Honolulu and the Pingdemic

July 22, 2021

Apologies for the occasionaly obscure titles I give and the headline images that at first glance just don’t seem to fit in any way, shape or form. All will be revealed, hopefully it’ll become clear. It would be negligent before I moved on to the much more important photography stuff if I didn’t give a quick mention to the ‘Pingdemic”. If you don’t live in the U.K. then you’re forgiven for not knowing what the hell I’m on about, but I expect it’s a similar story for most countries, or will be. Anyway, Roll Up, Roll Up, let me try and explain…it won’t take long and then we can get on with discussing my YouTube appearance where I judged a Street Photography Challenge that took place in Hawaii. I sounded like a ‘bored pirate’ by the way, right, let’s leave that for just a brief moment and unravel the lunacy of Boris Johnsons masterplan.

We took the children to the Circus last Friday. This year there was a kind of Irish theme at Giffords, it was called “The Hooley”. A great time was had by all until we got home and my NHS Covid-19 App pinged. When there’s a ping it means, or the App believes, that you’ve been in close contact with someone who has coronavirus. You must self Isolate for 10 Days. They’re a bit slow on that by the way, mine said 5 Days, Sam had one a few weeks ago that said 1 Day when she received it. By the time they get results and it’s registered…well in Sam’s instance 9 Days had passed already before she got pinged. Almost pointless in my opinion, I’d been to the circus, to the pub a couple of times and into Bath for a Street Photography session by the time I was notified. It also tells you where and when you were in contact. It was the Saturday previous, you know, the day football didn’t come Home and instead went to Rome. Unlike English Football I was at home apart from a quick trip to a sports shop to buy a football for Louis (which he hasn’t played with since!). Sam was with me, we were in there for 15 minutes, both wearing masks. I didn’t stand near anyone in what was in fact a very quiet shop. She didn’t get pinged, I did. Makes no sense. Of course there have been people who have been pinged because their neighbour tested positive and the App picked it up through the adjoining wall. Where does Boris’s plan leave us? Well, some of the newspapers call him ‘Bozo the Clown’ and they could be right:

Last week half a million people were pinged. Now ‘Freedom Day’ has arrived then we can expect that figure to go well into the millions per week. Factories are closing because staff are isolating, supermarkets are reducing their opening hours because not enough employees to cover the long shifts, shortage of lorry drivers disrupting the supply chain. You get the picture, it obviously has a huge knock on effect across the country, healthcare included. We’ve gone from Lockdown to Shutdown, How did the U.K.’s top politicians celebrate the much heralded ‘Freedom Day’? The Prime Minister , the Secretary of State for Health and the second most important man in the country, The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) were all isolating…you couldn’t make it up! There was a news conference on Monday to discuss ‘Freedom Day’ whereby Boris Johnson spoke via video. Really, it’s a complete circus, which is how we match up part of that title with the opening shot. Let’s talk about photography instead.

I’ll start by putting a few more of the Circus shots in a grid, they’re out of the way then and in any case they’re not great. Essentially if you want to take photos in really low light don’t buy a Leica, this didn’t come as a surprise as I’ve experienced this many times before. To begin with a High ISO for my Leica is around 1600 or 2000, that should still produce a usable photograph, Canon users will quite happily use ten times that and won’t know what to do with all that light coming through to the sensor. Try using a Rangefinder in the dark, you need to be looking through the view finder to focus when you’re at large apertures, f/2 for example. The problem there is that when you do look through you only see whatever the ambient light provides, which in the case of a dimly lit circus is not much, certainly not enough to line up the focus patch. So, we get what we get. Here’s a few, the first one I could arguably say that we’re going for an arty, ethereal, fantasy look, in reality there wasn’t any light and the camera couldn’t handle it, neither could I.

Personally I would have enjoyed the experience more if I could have been outside, preferably around the back of the Big Top documenting the comings and goings of the circus folk. The clown, named Tweedy, was exceptionally good so I’m happy that I sat back and laughed with the rest of the audience. My opening photo shows that perhaps running away to join the circus may not be as glamorous as it might first appear. Thinking about audiences and less glamorous as you imagined (my performance) let’s switch to Hawaii and this YouTube video challenge that I judged. I’ll put the link at the end.

My friend Tim Huynh who you might remember made a film about Street Photography called “Fill The Frame” asked me if I would judge a Street Photography Challenge. Joel Meyerowitz had already refused, next Tim contacted the top 50,000 street photographers around the globe via email who said No, Non, Nein, Нет, 不是, Não, in some cases the second word was OFF! Eventually and with nowhere else to go he reluctantly turned to me. That’s how I got the gig just in case you’re wondering. Essentially the HNL Street Collective would be in downtown Honolulu, they would split up and for 90 minutes see what they could get. Now, to my thinking that’s an ultra tough challenge, even more so when they appeared to have picked a really quiet time of the day. Any Street Photographer will tell you how difficult it is to produce work on demand, sometimes you just don’t see it or feel it, you return from a session with nothing to show for the effort.

I mistakingly thought that I’d have to watch the video of different clips Tim had put together, POV’s from the various photographers and their photos. I’d comment on the photos I liked, pick a winner and done. The photos I’m sharing here I received after the event by the way, I didn’t have access to them before, I had to watch the video. Anyway, Tim decided that I could video myself watching the entire video, 30 minutes worth. I wouldn’t say it was entirely in my comfort zone. I’ve watched others do this kind of thing on YouTube, they appear articulate and super cool. I sound like a bored pirate, okay there’s little that I can do about my west country accent. What I wasn’t though was bored, not in the slightest. I enjoyed looking through every second of this video, the members of the HNL Street Collective are a very talented group of photographers that’s for sure. It was like a kind of ‘group therapy’ for Street Photographers, we can recognise what they were going through, the difficulty of finding and capturing a meaningful candid photograph. I offer my opinions throughout and do my best to commentate whilst they walk through largely empty streets.

Of course they did eventually come across something of interest as Lance did in that shot above. It’s superb, we have no idea what’s going on here, there are many questions need answering. For example: Is it some kind of Street Mortuary? As is the case in many street photos there’s always a simple answer, one I don’t wish to know. I’d rather be intrigued and use my own imagination. That’s one reason why I don’t like titles for photographs, although occasionally some context might be necessary for documentary. What we don’t need is “Walking into the Light” or some other nonsense like that. You know I’ve often written here about how there needs to be something more in a street photograph, otherwise it’s just people walking along. Well, if you’re going to take a shot of someone just walking along copy this last shot, this is how it should be done. Perspective, expressions…

I haven’t included all the photos from this challenge, you’ll have to watch the video and see who I announced as winner. I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts. Which shot you thought should have won and why? I don’t want to hear from Tim though, I already know his feelings (It’s a fix, I should’ve won) and I’m certain he’s one of the two people who gave the video, his own video, on his own channel, the thumbs down! Clearly the other was Joel Meyerowitz, I’m positive that he would have enjoyed their work, the commentary though probably made him shiver! This experience has pushed me to produce my own Street POV video, I’ll give it a go next week and set myself 90 minutes just like the HNL Street Collective did in Honolulu, obviously it’ll be in Bath. I’ll finish up with a few of my own shots from the only trip managed last week and in fairness to myself it was under an hour, I’m not going to beat myself up as I often do. Not great, but you get what you get. As you know I always post anything I have, it’s partly for myself, but also so that others who are having a tough time with their own Street Photography hopefully don’t feel quite so bad.

Here’s the link to the HNL Street Challenge YouTube Video:

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. Obviously not from our friends in the HNL Collective.

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