About Me

A picture of Tommy, the author, sitting at an outdoor picnic table.

🤔 Who are you?

My name is Tommy. Nice to meet you! ☺️

I work full time as a software engineer, and throughout my life, I never took starting a business very seriously. Like many, I was pushed onto the path of the 9-5 and hadn't ever really humoured the idea of going onto, as some call it, "The Pathless Path".

But last year, I read a few books on the issue. It became my life's mission to start a business, but I didn't really know what to do. Especially with the pressures of working full time, having the time and energy to dedicate to starting a business was tricky.

In early 2025, I found myself with a 2 weeks between job positions. I thought - it's kind of now or never, right? I'm never going to find myself with that much free time again. So I came up with a crude idea. Inspired by something that happened to me when I was a bit younger, I decided on a business I thought I could launch from scratch in that amount of time.

I even announced I was starting a business on LinkedIn. And here we are!

But something's happened in the process of setting this thing up. The first was that I learned more about setting up a business than I realised I would. The second was that, as I was trawling through all my old collections of photos, it brought the artistic side of me back to the forefront.

It turns out, I've got this store online for two reasons. The first being as a learning exercise in all things business. The second is a love for sharing art.

It's resurrected my appetite for street photography, and I've never been happier.

📆 The history of London Canvas

A number of years ago, I worked in the City of London.

Before the age of working from home, when all my work devices lived at the office, I was free to bring my camera into work whenever I wanted. And whenever I did, I'd take the occasional walk into the city to take pictures of the architecture. Sometimes, I'd stick around in the city after work to photograph the buildings by twilight, or just at night.

I loved putting these pictures on social media, but it wasn't until a friend messaged me complimenting on a picture I'd taken from London Bridge that I thought - actually, some of these are pretty good! I even had a few of them printed into canvases which decorate my living room to this day.

This same friend asked if I could have this particular image printed onto a canvas for her. So it ended up being her birthday gift that year. 

🇬🇧 Why "London Canvas" (the name)?

To be totally honest, I didn't want to get bogged down in coming up with "the perfect name".

So, I came up with a name I thought was pretty snappy and registered the domain. If I need to rename/rebrand later, I can always do that. But to be totally honest, the name has grown on me a lot.

So at least for the time being, I'm sticking with it!

🙋 Follow me elsewhere

London Canvas is dedicated to my love of art, but it's also a big experiment in my other pursuits - business, personal branding and search engine optimisation.

If you're interested in following my journey or just connecting, here's where else you can find me!