I think it was Bruce Gilden who said in an interview that Street Photography was becoming increasingly difficult because there are no characters or people with an individual style on the streets. No one stands out in the crowd, we all dress and look the same. Identikit. A kind of uniform, jeans, t-shirt, trainers, hoody. So in the shot above we see three girls in a school uniform that I often see around Bath. I believe the school specialises in child care, nannies and so forth and they have this distinctive, almost iconic uniform. Who wears gloves nowadays? White ones at that and they’re always pristine. Our other young lady is in the uniform of today, okay she’s made a stab at individuality with her purple hair, but she pales into insignificance by comparison. This is just some of the crap that goes through my mind whilst walking around Bath, of course it’s only the bits that I tell you and make public.
On these two visits to Bath I was partly looking for colourful characters. I always try to have some kind of plan before I go off for a session on the street. I think that’s a good thing, it sort of focuses your eye, failing to have an idea of what you’re looking for ends up generally with a negative experience. You might for instance decide that you’re going to concentrate on light and shadow, or close up or layers or scenes. It’s of little consequence what it is as long as there’s a plan and of course you don’t have to stick to it.
Bruce Gilden was wrong, there are still plenty of characters out there. Let’s not forget that this isn’t New York, we’re in a small city, namely Bath. You might be mistaken in thinking these people are off to a fancy dress party, they’re not or if they are they’ve forgotten what the theme was. No, they’re just going about their daily business with perhaps a little eccentricity. I like their style. Look at that fourth photo, the hat selection alone is incredible. It’s like the conundrum of tattoos, people have them because they believe it makes them individuals, expressing themselves, yet it’s those that don’t have any tattoos that appear to be the most individualistic nowadays. I have absolutely no problem with tattoos by the way. Although I do wonder if dolphins ever consider getting tattoos of overweight, drunk women? Okay, it’s just a joke, if you’re a dolphin reading this I know you wouldn’t get one done!
Back to having a plan. You could try the old colour match idea, concentrate on that, but pick a colour slightly more difficult than red. I stood by those old telephone boxes for about two minutes, red really is too simple, but you could easily spend a whole session just looking for colours. Alternatively we could go back to Black & White. Mainly because all this colour is making me feel a little queasy. I still believe that you need to have a black & white mindset, visualising and therefore seeing in monochrome. There was no way this image would work in colour, too messy.
I’m sure it won’t escape anyones notice that “the man with a plan” is fluttering around all over the place with his butterfly mind. That’s because I have many plans, I’m looking at all this stuff happening around me, but there are several options running through my thoughts. I suppose what I’m saying is don’t go out and think, well, nothing at all except: I’m on the street and I want some street photos. Chances are that you’ll come back with nothing. You need a purpose or purposes. I often head off thinking layers, that’s what I need. Generally if I don’t see them and more often than not I don’t, I go back to one of my back up plans. Shop windows or reflections for example. I’m in the second one walking past.
Once again the word ‘Identikit’ comes to mind. Not the kind of Identikit reconstructed photos the police use to capture criminals , those for instance stalking the people of Bath! No, where we’re formulaic, nothing unique in our images. It’s easy to get bogged down with Instagram’s so called Street Photography, purely based on light and shadow. There’s nothing wrong with light and shadow work, but it’s not really Street. I try not to replicate it. In the end my ‘plan’ is almost always to spend some time looking at scenes.
They’re often considered the most boring of photographs, but I always find something appealing in a scene. The misnomer that is ‘Quiet Street’ in Bath is usually where I end up watching the scene, it’s often busier than its name might suggest. By the way the shot earlier of the woman and halo was taken in ‘Cheap Street’, you can see the sign on the wall and maybe it was giving me a sign too, bit of cheap shot really. I include as much as I can in these blogs, the good, the bad and the ugly. Anyway to finish, here’s some scenes from ‘Quiet Street’:
Oh yes, absolutely finally here’s the YouTube slideshow for August if you’re interested.
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 made using a Leica M with Summicron 28mm Lens fitted.
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