Pyke created photographic works for Peter Greenaway's films that were used in stills and poster shots for A Zed and Two Noughts, The Belly of an Architect, Drowning by Numbers and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.

[4] It was during an early project on film directors that Pyke established his trademark portrait style, chancing on the little close-up lenses, that when placed on his Rolleiflex camera, allowed him to make incisive, direct images within the square 6x6cm negative.

The first picture made in this way, of the film director Sam Fuller in 1983, was taken the same afternoon as Pyke found the Rolleinars in an Edinburgh camera shop.

[5] Pyke has developed, self-funded and then published a number of personal projects,[6] including those on the world's leading thinkers (in "Philosophers")[7][8][9] and on youth identity (in "Uniforms" and "Homeless").

[10] In the late nineties he completed the series, Astronauts, photographing the men that had walked on the Moon as well as related still life artefacts from the Apollo missions.

His work has been exhibited widely in the UK, Europe, Japan, Mexico and the US and is held in many permanent collections, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museum, the V&A in London, and the New York Public Library.