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Photographer Jon Cartwright makes a point of going out into the London streets on Christmas morning because it's the only time you can see the capital without the crowds. Here are some of the fruits of his festive and furtive forays.

"The first year I did this, 2006, I concentrated on Covent Garden," says Cartwright.

"I had lived there for a while, but I had never seen and could barely even imagine Covent Garden Tube station without its throng of pedestrians at the top of James Street.

"King Street, Neal Street, the Piazza... all these places that looked almost spooky without their trademark crowds. It also allowed me to experiment with techniques that would have been impossible with lots of moving people in the frame, for example weird panoramas with ultra-wide-angle lenses.

"The next year I went to Piccadilly Circus as the sun came up to create a huge 30- or 40-frame panorama of the whole junction devoid of all traffic. The result is so familiar yet so unnerving that it's one of my most popular pictures, frequently used by newspapers and magazines that want to conjure an image of a post-apocalyptic metropolis."