Live East, Die Young

I received an unusual email request recently from a friend in Australia. He wanted me to hunt down and photograph a piece of graffiti which read "You are not how much money you have in the bank" for a project he was doing on profound graffiti works. I had a street name to work with and that was all.

As luck would have it the sun came out properly for the first time all year on Saturday, so in the late afternoon light I donned my shorts and T-shirt, grabbed my camera (with my 24-70 lens attached) and headed East to Brick Lane and surrounding gritty areas in pursuit of some graf. This is one of the things I love most about photography, it gets you out of the house and forces you to see interesting things and interact with unusual people that you wouldn't get the chance to see and meet if you'd stayed on the couch. And if you're after interesting looking people in London I'd suggest East London is second only to Camden in this department.

This first shot was taken on Shoreditch High Street, I was feverishly looking around for some interesting shapes with interesting light bouncing off them when I stumbled upon this fence. I took a few shots of just the fence but they lacked punch, when I deceided to fill half the frame and have a blurred walking figure in the other half I liked the look if it a lot more, the shot had a degree of interest to it. Only problem is I think I was a little close to the first post and it's not quite pin sharp, and the rest of the shot is intentionally out of focus, so I've basically taken a shot with nothing in focus. I guess that makes me arty.



Next up we have my attempt at classic Brick Lane shot. As I was walking down the street towards Brick Lane I spotted the street sign and thought that would make a nice image, the light was good too. Problem was I was too far away so I had to wait till I was closer. As I got a little closer (not yet close enough) a musician with a guitar case stepped right into my frame, a perfect point of interest. I whipped out the camera but was still a bit far from the action to make it work (only had the one lens which only went to 70) so a hastily semi-jogged to get myself in a better spot. Miraculously this guitar carrying muzak creator continued to dawdle right in the very sport I wanted him to for a good 30 seconds more, then when I saw the crazy old guy with dreads approaching on a bike from my right I though all my Christmases had come at once. I waited for the right moment and pulled the trigger, and after a little cropping in Lightroom to get the framing spot on I converted to B & W and proceeded to write about it on my blog.



I frequently treat myself to a Subway sandwich on Sundays (chicken and bacon ranch on Italian herbs and cheese, toasted with cheese), opposite the sandwich factory sits a burned out shell of a building that I always think would make a good photo. My trip back from the Lane took me past this shell so I thought I'd make good on my promise to myself and set up camp on the other side of the road and wait for someone to walk past. A photo of the building alone is ok, but really lacks something, especially when taken from a conventional bang-in-front position, however a photo taken at a slower shutter speed (1/30 of a second) with a member of the public walking past transmorphs an average photo into something far more appealing to the eye. I also thought this lady's somewhat corporate appearance contrasted nicely against the ruin behind her, I would like to suggest that this is my take on the credit crunch and the impending doom in the global financial markets - but I've only just thought of that now so i can't really claim it as my motivation.



I never was able to find the piece of graffiti I went in search of, but the enjoyment I found from a few hours in the sun with my favourite toy was a much better find.

My Sordid Past

As I've not managed to get out there with the camera this week I've decided to take up a suggestion (thanks Hebrew Hustle) to document my progression as a budding photographer. This was a particularly welcome suggestion for 2 reasons:
1. I didn't have to do anything new
2. It allowed me to be a bit self indulgant under the guise of responding to a suggestion, but at the end of the day this whole blog's a bit self indulgent isn't it? (although it's a rhetorical question feel free to answer it in the comments at the bottom!)

So, I thought I'd run you through my favourite photos from my first digital camera, the then "ultra slim" Pentax Optio 330GS.

I purchased this little number back in 2003 to take with me on my world safari. I was looking at 2 megapixel cameras back then, but decided to splash out for the more impressive 3 megapixel option, and to record these images I went for 2 x 128mb memory cards. All up the whole kit cost me somewhere in the AU$800 vicinity, quite a preposterous amount by today's standards. So, here it is, the very first photo I ever took with a digital camera, a delightful self portrait I think you'll agree.



Next up we've got a night shot I took in Hong Kong a few weeks after buying the camera. In the absence of a tripod I rested it on a wall and experimented with the shutter speeds until I got the result I was after, but not really understanding anything about shutter speed at that time I think it's a miracle this one turned out as well as it did!



Next up there's 4 of my favourite shots from Spain.









And to round things out we've got a couple of my favourites from Torres Del Paine national park down in the south of Chile.





So, there you go, this is what happens when you send someone out into the great big world with a very basic camera and no technical knowledge. Shortly after those last 2 shots were taken this camera was stolen, so for the next installment of my photographic odyssey you'll see what results a hefty 4mp Canon point and shoot can deliver.

Till then.

Not A Young Man Anymore

It's not so much the fact I'm now into my thirties that bothers me, it's more the fact I'm no longer in my twenties. I know they sound like exactly the same thing, and logically they have to be, but in my mind they're very different. So, it was with this last hurrah mentality that I headed down to Brighton on the weekend with 15 of my nearest and dearest to see in this next decade in style.

To provide a bit of light entertainment I decided to organise a photo treasure hunt loosely based on the Shoot Portobello from the previous week (see last blog entry), and by loosely based I mean borderline identical. So, Snap Brighton was a whirlwind 5 clue 2 hour event which culminated in a slide show and awards ceremony at the end, congrats to Shane & Sherrie on their winning photo, I trust you enjoyed the 2 litre bottle of Strongbow. While the others were out shooting clues I decided to try my hand as a paparazzi/private detective by sneaking round after the competitors and getting images of them in compromising positions. I decided to give up on this after I lost the scent of my first targets after 3 minutes and couldn't find anyone else and instead just pottered round Brighton looking for images. I decided to stick with the 70-200 lens the whole time to try and force me to look at things in a different way.

This first shot is perhaps my favourite from the weekend. I stumbled across this amazing band of buskers performing in a park, they were playing Buena Vista Social Club style music and the crowd was loving it. A young girl in the crowd was clearly enamored with the tuba player, an uber cool black guy, and after they finished one of their tracks she bounded right up to him for a chat. I managed to capture that moment with this shot, the downside was that I cropped off the top of his tube and his head is touching the top of the frame which sort of ruins the aesthetics of the image. Still though, I really like it.



As Brighton is a seaside town there were loads of seagull everywhere. I went on a bit of a gull shooting bonanza as the nice light, lovely blue skies and my telephoto lens were all working nicely in my favour. Managed to capture this first guy looking straight down the lens, it's always good to get wild animals to pose for your images. The second one was easier to take than you might think, due to the wind drafts the gulls were literally suspended in mid air with minimal movement, I set the focus to AI Servo to track any movement that did occur and filled the frame with gull wings.





This third gull related shot was taken to show 2 things, firstly the number of gulls all over the place, but secondly the amazing changing weather, this was a huge storm cloud sweeping in over the ocean. I just love how there's absolutely zero barrel or pincushion distortion when you shoot with L series lenses, the horizon is just perfect.



Another shot I like, I think this one works because the 3 models are all doing something different, if I just had 3 people all standing next to each other at roughly the same height the shot would look a bit boring and stagnant but luckily Dave had his legs spread and Siobhan was sitting down so it all came together nicely.



The classic sunglasses reflection shot, not highly original but I still like it.



Lastly I thought I should include one of the Brighton Pier itself. I spotted this shot potential early on the first day but it wasn't till late on the final day that I managed to be in the right place while kids were using those jumpy things (which look really fun BTW, anyone ever been on one?).



Well, harder than I thought to come up with a short selection of shots, still not sure if I've picked the best ones, click on any of the images to take you to the full album, and as always, feel free to leave a comment.

Another Glorious Victory

What's this, a Blog update on a Saturday? Yeah, that's right, just another example of my unconventional approach to photography and my total disregard for society's conventions.

I write this 7 days after another fantastic photographic treasure hunt, this time round it was Shoot Portobello. This is the third such event that my cohorts and I have been involved with and somehow we've managed to come away with 3 winners badges. To put this in perspective there are actually 14 of this badges per event and roughly 60 teams competing for them. I was also linked to the overall prize as a group of friends who called their team "Better Than Simon's Team" managed to win it all after Shane jumped into the canal in the name of art. Kudos.

I'll start with our winning photo. This wasn't our most aesthetically pleasing photo but I think it got the nod for being a bit clever. The event was scheduled on the same day as the famous Oxford Cambridge boat race which I otherwise would have gone to, so this was our take on that. Dave came up with the idea of doing a drinking competition style boat race and went the extra mile to pour beer over his head for the first shot of the day. It's the little touches that bring the jewelery. Clue: You can al(l) get nautical along this nearby waterway.



We were struggling to come up with something creative for this next shot. The clue was "Knotting Hill" so it was very open to interpretation. We left this clue to last and by this stage we thought we'd already taken some good shots and motivation was low. I spotted a shop selling Notting Hill bags for just £3 so I thought it might make a good shot to attach the 10-20 lens and get down low to shoot someone holding the bag while shopping. We bought a leak to have sticking out of the bag and bulked the bag up with some police hats we'd purchased as props for another clue. The light was very flat so I decided to shoot in black and white. In the end I was really pleased how the shot turned out, we sort of ignored the "k" at the start of the "knotting" in the clue but we decided to leave it as a nice artistic photo rather than add the K with a marker and cheapen the shot.



Last but not least we have my favorite shot of the day. There are strict rules in the comp about digital manipulation of photos, so I came up with an idea before the comp whereby we take a few shots related to a clue, take them to snappy snaps (locations had been researched before the day) to get them printed, then include them in the final shot. The clue was: "Waterford crystals? Napoleon's pistols? You'll find what you want in the......('Beautiful Port')....road." so that seemed perfect. Here's what we came up with.



So, as I said at the top, 3 on the trot...