Emma Wood, A Brit Different

Emma Wood is a Brighton based photographer who has recently published the book “A Brit Different”, a celebration of everything that makes Britain great. The book compiles fifty eccentric events taking place across the country, from the cheese rolling to the custard pie throwing, it brings to life the most quirky contests on the British sporting calendar.

Emma has an eye for eccentricity, and not only does she take the photographs of these contests, but she also participates in some of them. She is the current winner of the Ladies’ World Mountain Bike Bog Snorkelling Championship, a competition she had already won in 2007. 

“You just go to one and well, I got hooked”, Emma says when asked about how she became fond of these quirky events. “It is a great atmosphere, there are fun people, you have fun; it is just amusing. That is how I ended up going to so many. You meet many people, you have a laugh and you get out of the house” says the photographer. When it comes to the photography side, she affirms that she is “into photographing people, and in those places you can capture people doing the most funny faces, reactions to things they do, you get great facial expressions and outfits, it is funny”.  

Her passion for photography started when she was a kid, even though she studied a BA in Graphic Design, she after did a couple of courses on photography and she has been working on it ever since. “With photography I just follow my heart”, she says.

She has been to more than seventy quirky events across the country and her top three contests are the World Custard Pie Throwing Championships, which took place last May in Kent, the Tin Bath Championships, celebrated in the Isle of Mann in July and the Mountain Bike Bog Snorkelling Championships, held in Wales in July and from which she is the current champion. “I feel very, very good, I wanted to win more than anything else” says Emma, who adds, “I’m going to train and try to retain it and hold it every year”.

The idea for the book came up naturally, since as she says, “I have been photographing many of the events anyway”. She approached the publisher last year after realizing that there was a clear interested in the events and they agreed. “It was a strange situation because publishers normally get approached by writers rather than photographers, I am not a writer, but happily they could give me a contact and put me together with a very good writer” she claims. 

Choosing which events to include in the book was “not difficult” says Emma, and adds that “I pulled out the ones which are the best and which would appeal most people really. There are loads of events going on all the time around the country, I think maybe in the next edition we will put some more, some have been banned for health and safety reasons, so we will see what happens”.

Her photography has taken her to far-off places such as Greenland or India as well. When asked which one is her favourite she struggles to decide. “I haven’t had any bad experiences in any of those places I travelled, so I cannot really choose only one” says the photographer. Deciding on her preferred photo is not an easy matter either. “I really like the ones from Greenland and India”, and adds laughing, “I might not have a favourite one, I really like many of them”. In the end she concludes that her favourite one at the moment “is the one featuring a guy with a pitchfork”.

This picture belongs to a series of photos she took over the last year and currently forms part of the exhibition “Allotment Life”, on at the Horniman Museum, in southeast London, until the 17th of October.

Her book is available to buy online and it is worth to have a look at, because as Emma says, “every country has strange events, but the British just are really good at embracing it and enjoying themselves”.