John Lewell

Some People Are Larger Than Life

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How do you photograph people who are larger than life? Do you sit them down in the studio, put them at their ease and flood their features with artificial light?

Maybe you deliberately make them ill at ease, forcing them into a corner, as Irving Penn did in his famous “Corner Portraits” of 1948. Such a draconian technique ought to reduce the charisma of people who are larger than life, but it doesn’t.

Truman Capote, Joe Louis, and Salvador Dali are so familiar to us from other images that we see Penn’s portraits as just one more instance in their lives. They may have been in a corner, but they were ready to spring off the page and go back to writing, boxing, painting — or just being legendary.

If a person is larger than life — if he or she has the bigness of personality that comes from being recognised for expertise in a particular activity — all you have to do is take a natural, candid portrait. All the rest will follow. For example, a quick snap of Kate Moss in wellington boots at Glastonbury can have the same photographic impact as a fashion shot on the cover of Vogue. The candid shot is supported and enlarged by the all the covers that have preceded it.

Waiting for a Natural Break

Can you do the same for an unknown person? Obviously, the task is harder. If you want to create potentially “iconic” shots you need to show people at their work, doing a job for which they may eventually become famous. You mustn’t pose them during a special photo session — as the corporate photographer usually does — otherwise you’ll break the connection between their personality and the activity that fuels it. Wait for a natural break, if you must, then fire away.

My featured image (above) shows a park gardener pausing to take a sip of cola during his morning’s work. I’d been chatting with him and admiring the huge, ornamental dragon sculpture he was creating from wires and plants. He wasn’t aware of being photographed when I took this shot — he thought he was on a break — so it’s entirely candid. I think it shows him to be larger than life.

Fashion Designer

On another occasion (above), while taking pictures in my favourite stamping ground — around the malls of Bangkok — I watched a fashion designer organising a show of a new collection. Again, when people are working confidently, with a host of things on their mind — and when they pause for a moment — that’s when you can get a defining shot.

That Portrait of Che

The same is true of my next image: of a man who runs a bar on the east bank of the Chao Phraya. At the end of a small side-road alongside a big hotel and a row of tailoring shops, the bar is nothing to speak of, except for its extraordinary location with spectacular views of the river. I often have a cold beer there after taking pictures in Charoen Krung, Bangkok’s oldest street.

The bar owner is a great fan of the South American revolutionary Che Guevara. The ubiquitous portrait of Che hangs above the bar. In this candid photo I was at pains to exclude Che because there’s only room for one larger-than-life character in each picture. I didn’t want the Marxist guerrilla to eclipse the cheerful — and still very much alive — person standing beneath the banner. However, I did want to establish a connection, so I compromised and cut Che’s face in half. I’ve always been a bit ambivalent about Che Guevara.

Bartender

Who was Che, really? Was he the glorious revolutionary who tried to free people from the “slavery” of capitalist systems around the world? Or was he a murderous bandit, glamourised by the Left despite having the blood of innocent people on his hands?

I’ve not had time to find the truth for this short blog post, even if that were possible, given the bias of contemporary accounts of his life and times. But I have read a little bit more about him and I don’t think anyone could deny the scope and impact of his activities. He’s like a latter-day Lawrence of Arabia, another instantly recognisable figure whose life became embroiled in myth, legend, and controversy.

The iconic image of Che Guevara is probably the world’s best known photographic likeness. It’s on tee-shirts, bags, banners and posters, mugs, mouse pads and (according to The New York Times) condoms. I’m sure an enterprising collector has thousands of other items bearing the same image. A brief account of its origin can be found in the Wikipedia article Guerrillero Heroico. There’s a more complete account in a book called “Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image” by Michael Casey.

Che Bag

Che In Brief

To summarise: Cuban photographer, Alberto Korda photographed Che on March 5, 1960, in Havana, at a memorial service for those killed in an explosion on board a French ship unloading munitions. The original image was not a whole-frame masterpiece because it showed the profile of another man on one side and some palm leaves on the other. Once Korda removed this extraneous detail the candid portrait — a street photo — became compelling, timeless and hypnotic. It did much to fuel the hero worship of Che that continues to the present day.

Che became a brand, a marketer’s dream. He was killed seven years after Korda photographed him, so there are no images of him in middle age to remove the aura of perpetual youth and idealism embodied in the image.

Even though Marxism has been discredited over and over again — wherever it has been implemented — to this day people still rally to the image of Che Guevara.

Would a Marxist system provide all the products which carry the image? Perhaps by only decree. Or the authorities might decree otherwise and demand an icon of the current leader. In fact, the only way to get rid of scruffy shopping bags bearing the portrait of Guerrillero Heroico would be to have another revolution.

Viva Che! Viva la revolución!

When Only Part of the Shot Has Visual Interest

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All street photographers experience the moment when, having noticed a subject some distance away, they take the shot — only to find that three-quarters of the photo holds little or no visual interest.

One solution is to crop the image, reframing it exactly as you’d wish. Sure, that means throwing away several million pixels — maybe 31 million of them if you’re using a Sony A7RIII.

It sounds a bit extravagant, doesn’t it? Having bought a great camera you’re now reverting to the quality you were getting five years ago.

Maybe it’s time to re-think this problem. What can we do about it?

Possible Solutions
Frankly, if it’s happening to you frequently, you’re probably using the wrong lens. Instead of a wide-angle you may be better off with a medium telephoto, say 85mm. I love using my Canon 85mm for street photography, even though my standard lens is 40mm. It’s super-sharp, and it gives me the reach to shoot from the other side of the street when necessary. However, it’s not an easy lens to use in close situations because it isolates the subject (often just one part of the subject) and throws everything else out of focus.

But let’s say the problem of filling only a fraction of the image with visually interesting content happens only now and again. Is this because you can’t resist certain subjects, or because you were unable to get in close, or because, subconsciously, you think the blank area really ought to play a role in the image — but doesn’t live up to its promise?

Take my featured image (above), for example. This entrance to a narrow alleyway in Bangkok looks particularly forbidding because a graffiti artist has spray-painted a menacing, mouse-like face on the wall. The face is a cross between Mickey Mouse and The Scream. That can’t be good!

I wanted to show someone bravely entering the alley, but only motor-bikes ventured into it. I snapped one of them. Rather than walk, this guy took a “Bangkok rocket” (motor-bike taxi) to whisk him along the evil alley. On one side is an abandoned store, on the other a derelict building. I had no other way to frame the shot, except by standing back to feature the whole scene.

The result isn’t bad. I like the fact that over half the image shows plain corrugated iron. Its blankness enhances the slice of the photo that contains all the visual interest. At the same time, this plain area is not completely devoid of features. There are little details which break the monotony without spoiling the desolate effect: the log of wood and the lone plant springing up behind the barrier, the latter signifying a long-term closure of the site.

Did I overdo the shutter speed? The 1/800th second certainly froze the action — the bike looks as if it’s stationary, but I assure you it was nipping along quite briskly. I like this effect. It gives the photo a dreamlike quality that would otherwise be lacking. The riders look as if they are “stuck in time,” watched over by Menacing Mickey for eternity.

Menacing Mickey

That Mouse
Of course, I’d seen the evil mouse on other walls around the city and tried to make use of it in some candid portraits. Here’s one example (above). The man, the main subject of the photo, has such a pleasant face he erases the menace of the graffiti. His presence is strong and reassuring. You can see by his orange jacket that he, too, is a motor-cycle taxi driver. Could he be the same one who’s taking the boy down the narrow alley? No, that would be too great a coincidence. As I recall, the two scenes are several miles apart.

So that’s one way to deal with areas of little visual interest. Don’t just throw them away: use them constructively to enhance the main subject of your photograph. Of the two pictures I’ve shown to illustrate this point, I prefer the first one because it fulfils my original intention. The second image works, too, because it’s an “environmental portrait” — featuring a man-of-the-street in front of tough-looking graffiti — but the overall effect is not really menacing, despite the presence of the evil mouse.

Almost Rejected
Here’s another image (below) where more than half the frame is filled with grey or black. To make matters worse, the grey area has no direct light shining on it — and what’s more, it’s right in the centre of the picture! I puzzled about this for a while and was on the verge of rejecting it as unusable when something stopped me from throwing it away.

Sunlit plants

Of course! The man (in sunlight) is looking at the green vegetation (also in sunlight). Our eyes may very well be drawn down to the lower half of the image but the message is clear. This is fundamentally an upbeat, cheerful picture, even though the dull cardboard square and the grey grille behind it would have us think otherwise.

Areas of little visual interest can be vital to the success of a photo, as long we don’t get mesmerised by their blank gaze.

That’s right. We can look at our photographs but our photographs can also look back at us: daring us to destroy them unnecessarily. Don’t do it! They may be better than you think.

Awkward Eating on the Street

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If Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy, represents the top of the food chain — in 2018 it’s No.1 among “The World’s 50 Best Restaurants” — then the eating places I’m showing here are somewhere near the bottom.

I mean no disrespect. In fact, I don’t particularly enjoy eating in expensive restaurants. Getting a table is always vexatious, the food often fattening, and there’s a whacking bill at the end of the meal with taxes, tips and surcharges which sometimes leave a nasty taste in the mouth.

A Look at the Stats
There don’t appear to be any reliable statistics about the numbers of restaurants in our major cities. I’ve found references to “24,000 eating establishments in New York” (which seems a bit low) and “160,000 restaurants in Tokyo” (which seems high). Paris is said to have around 40,000 — mostly with uncomfortable chairs like the one below — and London around 22,000. These figures, from various sources, include delis, cafés, and fast-food takeaways.

Morning Beer

It’s the fast-food takeaway that feeds the majority of people on low budgets. Students, low-paid office workers (and street photographers saving up for a Leica) will tend to patronise the takeway. It’s a great and commercially successful idea, but the problem is: where do you take it away TO?

The girls in my featured photo (at the top) have decided to park themselves on the kerbside in Covent Garden’s famous square. I like this shot because the subjects look like they’re having fun. They may not be comfortably seated or having a “fine dining” experience, but at least they’re getting in touch with nature. I’ve called the picture “4 Girls, 4 Pigeons,” in recognition of the similarity between the two groups. One pigeon has scored a complete takeaway meal of his own.

Halfway House
In Hong Kong (below) you can find restaurants that provide really minimal facilities for dining outside. Maybe it’s just a shelf on which you can stand a cup of coffee while you tuck into a plate of rice, but at least it’s a step up from the domain of the pigeon.

Hong Kong Lunch

The steep hills on the main island of Hong Kong pose a challenge for restaurant designers. Parisian-style tables are “out”; Hong Kong-style shelving is “in”. My photo, taken in the ever-changing environment of Peel Street, shows several levels of table which correspond to three levels of privilege: indoor table with a seat; outdoor shelf upper level; and outdoor shelf in the full sun with a crotch-eye view of the other diners.

Back in Bangkok
You could scour the whole of Asia, including China, Japan, Indonesia and the sub-continent of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and not find a more highly acclaimed restaurant than Gaggan in Bangkok. Chef Gaggan’s establishment was crowned No.1 in Asia again this year and is now No. 5 in the entire world.

The “Gaggan Experience” (a tasting menu) costs upwards of 4,000 Thai baht (under $120), which I’m sure is good value and about half the cost of similar sessions at other restaurants on the list. For this you can sample the restaurant’s spectacular Indian cuisine, in all its regional variations, served with impeccable presentation.

In particular, Gaggan reveals his passionate love of food, inspired (to quote the restaurant’s website) by “childhood street food memories.”

Maybe it’s time to take a look at children eating street food. Perhaps they’ll grow up to become famous chefs like Gaggan Anand.

Underprivileged? Not in the Least
Here’s one candidate: a girl eating a healthy salad from the top of an ancient set of scales. There’s a large bowl of fish next to her, so I assume her mother sells fish in the market where I took the shot, which is actually a few miles outside Bangkok.

Salad lunch

Now, it’s easy to jump to conclusions. Some people might feel guilty seeing a child who’s obliged to eat lunch in a makeshift style, next to a pile of fish — especially when there are hundreds of expensive restaurants in the vicinity. But personally I don’t feel that way. The little girl is enjoying an excellent meal right inside one of the world’s most compelling tourist attractions: the Mae Klong Railway Folding Umbrella Market.

Every day, just inches away from the little girl’s “table,” a train passes through the market and into the station further along the line. The stall-holders quickly fold back their sunshades, move their goods from the rail track, and wait for the train to pass. Within seconds of its passage through the market they replace everything exactly as it was before.

Isn’t that enough to lay down a few “childhood street food memories,” like those which inspired Chef Gaggan? I hope so. When you’re at the bottom of the food chain there’s only one way to go — and that’s up.

Using Reflections in Street Photography

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When I’m out taking street photos I often notice the reflection of something before seeing the object that’s being reflected. This is because I’m always on the lookout for elements that bring something extra to a composition.

Reflections usually bring symmetry: a quality that enhances photos by adding balance and harmony while helping to fill the frame with significant content. The downside is the danger of over-using reflections — to the point where they become a cliché in your work.

Two Roles for Reflection
Following on from this, there are, I suppose, two main types of photograph in which reflection plays a major role: those containing both the reflection and the reflected object itself, and those that contain the reflection alone.

Of the two, the latter is the more difficult to use successfully. After all, the viewer expects to see a representation of a real object and feels slightly cheated when presented with a mere reflection of it. This is an entirely natural reaction. The viewer has agreed to turn away momentarily from the real world to look at your two-dimensional version, only to find that there’s another step required: a step beyond the image into a world seen in reverse. It really is tiresome!

giraffe

You can usually choose which of the two roles you want reflections to perform in your image. For example, if you photograph a person who’s leaning up against a shiny wall you’ll get a reflection that creates a degree of symmetry; but if you point the camera directly at a shop window you’ll get a reflection of the street behind you that would otherwise be out of view.

With the second approach you’ll get much more because the reflection is superimposed on the contents of the window. This is great fun (see above photos) but it creates complex patterns that are almost impossible to decode at the time of taking the shot, especially when there’s movement both on the street and on the other side of the glass.

Technical Pitfalls
From a technical point of view there are only one or two pitfalls to avoid. Shop windows tend to glare, so you may find a polarising filter helpful if you have one with you. You can always run a polarising routine during processing, but that’s never quite as effective as using a real filter.

Equally, you need to watch your depth-of-field, as reflected objects are usually further away than objects seen directly. It’s good to keep them all in fairly sharp focus, but it’s up to you the photographer to choose what’s right for your style.

jewelry counter

Historical Precedents
Street photographers have always made use of reflections. Among the greats of the past, Vivian Maier and Lee Friedlander spring to mind.

If you Google “Vivian Maier self portrait” you’ll find her favourite way of obtaining a “selfie,” by capturing her reflection in a mirror or practically any other reflective object. Everyone now tries this technique, but I doubt if anyone has done it better. In one famous image she appears as a towering, ghostly presence, her body reflected by the glass while at the same time shielding it from the light — enabling us to see two women sitting inside the shop, framed by the bottom of her coat.

Lee Friedlander used mirrors, glass windows and other objects to obtain reflections. Like Maier he sometimes made a self-portrait, either for fun or when the image needed the addition of a human face. His 1968 self portrait in a sepia coloured photo in New York City is one of his best, a magnificent semi-abstract composition of light and dark rectangles with great depth of perspective and passing figures: street photography at its best.

I was thinking about the potential of using light and shade, together with reflections, when I took the following shot. It’s essentially an abstract composition, but with an important human element.

reflected

Artistic Possibilities
Still water in puddles and pools is a great source of reflections and a very good reason why you should go out to take pictures on rainy days. Unfortunately, most streets are well drained, so you need to be in an area that tends to get waterlogged. Wait for the day to brighten; choose your angle carefully; and capture passing pedestrians as they step around the water or cycle through it.

If this sounds like the kind of advice one might give to a new photo club member, you’re right. It’s only a suggestion. The art of making really good pictures has little to do with simple strategies — they’re fairly obvious — but rather has everything to do with composition, timing, luck and intuition.

Being able to see the artistic possibilities of reflections in the particular enviroment where you are hunting for pictures is your most useful asset. It’s a talent you can acquire with practice, just as young guys learn to use charm and bravado to find a new girlfriend.

Perhaps you’re naturally gifted, in which case there’s not much more you need to know. Good luck!

The Peril of Parallel Lines

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I was standing on the station platform, looking at the railway tracks then glancing at my newspaper. The top story jumped out at me and said: “Revealed: How Parallel Lines Can Give You a Splitting Headache.”

They can? This was certainly news to me — and the sub-editors must have thought it would be news to other readers, seeing as they’d placed it on the front page.

To mark the moment I took a shot of the rails in front of me (below). It’s not a “street shot,” but it’s kinda pretty, especially with the red weeds (Herb-Robert?) and sycamore shoots growing between the tracks. Could such an innocent scene really give me a headache if I looked at it too long?

rails

Apparently, the answer is “yes” for many people. Scientists at the University Medical Centre Utrecht have discovered that regular parallel lines can exaggerate a natural pattern of activity in the brain called “gamma oscillations.” They do so in a way that’s been detected just before epileptic patients have a seizure.

The researchers have even suggested a plausible theory as to why this happens. Because there are no straight lines in nature, the human brain has not yet evolved complete protection against the man-made environment — which teems with straight lines, many of them parallel to each other.

Striped Patterns Can Be Irritating
As a street photographer I’m trying to recall whether looking at vistas with lots of buildings has ever triggered a violent headache. I can’t say it has, although I certainly get debilitating migraines from time to time. I’m not alone in this. Ten million people suffer from migraine in the U.K., twenty times the number of those who are epileptic. The researchers believe there may be a link.

Do you find stripes irritating? Quoted in “The Times,” Utrecht researcher Dr Dora Hermes said: “Even perfectly healthy people may feel modest discomfort from the images that are most likely to trigger seizures in photosensitive epilepsy.” She went on to say that making sharply-defined stripes just a little bit blurred or fuzzy can greatly reduce their negative effect.

As regards interior decor, I’ve never been very keen on striped wallpaper, the sort which often decorates a doctor’s waiting room. My tutor at university, the late Maurice Cowling, had vertically striped wallpaper throughout his rooms at Peterhouse — and he wore vertically striped shirts that almost matched. It was quite hard to spot him on first entering his apartment.

Cameras Have Fits, Too
Believe me, it’s not just people who freak out when they see parallel lines. Cameras do it, too.

I found an interesting weed-covered building site in Bangkok and attempted to focus on a flat, distant wall. The camera just refused to focus, no matter how many times I half-pressed the button. Worse, it wouldn’t focus thereafter, causing me to take the nuclear option: switch off, remove the battery, replace, fire up, and — presto! — it worked for other, “normal” subjects.

Later, I looked up the problem in the 5DIII manual and found an interesting page called “When Autofocus Fails” (p.110). There it was in black and white. “Subjects Difficult to Focus” — including “repetitive patterns,” such as “skyscraper windows.” It didn’t mention anything about the camera having an epileptic fit, but mine certainly did.

Parallel Lines in Street Photography
I’ve been looking through my pictures to see if I have many shots in which parallel lines are the dominating factor. I don’t. There’s always some ameliorating feature, a curve, a twist, a diagonal, or something else to soften the rigorous man-made lines of modern architecture.

I think architects and designers have already woken up to the parallel line problem (except possibly in China and Hong Kong). They’ve made skyscrapers less regular in shape and they use sculptures and plants to break up the rigidity of form. I doubt if the couple in my featured photo (at the top), taken at Em Quartier in Bangkok, are suffering from a headache, unless it’s from looking at their mobile phones.

Here’s another example (below), also from Em — which represents some of the latest ideas in city architecture — a brilliant contrast of curvy sculpture placed against a vista of straight lines.

sculpture

Just looking at it gives me alpha waves — surely the opposite of gamma oscillations?

When the Picture Makes No Sense At All

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I have a feeling that most people only glance at a photo, then move on to the next one unless something in it catches their eye.

So what happens when the picture makes no sense? Will the onlooker be obliged to linger for a few seconds or turn away with a sigh of impatience? Either way, it’s an improvement. Confusing the onlooker is the artist’s revenge on those who don’t pay attention.

Forgive me if I sound a bit cross, but I’ve just read my Facebook comments, from which it’s clear that some people can be so impatient they’re prepared to condemn an article without actually clicking through to read it. You, dear reader, are not among them. Thank you for your indulgence.

The Crazy Café
In certain places it’s possible to take a representational picture and still leave the onlooker in total confusion. But first you have to find somewhere that’s visually disturbing on a grand scale.

My featured image (above) is an interior shot of a café in Bangkok, somewhat off the tourist trail. It will be familiar to the residents of the adjoining condo building and their guests, but I doubt if very many tourists will have seen it.

Dimly lit, the Bookshop Bar (at the Ashton Building, Sukhumvit Soi 38) is the sort of place where booklovers will be either delighted or appalled. Here, the designer Ashley Sutton — who’s well-known in Bangkok for restaurant interiors such as Mr Jones Orphanage at Siam Square, Maggie Choo’s, Iron Fairies and Fat Gut’z — has created the ultimate anti-book environment.

This is not a place where you’d actually want to read, unlike true bookshop cafés like the Elliott Bay Café in Seattle. Sutton’s Bookshop Bar is a surreal flight of fancy, a nightmarish vision of old, dusty volumes, twisted shelves, stairs that lead nowhere, feather quills on tables, and the pièce de résistance: books suspended from the ceiling on wires so they can be pulled up and down disconcertingly above the customers’ heads.

You can read long quotations from the books on the walls of the bar, but taken out of context they don’t make any sense. They seem to have been extracted from “penny dreadfuls” or old westerns, whereas the leather-bound (or faux leather-bound) volumes look as though they might be classics. The whole place makes you feel like Harry Potter having a nightmare before examination day.

Like the cakes in Mr Jones Orphanage, the Bookshop Bar is a visual feast — and where better to take a confusing photo? Any photo taken in this café would be puzzling. There are one or two on the Internet which do not include a blurred waiter, as mine does, but they’re still a jumble of nonsensical shapes.

In a still image, there’s no way to show the books going up and down on their wires, but by blurring the waiter I thought I could introduce a little movement into the shot. Frankly, I didn’t have much choice. I needed a long exposure in the dim light. Resting my elbows on a table I hand-held the camera, set it to ISO 1000 and took the shot at 1/20th second.

I think people will give this shot of the Bookshop Bar a second glance, if only to try and make sense of it. They will still continue to flick through other, more meaningful images without pausing, but at least I’ve stemmed the flow for now.

The Crazy Shop Window
Again, in the image below, a strong element of craziness intrudes, setting the onlooker an indecipherable puzzle. This time the designer is Issey Miyake, whose surrealistic clothes are visually striking even without the dramatic treatment they were given in the Selfridges window on London’s Oxford Street.

Selfridges window

I tried photographing the window directly, but as I was standing in sunlight (it was a July afternoon) my reflection was unavoidable. So I decided to take the window at an angle and capture someone else’s reflection instead.

I quite like the result. It looks as though the two female pedestrians are holding sunshades, but no, it’s the work of Issey Miyake again. There are some ghost images, too, which even I can’t quite fathom.

Never mind. It’s Oxford Street on a typical summer’s day. I’d just attended my son’s graduation and I was still tipsy from a few glasses of wine. The subject seemed perfectly natural at the time.

Colour Matching Really Works

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If you can find different people — or even a selection of objects — bearing the same colour within a street scene, you have a good chance of getting a satisfying photo. Better still is the occasion when people and unrelated objects share the same colour. That almost guarantees success.

For want of a more definitive phrase I’ll call this phenomenon “colour matching.” It’s what we do when we decorate and furnish a room, or get dressed in the morning.

Not all street photographers bother with colour matching, many of them opting out of colour altogether to concentrate on black and white. Maybe they are the sensible ones. Black and white photos always look good when you frame them and hang them on a wall at home. They don’t interfere with your existing colour scheme; instead, they enhance it by providing neutral contrast.

The Impossible Problem
As I’ve said elsewhere (my blog is full of colour musings), the battle with colour in street photography is constant and ongoing. It’s presence raises a fundamental problem which is almost impossible to solve.

It’s this: the streets contain a riot of colour. There are bright yellow markings on the road, bright orange cones, red warning signs, along with multicoloured cars, handbags and hairstyles. Shop windows have touches of colour coordination — and passers-by are as varied as a box of Smarties.

If you take a standard, wide-angle shot of this polychromatic world you’ll have a truthful image, but it may not look very pleasing to the eye.

So what do you do? (And this is where we get to the crux of the fundamental problem). You have a choice. You can continue to take the standard, truthful shots, making sure your system reproduces the colours accurately. Or you can be very selective, photographing only those subjects that show colour matching and coordination.

Expressed in the terms I’ve suggested, the choice would seem to lie between truth and falsehood; between true but ugly photos and those which are false but pleasing.

The Difficult Solution
There’s only one way to find a solution to the impossible problem. You have to prioritise your choice of subjects. It’s no less truthful if you take a typical scene when the colour combinations are pleasing, as long as you’re not consistently leaving out vital elements of our contemporary culture merely for the sake of art.

Unfortunately, you may have to overlook promising subjects that would make ideal content if found in an alternative location, or adjacent to differently coloured objects. You have to become very selective in what you photograph. At the end of the day (literally) you may still have plenty of images, but they’re likely to be in various styles: uncoordinated among themselves, although each one may individually demonstrate a mastery of colour matching.

I don’t think you need to worry too much about the variety of styles. When you have enough images you can sort them into harmonious sets. Personally, I think this is more enterprising than the blanket imposition of a black and white colour scheme to all your work.

Loosely Matched Colour
I’m not suggesting you attempt to control the colours too tightly. You can have fun with them, as my featured image (above) shows. I liked the “in-your-face” portraits of the ColorFun banners and waited until I found some matching colours in the passers-by.

In the photo, the prominent red bra in the centre anchors the composition. The strap of the bra below points to it, emphasising its role. Three passing shoppers wear a shade of pink which actually clashes with the red bra, but it doesn’t seem to matter. As long as there’s some colour matching you can still have fun. Luckily, there’s enough red in the banners — and in the bag at bottom right — for the fight between the colours to be evenly matched. (Note: the word “fight” appears on one girl’s tee-shirt).

Closely Matched Colour
It’s relatively easy to obtain an image with closely matched colours, but the result is often less exciting than when matching colours fight among themselves.

Stacked heels

In the image immediately above (taken in Hong Kong) the artist has already created a backdrop using harmonious colours. All you need is two passers-by to complement the effect. The two I’ve chosen are ideal, partly because their colours are neutral but also because the stripes of the woman’s leggings echo the many stripes in the mural. Similar stripes are made by the zips in the man’s backpack.

Everything in the image is harmonious, except for the woman’s trailing foot with its huge stacked heel. She negotiates the perilous descent with skill — and the next step looks like it may be even higher, although we can’t see it. Her balancing hand, the man’s wristwatch, and the stacked heel form an inverted pyramid, suggestive of instability. Without this hint of danger the excessive colour matching would make the image uninteresting. That’s always the danger when you match colours.

Wooden stall

A Study in Yellow
In the next shot (above) I’m relying largely on the subject’s pensive expression to lend interest to the image. With his friend this man was moving a portable stall through the market in Bangkok’s Chinatown. The yellow of the wood matches the colour of the advert on the side of the passing truck. The man’s black clothes and headgear match the electrical hob hanging from the roof of the stall.

Again, I’ve made the image work on its own terms. But if I were to set it beside another internally harmonious image the two would not necessarily hang comfortably side-by-side. Nonetheless, because black is one of its most prominent dominant shades, it looks at ease with my final picture (below) of two repairmen at work on a motorbike.

The contrast between the two images is not one of colour — because they share a similar shade of red highlights — but in the actions of the subjects. The man in Chinatown is pausing, calmly, whereas the mechanics are caught mid-action in dynamic poses. You can’t see their faces clearly, so the picture relies on their activity for its visual interest.

Souped up

Truth Will Out
I don’t think the compositions I’ve shown here are any less truthful for having been plucked from the riot of colour on the street. I like to bring order to the reality I see, but I’m not always willing to accept the order which others — architects, designers, and town planners — have tried to impose upon it.

What matters? The end result. The finished image. A truthful statement that pleases the eye.

Keep Looking, You’re Shooting for History

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A street photograph consists of two major components: people and an urban setting. If you like, you can call these components “subject” and “context” and you can think about them separately or together.

Sometimes the human subject looms large; in other shots the surrounding context is so dominant it becomes, in a sense, the true subject of the image despite the presence of one or two small figures.

Both subject and context need the photographer’s full attention. It’s all too easy to concentrate on one at the expense of the other. In my own work I usually try to create a balance between the two, rarely taking distant shots of the city but not often getting in so close as to exclude the city altogether.

The Third Component
Arguably, there’s a third component in the street photo, the significance of which easily escapes us in the heat of the moment. Did I just say “moment”? Well, there’s the clue: the component so easily forgotten is time itself.

Every street photo is taken at a precise moment in time. Twenty-four minutes past four on the twenty-first of August 2013. Nineteen minutes past four on the twenty-fourth of March 2012. Those are the times at which I took the featured image (above) and the building under reconstruction (below).

So why am I showing pictures from five or six years ago?

I want to make the point that our street photographs are not only to be shared among our contemporaries, they’ll be viewed by people in the future — perhaps for different reasons. One reason may simply be our descendents’ curiosity about the past. When you freeze a moment in time you can return to that moment at a later date and find an insight into the way people lived, worked, dressed, moved, traded and dwelt. If only we had such images from a thousand — two thousand, fifty thousand — years ago, wouldn’t that be great?

The Hardware Store
Apostrophes were the only things they didn’t stock. My featured image (above) is what was once Jacks hardware store in Colchester. By the time it closed it had long since been left behind by B&Q, Homebase, and the growing businesses of online commerce. Note how proudly the shop displayed the date of its origin: 1946. You can just imagine how briskly they traded in the years after the Second World War. First there was post-war reconstruction, then the boom of the ‘Fifties. It probably continued to prosper through the Beatle years, the Thatcher years, then, somewhere around the turn of the century it went into decline, followed by closure a few months before my shot was taken.

The girl in the photo clearly does not belong to any of the eras I’ve mentioned. To her, 1946 is “great grandpa” territory, and I doubt if she remembers much about the turmoil of the twentieth century. There’s something slightly retro about her style of dress (the shoes and the short leather jacket) but the large shoulder bag and the coloured hair were very “now” in 2013 and the whole outfit would still look good today.

Layers of Time
My photo has within it several “layers of time” which I’ve tried to disentangle in the above explanation. As always, the human figure is the most up-to-date element in the shot, but in her appearance even she carries references to the past, as we all do.

Because I’ve shown the building during its relatively brief period of emptiness (vendors of second-hand goods moved in fairly swiftly) the image can be located in time fairly easily, as least by local residents. Others can look at the EXIF file for the precise time and date.

For once, I think I’ve brought together subject, context and layers of time into a single image without any one of them being dominant. A casual glance may dismiss it as yet another photo of someone walking past an old shop, but you can scrutinise it and unravel the story without my telling it. The narrative is there, in figure, setting and time.

The Stockwell Arms
In the picture below, the figures are smaller, the building larger, so you can surmise that this is more about the context than the figures themselves. You’d be right.

I believe the figures may in some way be related to the building, although I don’t know them personally. Standing in Colchester’s West Stockwell Street, The Stockwell Arms was once an inn, where, many years ago, the first novelist in the English language, Daniel Defoe (author of “Robinson Crusoe,” “Moll Flanders,” etc.) stayed for a while. It’s close to where I live now, so I kept an eye on it during its much-needed reconstruction by the late Robert Morgan (a major player in the computer outsourcing industry).

Again, because the building was undergoing reconstruction, the image can be located with reasonable precision in the flow of time. True, it looked like this for a few months because the whole project took two or three years — but what’s that in the history of such an old building?

I like the incongruous way in which the name “Jewson” is displayed over and over again on the modern plasterboard, now adorning the medieval structure. There’s a personal connection here in that my father served as a captain in World War One with Captain (later Colonel) Jewson, a member of the family which founded the building supplies business. Maybe the timespan is not so great after all. Leap backwards a few more generations and you can imagine Daniel Defoe standing outside the building, wondering what to write next.

Time Waits for No One
When I took these shots I was aware of their historical references. However, I could not have predicted the changes that have already taken place in the four or five years which have already elapsed.

For example, the venue, now called The Stockwell, reopened as a high class restaurant, seemed to prosper for a while, then closed. Sadly, the strain had taken its toll on the owner. His widow transferred her successful quilting supplies business to it, running it for a year or two as a meeting place and tea-room, but recently put it up for sale. We await developments.

You see, history starts being woven again from the very moment we press the shutter button in our vain attempt to stop time in its tracks. As street photographers we have to be aware that we are part of the flux of time and try to find ways of using this awareness to make our images more meaningful.

When you recognise the ephemerality of things, you tend to find certain subjects (and their contexts) more intriguing, more visually interesting — more emotive.

So keep looking, and remember: you’re shooting for history.

The Anxiety of the Street Photographer

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I sometimes get the impression that photographers — even a few street photographers — never feel anxiety when they’re shooting. They look so comfortable, strolling around, casually glancing to the left or the right. They seem to be waiting for the perfect photo opportunity, perhaps a two-headed cow ridden bareback down the High Street by a naked dancer.

The other day I saw a man, camera in hand, looking for pictures on the right side of the street while a delightful two-second scene was being played out on the left. The light was perfect, the gestures demonstrative, the woman captivating. But the photographer was still checking out a minor architectural feature and wondering whether to record it.

Going Offline
Personally, I was not in shooting mode at the time. As I’ve explained elsewhere, I don’t carry a camera “at the ready” at all times; only when I’m seriously hunting for pictures. It’s the only way to do it. You need to have total alertness or just be content living a normal life without constantly taking pictures.

Along with “total alertness” — the state of readiness needed on the street when you’re shooting — comes anxiety. It’s part of the Faustian bargain you make with the devil (so to speak) when you take up this occupation of street photography. You sell part of your soul, or at least your peace of mind, in order to get decent pictures.

It’s not just me who feels anxiety on the street.

Henri Cartier-Bresson said in an interview (you can find it on YouTube): “It develops a great anxiety, this profession, because you’re always waiting: what’s going to happen? What, what, what?”

That’s it precisely! You become worried about what’s going to happen next. Or rather, you start to worry that nothing whatsoever is going to happen for the rest of day. You’ll just be stuck in limbo, wandering aimlessly around the streets, feeling — knowing — that all the action is going on elsewhere.

You start to wonder: “Why am I doing this? Couldn’t I be sitting at home reading a novel, or having a drink with a friend? Why do I feel compelled to tramp the streets of this goddam city when it would be so easy to get a flight to Peru and take some great photos of people wearing peculiar hats. A trip like that would yield sure-fire results.”

Only the voice of experience can calm your fears.

Good Days, Bad Days
The fact is: there are good days and bad days on the street. Some days I’ve gone out in my home town when the light has been great, only to find nothing to inspire me whatsoever. I return with a few desultory images that are barely worth loading on to my computer.

By contrast, I popped into London a few weeks ago — with the lowest possible expectations — and returned with around thirty shots that I wouldn’t mind showing.

Perhaps I respond more readily to life in the big city. I lived in London for many years and I know the feel of most of the streets in the West End and all of its surrounding areas. It’s possible to be both anonymous and invisible in London whereas neither is possible in a small town. It’s harder to photograph strangers in the street when you’ve seen most of them before.

Now you’re wondering: can you turn a bad day into a good day by using a different strategy or by trying to change your mood? Maybe it’s your anxiety that’s actually causing the lack of photo opportunities. Perhaps there are opportunities happening all around you, but your negative mood is preventing you from seeing them.

The Best Tip of All
I don’t subscribe to the view that anxiety is negative. It’s quite the opposite. It’s what induces the state of “total alertness,” when you’re able to take in everything that’s going on around you and respond to it quickly. Getting some potentially good pictures reduces your anxiety; failing to get them increases it. Fortunately, I do have a tip that may help you keep your anxiety level down to manageable proportions.

It’s simple: just move to a busier area where there are more opportunities.

While it’s true that you may get some of your best images in the quieter streets, especially when the light is good, you’ll find it frustrating to work in these areas for long periods. As Cartier-Bresson says, “you’re always waiting” — and it’s the waiting that causes frustration and anxiety to build.

So when that happens, give yourself a break (and if necessary change your style) and move to where there’s more action.

This is what I did after taking shots in the Seven Dials area of Covent Garden. It’s a great spot: a confluence of streets with attractive buildings such as pubs, restaurants and vendors of theatre tickets. However, there’s only a trickle of passers-by, making it difficult to compose meaningful shots in which people play the major role.

Time was marching past quicker than the pedestrians and I was becoming increasing aware of my lack of success. The solution was to walk the short distance to Tottenham Court Road, a major artery heading north, where I found some building works causing chaos on the pavement. Pedestrians were having to walk around the trucks that were pulling out on to the main road into the path of oncoming buses. You can see one of the shots I took just above this section.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I was able to head back towards the quieter areas and continue the day’s shooting (such as the featured image, at the top). I found that alternating between backstreets and main thoroughfares was a good way to engineer a positive outcome. The build-up of anxiety in the quiet areas made me bolder in the busy areas, resulting in better pictures.

My message is this: don’t worry about anxiety. Just use it to your advantage.

Sculpting Buddhas

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For every Saint sculpted by European artists I reckon there must be a thousand Buddhas sculpted in the Orient. It’s almost impossible to perform street photography without including them. Alternatively, you may decide to make them your primary subject. After all, the image of the Buddha is not a stage prop and shouldn’t be treated as such, despite being as much a part of the eastern environment as the ground itself.

Images of the Buddha are not representational in the same way that images of Christ, or the Saints, represent an individual human being who is nonetheless divine. A sculpture of the Buddha has an abstract, symbolic quality. It represents both an idea and an ideal. The idea is eternity and the ideal is the possibility of achieving oneness with eternity and liberation from the otherwise endless cycle of death and rebirth.

Eternity and Ephemerality
Street photography is all about capturing the ephemeral moment and preserving it for eternity — or at least for as long as people wish to view it. Unlike the sculptor, the photographer can’t separate these concepts of eternity and ephemerality. The conflict — or contrast, if you prefer — is built into the medium.

Move, point, click, eternity. That’s the photographer at work. Is it entirely coincidental that more cameras are manufactured in Buddhist countries (Japan, Thailand) than elsewhere? It’s interesting to reflect on this thought. We could be forgiven for thinking that the camera is a tool of Buddhist teaching.

All Buddhist sculptures are highly finished and smoothly polished, whether made of bronze or stone. They seem to be so self-contained and other-worldly you could almost believe they arrive in the world fully formed, without human assistance.

I love to see ancient Buddhist sculptures, standing or sitting in rows — especially in the rain. Repeatedly, they weather the storms yet succeed in maintaining their posture, even when the substance of which they’re made begins to erode.

Buddhas in the Making
Only during the sculpting or painting of a Buddhist figure do you get a sense of “process” rather than fixed, eternal serenity. I think my photo (above) of the craftsman in the purple shirt, who is smoothing the surface of the figure with some kind of resin, shows the process — but the moulded statue is already fully formed. Even here, the Buddha seems to be perfect, despite any ongoing activity to finish the work.

I took the shot from across a major road in a particularly busy part of Bangkok, near the Giant Swing — the huge wooden structure on which young men would perform the dangerous religious ceremony of “Lo Jin Ja.” Rooted in Hindu traditions, Buddhism is not all contemplation and quiet reflection!

To the Western mind, Buddhism appears to have been born out of a human desire for permanence in an impermanent world. Buddhists counter this view by eliminating desire itself. They set themselves on a path which, they believe, leads to freedom (from reincarnation), oneness (with the rest of existence), and eternity. You won’t get there, they say, if you desire it.

As a result, Buddhist societies have an easy acceptance of life in all its forms. I can’t be uncritical of the religion as a whole, because — as in all religions — cults and breakaway groups have a habit of making sudden appearances, enriching their founders and enslaving their adherents. Yet there are so many positive aspects, especially respect for life, tolerance shown to others, and reverence for the enormity of existence — that I can’t ignore it either.

In Thailand, what I value most about Buddhism is the way in which it interweaves with the everyday lives of the people. As I write, my 96-year-old father-in-law is celebrating his birthday by inviting a number of monks into his home for prayers and a meal. Younger people rarely have special birthday celebrations, but older people like to mark the big occasions: those that correspond with the 12-year-cycles.

Hence, 60, 72, 84, 96 are all occasions on which monks are needed, especially when you’re 72 and have completed your “six cycles” according to Eastern tradition — a tad longer than our “three score years and ten.”

The Forest, the City, and the Monastery
As I understand it, there are three environments in which the Buddhist adept — the Bodhisattva — can reside. They are the forest, the city, and the monastery.

Bodhisattvas have placed themselves on the path to enlightenment — and could achieve it with ease but stay to help others along the way. To me, those in the city seem to have the most noble calling, while those in the monastery have the advantage of peace and tranquility for reflection. Yet it’s the forest dwelling monks who are the most highly regarded, with their tradition consistently promoted as superior to the others.

sculpting Buddha

Back to Nature
Away from the normal city, I like to take pictures in Thailand’s Ancient City, the 200-acre park just to the south of Bangkok. Its construction began in the early 1960s but it’s filled with accurate reproductions of many ancient temples as well as with several original buildings, moved here to enhance the sense of authenticity.

“Ancient Siam” (as it’s now called) is not in the forest, as such, but set in splendid gardens with hundreds of trees and pathways. It gives you a real insight into the variety of Buddhist tradition and all the mythological events and narratives that support it.

Just above is my shot of people working cheerfully on their very latest sculpture. The woman has discarded her gloves to get a better grip of her spatula for carefully smoothing the torso. The Buddhist figure smiles back at her.