Barcelona, 2015

We had a break from filming and some of us went to Barcelona for a quick visit.  Here are a few images.

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DA1 (Dartford)

Mini project based in Dartford (Kent, London) coming soon.

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Ongoing projects, and other things.

Things are trundling along: the 100 Portraits project is almost a month old; the Street Photography Now challenge is half over; and I am still holding out for information on what my next step in life will be [off to Japan as a JET, further study or Irish island life on Rathlin].

Day 25 of 100: Betty, and her dog Bambi. Betty was a lovely and obliging subject to photograph. Her hands were dry, and her nails were long. She has lived in Belfast all her life, and walks the Lisburn road daily. Her dog, Bambi, had been abused as a pup and is now wary of men.

Week 27 of the SPN challenge:

"Bend the rules and play tricks with the mind; make documents of moments that have never existed." - Peter Funch

Again, I was not a huge fan of the week's challenge. However, I do enjoy weaving worlds together with reflections so it wasn't all bad. It allowed me to set up this scene in which the mannequin was voyeurising a couple. It was his 'gaze', which seems so severe, that forced me to frame it as such.

Outside of my photography I continue to keep busy. For example, Ireland will soon have it's first camera obscura and I am functioning as the online media facilitator, by maintaining the blog and digital archive. Construction is due to start soon, and that will mean plenty more updates. Until then I will be creating and uploading information sheets on the Camera Obscura, borders, surveillance, optics and more.

Visit: http://gulliverscamera.wordpress.com/

Also, I had to submit a portrait and bio for the website of Mute. For more information on the film, as well as my very stern Director of Photography portrait, please see the Mute film website.

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Week 25

"Talk to strangers, let them take you to places." - Mark Alor Powell

This is Ronnie. He showed me where he was working, and had no objection to be photographed.

This also functioned as my 7th portrait in the 100 Portraits in 100 Days Project.

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Follow the Money...

Week 24 of the SPN project.

"Follow the money" - Stephen McLaren

After following one man (seen above) for ten minutes or so, he doubled back on me. His facial expression says that he was annoyed that he was the subject of my gaze, and (I think) his clutching hand gesture belies the nervousness/uncomfortableness. I may have taken the brief more literally than was intended but it provided interesting food for thought on a fantastically bright day.

I spent most of my time in the financial areas of Belfast, which provided a wonderful playground for scenes littered with busy people too wrapped up in other matters. Photographing at lunch also in my favour because it forced more people into the public spaces where I was able to 'follow' and frame them.

My B-sides for this week include:

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"Slow down..."

"Slow down, the next picture may be very quiet and close." - Bruno Quinquet

Businessman with a parking ticket, Belfast, 2011 (SPN Challenge 20)

Week 20 was a tough one. Bruno Quinquet's statement was a more open brief than most of the recent posts in the Street Photography Challenge. Plenty of of the early posts in the Instruction No.20 Flickr pool, and discussion boards, were aiming on a 'good' street photo because of the openness of the brief (or so I gather from reading the threads), and the results have been good.

Bruno Quinquet, Salaryman Project, 2009

I first came across Quinquet's work at this time last year when his series on Japanese salarymen, Obsession of a salaryman otaku, was published in the 1000words Photography Magazine (Spring 2010). I was instantly hooked. Here was a photographer who was exploring a breed of working man bound by cultural constraints, constraints imposed by a distinctly Japanese view of the working world. Quinquet's poetic portraits documented the salarymen but also embodied, through his choice of composition and colour, the fleeting and transient beauty that is magnificently celebrated within Japanese visual culture.

Bruno Quinquet, Salaryman Project, 2009

In his artist statement for the series Quinquet wrote: "On one hand, it explores the identity of the average Japanese male office worker, called salaryman, letting mystery and poetry blossom in the supposedly boring corporate world. On the other hand, by concealing the subjects’ identities, the project tries to adapt in a creative way to the increasing constraints of portraits rights on candid street photography."

Woman waiting on a bus, Belfast, 2011

So, with the Salaryman Project in mind, I began shooting this weeks brief with the intentions of ferreting out workers seeking quiet and peaceful moments during their working days. Since the salaryman phenomenon does not exist in Northern Ireland my challenge was harder, but not impossible. I also wanted to avoid the repetition of a previous SPN challenge that urged the photographers to find people who were lost in thought amidst the new urban environment. The woman above was photographed through a bus shelter window, hence the strange lightened area where light has been reflected, and I loved how her cap covered just enough of her face to conceal her identity.

My entered image for this week, found beneath the brief at the top of this post, had some of the mystery of Quinquet's salarymen with the man's face being obscured by shadow. The layers within the portrait come from the green mesh fence, which protects the car park, and the glistening reflections upon the car. The colour in the image comes across more as a barrage of turgid tones than the simple palettes found in the Salaryman Project; however, the red brick is a stalwart in Belfast, and the blue sky reflecting on the car only highlights the fresh weather we are experiencing at this time of year. The simple action of searching for and reading a parking ticket is probably something he does every single day... Again, this leaves me celebrating the transience of things. Mono no aware.

Another week bested... Only 32 to go!

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New Urban Disconnect

"Expose the banalities of the new urban landscape" - George Georgiou

This is the nineteenth Instruction for the Street Photography Now Project, written to inspire fresh ways of looking at and documenting the world we all live in.

This challenge was later expanded on the Flickr group thread by George Georgiou:

"Hello all, this is George Georgiou. The quote is not quite how I put it, I wouldn't have used the word Banal. What I am interested in is what the relationship is between a modern planned urban/suburban space and the individual. In other words, planned public space where people can feel comfortable or familiar with but allows people to move through this space without contact, we almost become invisible to each other. Often these are made to a blueprint, airports, housing estates, bus stations, shopping malls etc. If you watch people in these spaces you notice a disconnect, people in their own worlds/minds. It is this disconnect from what is around you that I find interesting. A simple example is how people talk on the mobile, as if they are at home, in private. Eggleston and Shore are good examples of this. What they look at is very 'commonplace'. The urban environment and peoples interaction with it. I hope that helps. George"

I feel that the above image ties in closer to what George said on the forum. The woman is completely lost in thought whilst typing a text. Her expression is fixed and stern, her walk was brisk. The other face in the image adds to the 'disconnection', the woman is oblivious to the man looking at her (and he is oblivious to me).

My 'B-side' this week focused on the banal. I always find that a stringent deadpan approach to photographing is ideal for capturing 'banality'. I love the word banal, and banality is verbalised best in Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1983)... See the scene here!

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Bus Bricolage

The SPN Challenge for Week 18 stated: "Look for a window. Through a window, out a window or at the reflections on a window" - Arif Asci.

Phew, I made it this week! With the possibility of playing with reflections and refractions how could I really miss it? Natural superimposition? Yes please! Any excuse to use the word bricolage in a title...

Ok, so it was hard not to repeat one of my earlier entries this week by placing myself in the midst of the reflections. Of course, there are times when those images must be taken [see below].

This week I saw the challenge as a great way to explore the experimental and Modernist route. Looking in reflections and through glass allows several perspectives to overlap, or superimpose - to borrow a filmic term. Artists such as Andy Warhol and Stan Brakhage experimented with this process of natural collage to achieve fantastic results.

In this image there are seemingly an infinite amount of worlds converging: the bus, the people in the bus, the world seen through the bus (trees, houses), the numbers reflected off of a shop window behind me, iron mesh from the shop front, etc. The end result is a chaotic barrage of visual, and textual, information; yet, the people in the photo remain perfectly placid and only the viewer is subject to this amalgamated perspective.

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"When you have to shoot: shoot! Don't Talk"

Challenge 7: '"When you have to shoot: shoot! Don't Talk" - Il Brutto

Make a picture containing The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' - Jens Olof Lasthein

Taken as part of the Street Photography Now challenge.For more info:streetphotographynowproject.wordpress.com/

This was a very open challenge. And, based on the majority of responses posted in the pool thus far, I can see that most people opted for the more obvious interpretation: framing an image to contain three figures to represent the 'good', 'bad' and 'ugly'. And, to be honest, I was tempted to do the same. I also thought about taking the cinematography of Leone's film and applying that to street photography (wide framing, close-ups of eyes, or the fantastic of 'Triangle of Trust' from the film's conclusion).

In the end I decided to take Il Brutto's words to heart and photographed without asking or talking to anyone, which was quite odd. My thinking was to walk constantly and photograph as I went. So, this photography was more invasive and intrusive than my normal street photography, which can be highly sociable and interactive. As a result my style was based more on the work of Bruce Gilden or Mark Cohen than Jens Olof Lasthein, yet I still complied with his challenge.

Street Photography Now - Week 6

Challenge #6: "Never overlook a cliche" - Artem Zhitenev

Taken as part of the Street Photography Now challenge.For more info: streetphotographynowproject.wordpress.com/

The challenge this week asked us to 'never overlook a cliche' whilst photographing in the urban environment. This threw me. Was it better to be fully informed of the established cliches or to just go and photograph the really obvious? Well, studying photography for the past four years or so has instilled too much, I was aware of all of the 'cliches' that can pop up. I get the point of it though: there are still photographs to be had by using previously successful compositions... Not that we would reinvent the wheel by attempting cliches but they have become cliches for a reason.

In the end I went for the seasonal cliche of focusing on the dramatic shadows that winter's light can produce. Also, there is an established tradition of framing the natural world [trees] upon the manmade and industrial world [buildings] that had been stablished long before but perfected in the colour photography of Eggleston to Callahan - another cliche-box ticked!

I was tempted to opt for:

- Images that featured a repetition of colour...

- Images that used the obvious compositional traits. Such as adding a natural frame or border by including walls, posts or trees to create an 'edge' of frame. I prefer this image to my submission to the competition but the other photo fit the brief better.

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[10/11/2010]