No Time, No Excuse

November 23, 2018

A short blogpost this week;

I’m always banging on about how we should be constantly practicing, especially important with Street Photography. The photographic eye needs to be kept in superb condition, to see a frame, the light, shadow, little nuances. We need to be constantly alert, focussing on what is going on around us. Obvious really, except I haven’t been practicing what I preach. I appear to have entered some kind of “space time continuum” during November, my perception is that I have all the time in the world, the reality is quite a different story. So it is that I haven’t been out with the camera, there’s no backlog of unprocessed images on the computer, in fact I could count the amount of shutter releases this month and reveal that it’s not very many.

I love photography, there you are, I’ve said it and I even used the overused ‘L” word. There’s no excuse, make time is my current mantra. We had reason to drop into Bath this week, a quick coffee and Sam (my wife) went to do what needed doing. I arranged to meet her and gave myself 40 minutes. Strangely enough I felt no pressure to produce anything in such a short time and interestingly that helped. I felt relaxed and happy to be strolling around with the camera. I walked around the Christmas Market, looking for gestures, hands, etc -

Nothing particularly exciting, you’d think that with all these people milling around there’d be endless opportunities. Again, lack of practice I suspect is the determining factor, no doubt had I walked around there last month I’d have possessed the ability to see a great deal more. I know that there are those that don’t like a Street Photograph whereby someone is staring right at the camera, I don’t think it takes away from being a “Candid” moment, if anything it adds to it;

I don’t know what was in that pie he was eating, evidently it makes the consumer absolutley livid!

Despite the sunshine it was deceptively cold and in a way I was glad time wasn’t on my side. Ten minutes before meeting Sam and I walked down to an area that I’m very familiar with. One reason was that I know my Light in Bath and the sun should be hitting a few choice places. I was rewarded immediately with one of our extremely hard working postmen taking a well earned rest, the postmen and women in this country are unsung heroes in my opinion. Time for some colour;

Just down from our friend, “The Royal Male”, was a guy leaning up against the wall texting on his smartphone, I could have stood there for an hour clicking a way and I doubt he would have noticed. First click in Black & White;

Some really nice light, I changed my position slightly because I wanted to see more of his shadow, as though he was texting it. Back to colour, I liked that Bath Stone bathed in golden sunlight and his clothes and hair seemed to match up well in this frame;

Five minutes early I went to meet Sam who was busy sourcing Harry Potter merchandise for our all things magical daughter. I felt pleased, well satisfied at least, 35 minutes is all it took and I was back in the groove. Unfortunately and for the foreseeable future I’ll need to get used to these short sessions, grabbing them whenever I can. I’ll be making time rest assured of that. Of course it doesn’t always work out well, I was in a nearby town last week and managed three clicks. Pretty feeble I know. Here’s one of them I named “Cry”, because of the rain on the plastic sheeting in front of me, the look on the woman face, the way I was feeling at that precise moment and the sign in the background stating “We Make It Better”. I thought about going in there, sadly they were only talking about coffee! I imagine that unless your viewing on a 27inch iMac some of these photos are difficult to understand, what it is I see in them. Sometimes it’s so personal that there isn’t a definitive reason. All I can say is that I take what appeals to me, keep what I like and just throw stuff out there. Whether or not it’s any good is anyone’s guess.