Photographing Oxford in 2.6 challenge for Brain Tumour Research

Top left is 'A for arches', followed by 'B for bike'.

'C' is for churchyard, 'D' is for dodo, and elsewhere you can find 'I for ice cream', 'U for uniforms' and even 'Y for yellow'.

All of these pictures were taken in just 2.6 hours by Oxfordshire photographer Crispin Zeeman, who you can see bottom right – obviously under 'Z for Zeeman'.

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Mr Zeeman, 55, who lives in Finstock village near Woodstock, is also the head of brand communications at the charity Brain Tumour Research.

Surprisingly, he was inspired to take on the challenge by the cancellation of the London Marathon.

When the organisers of the race, which raises millions for charity, announced this year's event would not go ahead, they devised a new way to raise money for good causes – the 2.6 challenge, inspired by the race's 26 miles.

Many fundraisers completed a 2.6 challenge by simply running a marathon in the garden or doing 26 different exercises.

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However, Mr Zeeman put a different spin on the challenge.

On April 26, he set out to take 26 photographs of Oxford in 2.6 hours, with each snap representing one of the 26 letters of the alphabet.

He completed the whole challenge in Oxford city centre in his self-imposed time-limit.

He also completed his 2.6 challenge while following strict social distancing guidelines.

The pictures include a gargoyle for ‘G’, joggers in the park for 'J’ and even a knight in shining armour for the letter ‘K’.

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He even managed to find pictures for some of the trickier letters, such as the Quaker Meeting House in St Giles for ‘Q’ and a close-up of an ‘X’ at St Giles war memorial.

One of the more unusual pictures was, as he put it, of 'a bearded bloke on a big bike heading for Broad Street, Oxford’ for 'B'.

Friends and sponsors convinced him to take a self-portrait for the letter ‘Z’ because of his surname, but he joked that even this it was not his favourite photograph.

He said: “Apart from my self-portrait, I think my favourite photo is the ice cream.

"I am a big fan of human interaction, so if I can use my photography to tell peoples stories as well then that is a real reward for me. Taking shots of buildings is kind of easy because they are not going anywhere, whereas people moving around especially people you do not know is much harder.

“I met this girl in the George & Danver café and I went up to her and said, ‘look I am doing this challenge, would you mind, your ice cream looks fantastic, I’m going to enjoy eating this in a minute, but can you just hold it up so I can get this photograph’. So that is how I got my ‘I’ for ice cream photo.”

The photographer made a JustGiving page to raise money for Brain Tumour Research, a charity formed in 2009 which is dedicated to funding research and raising awareness of brain tumours.

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He had set a target of raising £260 but soon smashed it, reaching a total of £456 for the charity

Mr Zeeman said: “I’m not somebody who goes out and fundraises a lot of the time. My work for the charity is all about brand and communications, so I have been talking about this a lot but personally I am not a fundraiser by profession or by experience.

“So, I was pretty pleased to not only beat my target but also raise £456 for charity. Overall, as a charity we have raised more than £35,000.”

He added: “We’ve raised a huge amount of interest in the press and we drove a lot of publicity ourselves and it is great to see we’ve got fundraisers still carrying on.

“There is a woman who is doing 26 challenges throughout May for us with a target of raising £10,000. It has inspired people and brought people to the awareness of the charity.”

To help Mr Zeeman in his challenge and to help fundraise for the charity Brain Tumour Research donate to the Just Giving page via: www.justgiving.com/fundraising/crispin-s-2-6-challenge