Who is popular today?

The Guardian sports photographer Tom Jenkins follows up his popular take on tulips during the enforced break from action photography. Here he talks about how this latest project on a pair of long-tailed tits nesting in his front garden helped him through a difficult spring
“Bum barrels twit on bush and treeScarse bigger then a bumble beeAnd in a white thorn’s leafy restIt builds its curious pudding-nestWi hole beside as if a mouseHad built the little barrel house.”
John Clare, 18th-century English nature poet
Recently, I was told that I was showing classic signs of “biophilia” – I had to open a dictionary to learn this meant enjoying “the love of life or living systems” and displaying the psychological condition of being attracted to all that is alive and vital. I had just published a picture essay about some tulips that were flourishing in my back garden. I was nervous submitting it – here was a sports photographer, denied his usual fare because of the pandemic, trying his hand at something very different. I was pleasantly surprised by the response, with far more people getting in touch than I’ve ever had for a sports story.  Continue reading...