High St
I really love to make interesting images of the things I see on the street. As I spend more and more time in the studio with lights and models I get quite far away from the gritty stuff I love about photography. Its pretty important for me to get out for a walk with my camera, sit down on the dirty pavement, watch the world go by, chat to some crazy people and snap some fun shots.
I guess this is kind of a follow up to my last post about the fact and fiction of photography. For me street photography is the one of the purest forms of photography in that it is about capturing unplanned moments of everyday life on the city streets. There's no posing, no smiling for the camera, in fact hopefully anyone in frame doesn't even know a picture is being taken.
For me street photography is as close to fact as I can get. But then again I love to see street images in black and white which adds an element of fiction cause the majority of us don't actually see the world in black and white. But by taking away the distractions of colour we're left looking at the subjects, the shapes, the emotions or the movements of everyday life. And just by taking away the colour we create a whole bunch of questions which then add back the fantasy as the viewer has to make their own assumptions on what colours were where.
I like to set myself personal projects to push myself and keep trying new techniques. I have a series I've been doing for a while shooting from the shadows of people on the move. By exposing only for the light the final image has large areas of dark shadow which creates its own mystery and lets everyone make their own fantasy from the facts.
Plus I jus like lurking in the shadows watching the world go by.