatever circumstances you find yourself in.
The examples shown here were published in Roof Magazine, Inside Housing, The Guardian and a women's magazine.
The Independent Magazine
A mega find!!!
I had fogotten all about these Independent Magazines that I had stashed away many years ago. The '90s were an important period in my life as a person and a photographer. Looking back through them now, I can see the foundations of many of the interests and approaches that have stayed with me throughout my career. The photographers featured in these pages, along with the magazine's commitment to strong visual storytelling, had a lasting impact on the way I think about photography and documentary work today.
Rather than leave these magazines stored away in a box, or simply sell them, I have decided to archive them here on the CAMERA channel on You Tube in the simplest way possible and referencing the photographers whose work inspired me so much at the time. I believe it is important for contemporary photographers and future generations to understand and appreciate the publications, images, and visual culture that helped shape photographic practice. Over time, you will find every issue I own, good or bad in the Independent Magazine playlist. I hope you enjoy exploring them as much as I have enjoyed revisiting them. It is beyond me how they are all still in such good condition. You can view the playlist on this link
Royal Photographic Society - Terence Donovan Medal. I was honoured to have been nominated and to win the Terence Donovan medal. There were only ten medals ever awarded.
BBC
Another discovery from an old hard drive. When the BBC undertook the major refurbishment of its Portland Place headquarters, home to national radio networks including Radio 1, Radio 2, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 6 Music, I was commissioned to photograph the building’s original studios before they were redeveloped. The project included documenting a range of spaces, from recording studios and production rooms to the home of The Archers and facilities connected to the Maida Vale studios.
The photographs formed a visual record of a significant moment in the BBC’s history, capturing these spaces at the end of one era and just before their transformation into a new state-of-the-art broadcasting complex. A selection of the images was later projected onto the exterior of Broadcasting House during the official reopening celebrations at Portland Place.
The Independent. Ralph Fiennes.
Believe it or not, this photograph ended up as a double-page spread in The Independent, I think sometime around 1998. It actually looked rather good in print.
I was sitting in his agent's office in Soho waiting for him to arrive. The original plan was to photograph him on Wardour Street and I had supposedly been allocated 30 minutes for the shoot. He was running very late and, when he finally arrived, he sat down on the only available chair in the agent's cramped office. He looked over at me and his agent immediately shouted, "You've got two minutes."
He never said a single word. Never moved his hand from his head. Ignored everything I asked of him.
I managed to make around ten frames before he stood up and walked straight out of the room. Over the years it is far from the only time something like this has happened, and it is simply part of the job, especially when working for newspapers. Whatever the circumstances, however little time you are given, you still have to come away with the picture.
Shit happens. I hate this photo.
QVC Shopping Channel - Blackstar
I was commissioned by Blackstar in New York to photograph behind the scenes in the new QVC studios in London. Here’s a selection of images from the shoot. Ironically, I’m not including the front shot I created of their new building, because I still feel the pain whenever I look at it. What I thought would be an easy shot at 9 a.m. on a beautiful summer’s morning ended up taking until 6 p.m. to nail. The building stayed in shadow all day until late afternoon, so I had to wait on site, taking a few shots every hour until they were finally happy with it.
EVIDENCE - Issue 2 March 26 - 160 pages. Features a transcript of my WTF-STOP podcast interview with photographer Greg Marinovich. Published by Fistful of Books.
You can buy the book on this link: https://fistfulofbooks.com/product/evidence-002/
EVIDENCE - Issue 1 Dec 25 - 160 pages. Features a transcript of my WTF-STOP podcast interview with photographer Janine Weidel. Published by Fistful of Books.
You can buy the book on this link:
https://fistfulofbooks.com/product/evidence-001/
A recent find on a book shelf:
Hot Shoe Magazine Oct-Nov 2009
Terry O’Neill Awards 2009
2013, random view of Hong Kong whilst on assignment. I feel hungry thinking about Hong Kong. Need to return soon.
London Photographic Association - Portrait Winner
British Journal of Photography Magazine - December 2025.
This was about 20 years ago. I dont even know which magazine it was published in. I just found the file in an old hard drive.
The Professional Photographer - Source unknown. 25 years ago I would do a lot of these so I have no idea which magazine this was published in.
Jimmy Carr
A random image from a shoot on a corporate job with comedian and presenter Jimmy Carr. A very professional person to work with. We had to engage frequently during the event, and he used my name throughout the shoot, which can be relatively uncommon when working with well-known figures.
2021 - Press Release and bits for Life’s A Ball 90s
British Journal of Photography Online - September 2025
2020, loved seeing my Birdmen book for sale at the Photographers Gallery.
Good Morning Britain - Folkestone Lockdown Project (from 1:00)
Kent On-Line - Folkestone Lockdown Project
Music with kind permission by Claire Hamill ‘Someday We Will All Be Together’ Edited by Stephen Thomas Twitter: @softsync Photographs: Zak Waters Twitter: @zakwaters All rights reserved Zak Waters Photography May 2020
Britains Best Bike Rides
I was commissioned by The Guardian to follow and photograph a family on a bicycle route for a day as part of a supplement on cycling. It meant working continuously on the move cycling alongside them while carrying two heavy Nikon cameras on each shoulder which made the journey physically demanding at times. The family were excellent to work with and we operated as a good efficient team throughout the day. The appeal of editorial work has always been the unpredictability you could be photographing anything from one assignment to the next often with very little time to prepare and completely different subject matter each time.
BIRDMEN
If you have ever published a book, you will know just how challenging the process can be. Once the photographs have been created, the next stage begins with editing and refining the final body of images, followed by the difficult task of deciding which pictures deserve a place in the publication. From there comes the collaboration with designers, publishers and printers, before finally receiving the finished book in your hands. It is a long and demanding journey that requires patience, persistence and a clear vision. Publishing a book is rarely straightforward and is certainly not for the faint-hearted.
The Guardian - a random portrait I found from a shoot in Chelmsford about 20 years ago. The brief was to make a stand alone portrait in the town centre of Sam for an article which The Guardian were running on him. We had about 15 minutes to get something. A link to the ‘Free as a Bird’ article is on this link
Terry O’Neill Award 2009 - Exhibition Brouchure - Shortlisted.
Tear Sheets
Tear sheets were what (or still do) photographers traditionally called examples of their published work in newspapers and magazines, kept as part of a working portfolio. Here are a few random examples from assignments for The Guardian, The Observer, the London Development Agency, and Roof Magazine, including portraits of Ken Livingstone and David Willetts.
The Ken Livingstone assignment was to photograph the launch of a new container housing project. The demonstration homes had been built inside Olympia for the press launch, and when I arrived there were around a hundred photographers from around the world waiting to photograph the interiors. Each photographer was allocated a 20-minute slot inside one of the container homes. As I was working for the London Development Agency, I was given the first slot, which was slightly embarrassing with everyone else waiting outside.
The interiors had been dressed with models to make the homes look occupied, and Ken Livingstone also needed to feature in the photographs. With a tight shot list to work through, the pressure came from knowing that every photographer in the queue was watching how you approached the assignment. About halfway through my allotted time, Magnum photographer Peter Marlow stuck his head through the doorway and shouted, "Zak, we're learning so much here!" I hadn't realised he was second in the queue. I had worked as Peter's assistant during the 1990s, and he became both a mentor and a good friend. RIP Peter. I sort of fell apart then got it shot. The pressure!!
Editorial Celebs
I've never really enjoyed photographing celebrities. I've never been particularly starstruck, apart from Pele, Bruce Forsyth and George Harrison. Like anyone else, some were a pleasure to work with and others were less so.
Here are a few I came across while looking through the archives. Barbara Windsor (for Asthma UK) invited me into her home, made me a cup of tea and spent about an hour chatting before suddenly realising she had to leave. We ended up with just a couple of minutes to make the photographs, but she couldn't have been nicer. Emilia Fox was photographed for Channel 4 and was an absolute professional, working the camera effortlessly and making the job very straightforward. Jason Flemyng was equally professional, polite and easy to photograph.
I'll add more as I come across them. It's worth bearing in mind that I was never a celebrity portrait photographer. Most of these assignments were editorial commissions where the brief was simply to produce a strong picture quickly for the picture desk, often with very limited time.
General Medical Council
One day you are on a council estate in South London; the next, you are shooting corporate images for a client. The same kit is used, but the approach is completely different. Over the years, I worked for several NHS Trusts alongside my newspaper and magazine assignments. These types of jobs are neither easier nor harder than editorial shoots, but delivering exactly what the client needs, often within a very short timeframe, is paramount. These images are a small selection from a shoot for a new brochure campaign commisoned by the General Medical Council.
Miss Bump
Miss Bump was another commission that popped up out of the blue. It was a little outside my comfort zone in terms of the subject matter, but I had worked with the design company before, so there was already a good level of trust between us. It was not until I arrived in Soho at 6am that I realised the scale of the shoot. The client had hired the entire building for the day and there were more than a dozen pregnant models being prepared by a team of stylists and make-up artists. I was there on my own without an assistant, and there was also another photographer working on the job. After the briefing, we were each given a shot list as long as your arm, with the schedule running through to 9pm that evening, and it was not even 9am. The only way to get through a job like that is to start shooting.
Everything was running smoothly until I was informed that the other photographer had been asked to leave because he was struggling to get the images the client needed. Suddenly the entire shoot was down to me. After a quick coffee and a cigarette, it was simply a case of getting on with it. Ten hours later we had completed everything on the shot list and the client had the images they needed. It was a good learning experience. Below are a selection of the images.
Rakes Progress Magazine
FOUND - Self Published - Perfect Bound - 58 pages of objects I find in the streets. For more images use this link: https://zakwaters.com/FOUND-1
Plane Lines - Self Published - Perfect Bound - 68 pages. For more images use this link: https://zakwaters.com/Plane-Lines
Artists for Haiti
My work being auctioned for the Artists for Haiti art auction which is dedicated to raising money for education and health programs for children in Haiti.
‘Work Mode’
It was always going to happen once I started digging through old hard drives. I've never been one to seek the centre of attention, either professionally or personally, but every now and then someone turns the camera around while you're working.
Among the thousands of photographs I found were a handful that documented me in work mode: photographing inside factories in Scotland, getting a haircut in Gordon Ramsay's back garden, shark diving off the coast of South Africa, shooting from the back of a motorbike in Cape Town, and in a speedway car at NASCAR events in Las Vegas.
They are not images I would normally show, but together they provide a small glimpse into the often unseen side of a photographer's life. While the finished photographs usually receive all the attention, these pictures capture some of the places, assignments and circumstances that happened behind the scenes along the way.
A reliable car was always my best friend as a freelance. I would spend 8 or 9 hours a day sometimes in my car moving from job to job.
Corporate and Charity Tear Sheets.
A few more tear sheets from assignments completed for the Heritage Lottery Fund, Boots, and a school commission. These are another small selection from my archive, representing corporate and charity work produced for publications, reports, and promotional material over the years.
Vegas Baby!!
The following slideshow contains a selection of images from two separate assignments undertaken in Nevada. These photographs are presented as a random archive selection and were not included in the final edited bodies of work used for publication.
Birdmen at the Kunsthal.
I was honoured to be asked to exhibit my Birdmen project at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam which was just the excuse I needed to jump in the car with my youngest son and head over to Rotterdam, via Ostende which is one of my favourite places to visit.
Back in the day. Phillip Jones Griffiths with my oldest boy.
Philip, Ian Berry and Burt Glinn were the inspiration behind my WTF-Stop podcast. During my travels with them, I spent countless hours listening to their stories, often over dinner or a drink, as they reflected on their lives as photographers and their connection to the world they had spent decades documenting. Their experiences, observations and anecdotes offered a rare insight into photography, history and the people they encountered along the way.
So many images never make the website.
Just messing with my phone.
FOOD!!
For some reason I ended up photographing chef Jean-Christophe Novelli several times for The Guardian and a few other magazines that I can no longer remember. I’ve always enjoyed working with chefs and on food related assignments, not least because there was often an abundance of good food left over afterwards. Over the years I’ve photographed Rick Stein, Tana Ramsay,
Ken Hom, Ainsley Harriott, Antony Worrall Thompson, Tom Aikens, Giorgio Locatelli, Herbert Berger and Antonio Carluccio, among others, on editorial, charity and corporate commissions.
Back in the day. Messing around with my mates in the studio at university with Matt (L) and Chunky (R) (aka Steve Lazarides).
One of my favourite photos of my youngest son,taken around 2017.
Spending time with the legend Barry Lewis was a joy. The man is a machine as well as being an amazing photographer and top bloke. You can listen to our chat on this link (please excuse my rather rubbish images)
City St George's University, London.
This set, along with other images at City St George's, University of London, was published in The Guardian. The images document the university's aeronautics department and its Airbus A320 flight simulator. As part of the assignment, I was given the opportunity to take the controls, attempt a landing, and then skid my way along the runway in a less-than-perfect arrival.
One of the enduring attractions of commissioned photography is the access it provides to people, places and experiences that would otherwise remain unseen. Assignments like this offer a rare insight into specialist environments and professions, making each commission different from the last and providing opportunities that are a genuine privilege to experience.
I Love Ferrets
I have no idea which newspaper or magazine I shot this for or when I even shot the images as they were all on E6. I need to find the rest of the images.
Lapland, Sweden.
An amazing adventure near the artic circle in Sweden for The Guardian.
Burberry.
A selection of images from a shoot I shot for Burberry in London, I think around 2009.
Breadline Britain.
For the life of me I cannot remember who commissioned me to shoot this series of images. I won't go into too much detail about who they were, but they were a lovely couple who were clearly struggling to make ends meet. It was a humbling assignment and a reminder that photography often provides a brief glimpse into lives and circumstances very different from your own. Looking back at these images now, what stays with me is not who commissioned the work, but the honesty of the people I met and the privilege of being allowed to document a small part of their lives.
Concierge
This assignment was commissioned by The Guardian and involved photographing people who worked through the night. This particular image was of a concierge at a hotel in central London. The brief was straightforward and I got the photograph the picture desk needed, which is ultimately what matters on an editorial assignment.
Looking back, it is one of those pictures that did its job, but never really found a place in my portfolio. Not every commissioned photograph becomes a favourite image; some simply fulfil the brief, get published, and move on. That is often the reality of editorial photography.
Status Quo
Another Guardian commission was to photograph Francis Rossi from Status Quo. It wasn’t intended to be a glamourous portrait session, more a straightforward set of images for a new guitar supplement the paper was running, so the approach had to be basic, clear, and directly to brief.
In that sense the pictures did exactly what was required for the picture desk, but it wasn’t the kind of session that lends itself to more considered portrait work. Part of me would have preferred a full portrait sitting, as this one was quite a hard work, tightly defined shoot. Thankfully Francis Rossi was easy to work with throughout.
Bottle - Ivor Baddiel
Some test shots with Ivor Baddiel for the front cover of his book Bottle.
Easy Jet - Stelios Haji-Ioannou.
A couple of images from a larger PR shoot with Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of EasyJet.
Party Time.
I can't for the life of me remember which women's magazine this was for. The shoot was to illustrate a party scene. I came across this sequence while looking through my archive, and I really like it.
Eaton House Schools.Throughout my career as a photographer, I have always undertaken a lot of education-based work. Alongside corporate photography, it was definitely my bread and butter. For a number of years I was juggling education assignments for The Guardian, The Independent, Times Educational Supplement, design agencies, universities, schools and magazines, often all at the same time.
Before and After.
My set up for a twilight shoot in London for an investment banking company.
Pick Your Own - The Guardian.A selection of images from a standard Guardian assignment. This shoot was for a “Pick Your Own” supplement. I enjoyed working on commissions like this, and it was a privilege to be paid to do work that I genuinely enjoyed. It wasn’t always easy, and there was never any room for complacency.
