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.