Tag Archives: urban

Black, White, Urban and Intimate

This evening I decided to look back at some images I have taken in the last year.

Within a few minutes I realised that the ones I really love share some basic aspects in common.

  • They tend to be intimate – often shot from the hip, on the move, while walking past the subject.

light

  • They are in black and white

books

  • They are Urban

couple

  • They are of people. I hesitate to call them portraits, more a kind of capture the moment.

They also seem to be reflective somehow. Pauses in conversations, or thoughtful reflection.

why

They are so often taken when traveling – I have commented before that the act of travel just seems to make me reach for a camera.

It is enlightening to see these images side by side with ones that don’t mean so much to me – and plan now to proactively build up my expertise in these kind of areas in order to create more that I really do feel satisfied with.

But I also think one of the messages for me – personally – is that it is time to live in a city again. So much of what interests me is urban.

Street Photography Workshop

I spent Saturday morning in a rainy Brighton on a street photography workshop with Natasha Lythgoe

The workshop was fun and informative – some interesting exercises were

  • Asking 20 people in 20 minutes if I could take their picture
  • Looking for inside out shots ( from inside an environment through to the outside world )
  • Looking for architectural elements combined with Street – so not so much about people
  • Taking 20 steps, shoot, another 20 steps, shoot – to encourage you to look for images from wherever you are

These are some of the shots I took – despite the rain Brighton is always a source of great ideas.

Thanks very mush to Natasha for the course – I certainly plan to attend more of her workshops if I can.

 

 

 

Street shots from London

Spent a great couple of hours today looking to get some street shots in London.

I am quite pleased with the result, but have so much to learn. I think my biggest takeaway from today was just not to trust the small screen preview. Although on my Nikon D5100 it’s an excellent screen, you still can’t see enough details like the focusing and several times I thought I had captured exactly the image I wanted, only to be disappointed when reviewing them later in Lightroom.

I look forward to the next visit.

Some other shots from today –

More resolution options available on my Flickr.

I also learned that in winter standing around for ages on the streets is a mind numbingly cold experience, especially by the river!

Great fun!