The schools have finally opened up. Hallelujah! After almost six months the children are going to be educated, see their friends and experience a kind of normality. I’m going to open up too, perhaps admit a few things to myself and you. Photographically speaking of course, I don’t think anyone wants to know my inner thoughts, least not me and so we’ll leave those particular demons for another day. Similar to the children I’m going to further my education and get back on track to my own kind of normality. I’ll be attempting to be more liberal with my street photography, is liberal the correct word? Open up a bit, open-minded could be a better word, I might be mixing things up a little here, what I think I’m trying to say is that there’s an urge to feel liberated, less constrained.
This was always the great thing about having my own blog, I could post what I liked, not what I thought other people might like. I make and share images that are more in line with my current ethos. With Social Media I tend to post more conservative images and can’t help feeling that this has been a mistake. My profiles on Facebook and Instagram don’t really reflect the photography that I do now. The curator (me) hasn’t been performing his duties to the utmost of his ability, in fact I’d go as far as to say that he’s been living in the past for far too long. Of late I’ve avoided posting photos that I believe may prove unpopular and for years I’ve been saying “only post what you like, who cares what others think”. As William Shakespeare wrote: “To thyne own self be true”. I feel a little guilty that I haven’t been. I’m putting part of this down to “Lockdown”, I wasn’t creating very much new material and clearly I’ve become a Social Media addict over the last few months, boredom partly. I had to post something so began looking through the archives to satisfy my addiction. By the way, everything you see in this blog post is new.
In all fairness I only look at Instagram for about two minutes per day and so I won’t beat myself up about that. However, I do participate in a few groups on Facebook, I scroll through every post made by other photographers/members each morning from the previous 24 hours. That is extremely time consuming, I probably see more photos that the actual admins of these groups. I learn from this habit, however, I would say that I don’t always come away feeling particularly inspired, sometimes I do. Occasionally I see some outstanding and very talented photographers post a shot that I say “Wow” out load. What all this looking at images can do is force me in another direction, I see repetitive themes, photographs constructed is a certain way. I’m not at all influenced, in fact the antithesis of that would be true. I still maintain lessons are learnt though, look at lots of images and it will build you. Not a desire to copy, but to see what does and doesn’t work.
You’ll probably be asking: Why is he telling me this? Well, I’ll tell you. Not that you actually asked that question or necessarily want an answer to it. By writing this blog my head is often cleared and the result is that seeing it in print encourages me to do what I was thinking about for months. I’m not deleting my Social Media accounts, I will be weaning myself off though. Posting and participating far less frequently. It’s so time consuming apart from anything else and as we all know time is not something that we can afford to waste. I think that time could be better spent further developing my style, opening up a little, shooting more what grabs me. I have a book on my desk: “The Street Philosophy of Gary Winogrand”. It’s still in its cellophane wrapping. It needs reading and absorbing, I haven’t had time and each morning that I see that book I feel slightly angry with myself. I know that I’m going to receive an education from it, I’ll be inspired by it and thus my photography will improve.
In order to maintain a presence during this winding down period I will begin posting slideshows and perhaps the occasional video on Youtube. I know that doesn’t sound like I’m weaning myself off Social Media and slideshows are often derided, however I still want my photography to be seen. As they used to say on a children’s program that I watched as a boy… Here’s one I made earlier:
That video/slideshow includes most of my old Street Photography, just in case you felt like pointing that out to me. I posted it on Facebook, mentioning that currently I have zero subscribers and my friend Steve Allsopp commented: “Six subscribers actually John...it’s going mental!”. Hilarious, I couldn’t stop laughing. No doubt YouTube will soon be in touch and I’ll be earning £10,000 per slideshow! Sweet. I’ll phone the bank manager and warn him that huge funds are on their way. He’ll be absolutely bloody delighted. By the way, Steve is a great photographer, you can visit his website here.
As you know I write this blog as I go, which will explain how often it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, there’s just not enough planning going in. Something is on my mind and I tap away at the keyboard. I get distracted and off we go on another tangent. For example, I just uploaded those shots above and thought: “Hang on a minute, that’s another one in colour, did I stop shooting with a black and white mindset?”. I may have done, certainly I’m looking more towards colour at the moment.
I still adore black & white, it’s probably just a phase. I’d certainly be thinking that way for a Family Shoot or Wedding, definitely for Portraits. I’m no longer entirely sure for Street Photography. Somehow it doesn’t always convey what I’m seeing. Here’s a couple of examples of colour where black & white wouldn’t work at all. It could be argued, and quite convincingly, that they don’t work in any format. Anyway, I liked the pink theme of the restaurant and customers (one outside and one inside), the people in the windows and the second photo with this tattooed girl, pink hair, flowing green skirt and that yellow of the van pulling away :
I find myself edging more towards scenes, especially at the moment as there are more people around, that’s noticeable in both shots above. Here in the U.K. a scheme has been running that encourages people to aid the hospitality industry, namely “Eat out to Help out”, it seems I’m not the only one ‘opening up’. Essentially the government, and for that read the taxpayer, are paying towards your restaurant bill. Obviously it’s limited to a maximum amount, so you’re not going to a Michelin Star restaurant, however an individual can use it as many times as they see fit. They or should I say ‘we’ match whatever is spent up to a limit of £10. I read that some people are having Breakfast, Lunch and Diner every day that the scheme is running . Should we be proud of the effort they’re putting in to help out, or enraged at the greediness and cost as they eat out at our expense. There is a point to be made that the government is campaigning to reduce obesity, I can’t imagine that is going well if we consider you can eat two cheeseburgers for the price of one via a government backed scheme.
It’s certainly got people motivated to get out into the city centres, nothing like the prospect of free food to get them out. Not everywhere is benefiting though. In many instances, such as the image of the buildings in Bristol with the highlighted figure in red I posted earlier, large swathes of both Bristol and Bath are still pretty much like a Ghost Town as we spoke about in a previous blog.
Where were we? Oh yes. I’ve opened up a little. Told you that I’ve become a Social Media addict during this time of Covid and that I need to free up that time. I want to loosen up my approach to photographing the streets, too rigid in the past is what I’d say. I need to utilise fully any time I have on my hands. I’ll probably put together a slideshow of the last couple of visits to Bath & Bristol and post it to YouTube.
I’ll very quickly finish with a some shots from a trip we made over the weekend. We headed down to the forest in Hampshire so the children could “Go Ape”, Sam went up into the trees with them, I stayed on the ground...A lot of Health & Safety advice to begin with, for example: don’t swing about the very heavy trolley that connects to the ropes. Obviously Louis totally ignored that and once again I could see that analytical mind of his working overtime: How does it work? Fair enough. How can this become a weapon? Not so fair. I’m still hoping it’s just a phase he’s going through. Standby, we’ve gone back to black & white…contradictions seem to be the main theme on this blog!
As always my sincere thanks go to anyone taking the time to read this blog.
All images can be opened by clicking on the thumbnails and are taken using a Leica M with Summicron 28mm Lens fitted.
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