About Us

I've been fascinated by how a frame is put together — colour, light, the mise-en-scène of it — since I was a kid staring at the television, working out why a shot looked the way it did before I had any language for it. That curiosity followed me to university, where I started experimenting with photography properly for the first time, and it's stuck with me ever since: on and off for twelve years, and a lot more seriously in the last few.

Urban Utility Co exists because of a particular kind of photograph — the overlooked one. Not the landmark everyone already has a picture of, but the corner nobody stops for: a stop sign, a hedgerow, a street lamp nobody looks up at twice. Finding something in the mundane is half the appeal. It's a small puzzle, solved by noticing what most people walk straight past.

I grew up in North Wales with Snowdonia on my doorstep, and that's still where most of these photographs start. I shoot what's in front of me — if it's striking, I take it as it is; if it's ordinary but has something worth pulling out in the edit, I take it anyway. Either way, the point is the same: convey it, don't just record it.

The European city photographs come from the same instinct. Travel is more accessible than it's ever been, and with a camera always to hand there's no excuse not to bring something back — Europe in particular is rich enough in history and architecture that it feels almost rude not to. Wherever I end up, I'm photographing it.

If I had to pick a favourite from the shop, it's Bokeh Birds — birds on a wire, caught with a soft wash of light behind them. It's the print that best shows where I want to take this next: more of that quality, more of that stillness, deliberately built rather than just found. Photography is still the thing I'd put every spare pound into if the budget allowed, and that isn't going to change.

Every print in this shop is a photograph I took myself — not AI, not stock. If you want to know more about a specific one, or you're after a size that isn't listed, message me. I'm around.

— Iain, Urban Utility Co