Pushing my technical limits!

 

A large part of the course was in Borough Market. The instructor made a big deal of getting the light right at the start, Use manual mode. Use metering, Take a load of pictures of absolutely anything just to get the settings for the camera right before you even start to take the pictures you want to take. For me, I initially really struggled with this – I have a really bad habit of just reverting to Aperture priority and letting the camera do the work. However, the instructor showed us quite a few photos that had been taken on Auto, compared with photos taken when the photographer had chosen the settings, and the latter were substantially more atmospheric, every time.

Patience

 

All of us on the course have about 10-20 versions of this shot. Many of them look almost the same, but the people are in a slightly different position. So why is that important? Why take another one the same with the people in a slightly different position? I took one where three young women were right at the front of the frame, lit up by the light from outside the tunnel. The image suddenly became about them, rather than about the scene in general. Now if they were my best friends, maybe that would have been a great photo, but, to me, the scene and the crowd are more important than three specific people I’ve never met and probably never will.

Interesting?

One of the things the course leader really emphasised was that there’s no point taking a photo without a point. What does the photo show? Why have you taken it? To be honest, I don’t have a clue!

St Paul’s Cathedral

I don’t think the intention of the 36Exp course I went on at the weekend was for me to take photos in Black and White, but that’s what I started to experiment with. I’m also not sure this counts as street photography. It’s more like my architectural photographs that I love taking, just that it happens to have a couple of people in it!

Overly Exposed?

Messing around with Black and White and over exposing on my 36Exp Creative and Street Photography course at the weekend!