It wasn’t always raptors and platypuses, you know. For this photographer at least, subject matter and even genre has been a moveable feast depending on — primarily — place.

Without subjecting you all to a journey back in time to the beginnings of my obsession with photography, let’s just say that the current blossoming started way back in 2004 or 5, when it became clear that digital was A Thing. I had always wanted to create those amazing wildlife images you see in National Geographic or at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards and, being gainfully employed at the time, I availed myself of the basics of a capable rig.

But although I finally had something approaching the right gear, I had to acknowledge that I was living in London — an urban sprawl with very little to be seen in the way of elephants, say, or wildebeest. Yes, there were foxes, which you could hear screaming in a bone-chilling manner out on London Fields in the wee hours, but the whole urban set-up just didn’t lend itself to easy and fulfilling game spotting.

Booking an annual trip to Namibia or the Kruger National Park certainly yielded some excellent close encounters of the wildlife kind, but what to do for the other 11.5 months of the year when the photographic bug bit?

Fortunately, as an obsessive capable of numerous parallel passions, I also had cycling. One winter afternoon in Hackney, when the light was beautiful if faint, I found myself lurking at the side of Mare Street and taking pictures of the local cyclists as they made their way about their business. I found that panning shots provided a satisfying way of isolating these subjects from the background while also imparting a sense of motion to what is, fundamentally, a static medium.

I started doing this a lot. I did it in other cities when travelling. I worked on the technique and was rewarded with better results. And a quick walk around the City of London during my lunch hour could scratch that photographic itch which otherwise only a buffalo or martial eagle could assuage.

Even so, it took a long time to come to a fundamental realisation about this new obsession. They say we are blind to the most obvious insights about ourselves, and this realisation was proof. You see, it’s not that there were two separate obsessions — wildlife and cycling — it was just that cycling photography was the urban version of wildlife photography!

Put another way, what I was really doing was shooting pictures of the wildlife that teems the globe’s conurbations in all its diverse and fascinating minutiae. A good wildlife photo will often capture an aspect of a bird or beast’s idiosyncratic behaviour; likewise, a pic of a cyclist scratching their nose or smoking a ciggie highlights that species’ unique habits.

And speaking of species, it has been noted that riders of the bicycle fall into various groups or tribes. Just as you have the birds of the air, you have the racer-in-training; the swift and skittish antelope might be those nervy folk on small-wheeled folding bikes; and the predators, likely to pounce from nowhere and chase down their prey — clearly the bike messengers (or couriers, as they are called in the UK).

And the techniques you might use for capturing a fleeting biker — or at least to get into the right position to do so — are quite similar to those of wildlife photography. For instance, you need to choose the right time. Early morning is good for both: animals are up with the lark to get a start on the day’s food-gathering and surviving; likewise, your bike commuter will be hitting the road to get to work.

This is good, because the light is generally picturesque then too. And the evening makes sense, too, because commuters are headed home, while raptors, for example, are perching to look out for one last pre-sleep snack. And the light, again, is flattering.

So what seems to work in both cases is to find a good spot with a reasonable chance of sighting something exotic; having a care for a nice backdrop that’s not too distracting; ensuring exposure settings and focus distances are dialled in; and if possible, waiting.

Overall, though, there is a kind of charm to this style of pic that goes beyond the moment out of time, the serendipitous harmony of background and subject colours or patterns, the pretty reflections of lights on wet tarmac. This comes from the limitations of the genre, if I can call it that. Like that rigorous poetic form, the sonnet, the very strictures of the form paradoxically impart a kind of freedom to the picture.

Yes, this is all very pseud, for which I apologise, but I think there’s something to it. The bike pan pic requires a few essential elements: a human body, the immutable geometry of a frame and two wheels, and a blurry background to isolate these things.

Yet within that framework, there exists a plethora of small details: the rider’s face, the logos on their shoes, their choice of shirt or helmet, their bike and its modifications, and so on ad infinitum.

The poets who wrote sonnets knew very well how to exploit the tension between limitation and multiplicity. Doomed romantic consumptive Keats said the form is like ” sandals more interwoven and complete / To fit the naked foot of poesy,” which brings to mind unpleasant images of sweaty toes.

Less podophilically, Wordsworth said, “Instead of looking at this composition as a piece of architecture . . . I have been much in the habit of preferring the image of an orbicular body — a sphere — or a dew-drop.” Get it? The formal restrictions are the surface tension, the sentiment is the liquid within, and the two in tension give the droplet its shape. Neat!

Thus in a single frame, if done right, the bike pan shot can impart the dual impressions of movement and permanence — a uniformity of subject which is at its best on the move. Sure, shooting pics of falcons and fritillaries has its own particular attraction, but being forced to find alternatives can lead to all manner of minute revelations.

On a day like today, with gale-force, arctic winds roaring outside and the Tour de France on the TV, riding bikes and taking wildlife photos are both out of the question. Ruminating about how the two activities might be related is a pretty good alternative — an opportunity to think about stuff that otherwise requires a lot of doing.