I spotted this statue of Elgar wearing a traffic cone and took a few shots but was struggling to make anything of it. I was hoping someone would come along the street wearing a conelike hat – although that seemed unlikely! And then these hat clad workmen started to gather on the scaffolding. It was a moment – not necessarily a decisive one but it illustrated to me that things can happen in an unforeseen ways.
This hole through a wall appealed to me because I was able to stand and take photographs of passing folk without them necessarily realizing what I was doing. I also liked the grungy background, the colour and the lighting. I stood for about 30 minutes snapping unsuspecting passers-by. I always enjoy the process of reviewing the images – and was able to quickly edit down to half a dozen or so images. It became apparent that the most interesting thing was the light and the way it was illuminating the subjects from the left. I discarded a number of images because of certain elements that seemed to me create a distraction – plastic bags, rucksacks, pushchairs etc. Also, I needed to catch the subject in an interesting mid-walk pose – sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. So my preferred image is the one directly above because I really like the way the light is catching the guy’s face and the way he is holding his face up into the light as he walks. The shape of his silhouette is interesting and he has been captured in exactly the right spot in relation to other elements in the picture. I have chosen to retain part of the ‘hole’ since I think that adds an intriguing sense of voyeurism.
The images above were taken in front of Hereford Cathedral in a very low winter sun. I was particularly intrigued by the way the long shadows were contrasting with the perpendicular lines of the building. In my opinion, this effect is only really evident in the black and white version which stresses the contrast and eliminates unnecessary distractions. I spent some time trying to capture the image I had in my head but it never really came together – and then the sun set.
I spent a very long time in front of this advert. I had an idea for the image – to convey the impression that someone was breaking out of the line – but it was hard to achieve. They needed to be walking in the right direction, I needed to capture them in profile directly obscuring one of the people in line and they needed to be walking fairly close to the wall. It seemed to me that this idea would work better if the person was blurred so I purposefully kept the speed down. The bottom image just about captures it. It was fun!
Jo's learning log 