Colourful Arguments

As I’ve said approximately twenty times in these blog posts, “contrast” — in the broadest sense — lies at the heart of street photography. So here’s a potential theme with built-in contrast: domestic disputes set against a background of cheerful colours. Ironic, huh?

Psychologists often talk about the influence of colour on our daily lives. It plays an active role; it’s not just a passive backdrop to be enjoyed or reviled. Colour affects our moods and behaviour for reasons that are still unknown but which probably date back to humanity’s distant past.

Because colour seems to affect us emotionally, people develop preferences for one colour over another. There may even be a gender-based bias, with women preferring warm colours while men — most men, not all men — have a preference for cool colours. There’s even some academic research to support this generalisation (Whitfield, T. W. A., & Wiltshire, T. J. 1990).

Domestic Dispute
Is it possible that both men and women find a clashing mixture of colours to be sufficiently irritating to provoke a domestic argument? In my featured image (above) it looks like these two people have a strong difference of opinion. In fact, a dispute with recriminations seems to have broken out while standing in front of a colourful array of chiffon scarves.

I’m not suggesting that the scarves are in any way responsible, but I’m struck by the difference in appearance between the man and the woman. She’s dressed in neutral colours: black skirt, white shirt, and carries a white shoulder bag. She’s also clearly cross about something and has put the man on the defensive. He in turn wears a turquoise tee-shirt, a jacket with bright orange flashes, and rides a bright red scooter with a red, but not-quite-matching helmet.

No wonder she’s upset! Happy couples tend to wear colours that complement each other. These two — if they are indeed a couple — don’t dress harmoniously, although the woman may have restricted herself deliberately to neutral shades because her man has no colour sense whatsoever. In these circumstances, the only way a woman can express herself is to raise objections.

Chromotherapy
The science (or pseudo-science) of curing people of ailments by using colour to correct the imbalance which is supposedly the cause of the problem is called “chromotherapy.”

Chromotherapy seems to me to be a colourful version of homeopathy. It has a huge following. It’s used successfully in many instances — and it has a large supporting literature which explains it in scientific language without necessarily winning the support of the scientific community at large.

Modern chromotherapy dates back to the work of Edwin Dwight Babbitt (1828-1905), an American spiritualist and physician who established his own college — the New York College of Magnetics — which issued degrees to students qualifying them to administer colour-based treatments. He even invented a device called a “thermolume” which was able to concentrate light in various colours on to different parts of the body. In another approach, he irradiated water with colour-filtered sunlight, claiming that water retained the unique energy of each particular colour.

Is there any truth in chromotherapy? I’d be surprised if it were completely devoid of truth, but reading about it is like wading through treacle. Its exponents elaborate on it with smatterings of quantum theory, possibly in an attempt to bring it up-to-date and make it seem respectably scientific. But I can’t bring myself to believe a word of it. Frankly, it’s only a matter of time before someone invents a comprehensive, colour-based religion in which every colour represents a pathway to God.

Colours in a Lower Key
Coming back down to Earth — and to street photography — here’s a more harmonious image (below).

In a sense, this photo is the reverse of the other one. This time the man wears neutral colours whereas the woman is dressed in tasteful pink. The goods on display show a marked preference for warm colours, with pinks and reds predominating.

As you can see, the woman is looking off to the left, away from the man. For whatever reason, her expression is a bit grumpy, as though she’s either bored — for lack of customers — or waiting impatiently to be served.

There’s another possible scenario in which the woman is the customer, waiting for her husband to show up with some cash, while the man in the picture waits patiently with the two rolls of material she’s trying to purchase.

There can be no wholly accurate interpretation of the photo. Viewers will have to create their own narrative to explain it. To me, it looks like the man with the cigarette dangling from his lips is trying to woo the girl by showing off two massive rolls of material in her favourite colour — but she’s refusing to be impressed.

In Pursuit of Ambiguity
The photo is impenetrable and therefore ambiguous, once we’ve imposed our own narrative on it. In street photography, ambiguity is a virtue, but science can’t tolerate conflicting explanations.

I doubt if any science is more complex than the theory of colour — so inextricably linked to human perception. Perhaps, in our observations of colour, we should think more about relationships than about the specifics of red, white or blue. Here’s what the master of abstraction Piet Mondrian had to say about it:

“Everything is expressed through relationship. Colour can exist only through other colours, dimension through other dimensions, position through other positions that oppose them. That is why I regard relationship as the principal thing.”

He was right. Spread the word.

The Urge to Simplify in Street Photography

Can you resist it? Should you resist it? I’m talking about the urge to simplify your street photos in order to make them more striking, giving them more instant appeal.

The compulsion to simplify is universal in the accepted canons of good photography, whether portraiture, landscape or fashion. Very few subjects look good against a busy background — yet photography, in reducing the world from three to two dimensions, turns depth into flatness whatever the background. It squeezes space together so that objects in the distance collide with those closer to the camera. Our eyes don’t really like this effect. It creates too much ambiguity.

If you browse the sort of photos that often win prizes you’ll find plenty of good work that observes the canons of good photographic taste. People have taken to heart the exhortation to simplify their images — to such an extent that many photographers have embraced abstraction as a natural culmination of this line of thought.

I can’t bring myself to say they’re totally wrong. Abstraction is indeed the end to which all photography tends — but I think we should resist it. In the photographic arts, abstraction is like entropy in reverse. Instead of being “a gradual decline into disorder” (one of the definitions of entropy) it’s a gradual decline into order – a superficial kind of order which the photographer imposes on the world by studiously ignoring ninety-nine percent of it.

It you listen to the advice photographers are giving to each other, you’ll find that “Simplify! Simplify!” is the universal cry. Once they’ve made this point, their next advice is usually: “Get closer! Get closer!”

Here, for example, is photographer Ron Craig writing on picturecorrect.com: “In most cases, the power of a photo is inversely proportional to how many different elements it has. A close crop on a quarterback is much more powerful than a wide angle shot of the full field of players…an isolated tree is more compelling than a busy forest view.” And what is the photographer meant to do about it? Craig says: “The first way to simplify an image is to…get closer to your subject.”

Begging the Question
Now, I don’t necessarily disagree with any of the above, except to say that it begs a lot of questions. Are people who look at photos incapable of “reading” an image by enjoying detail and seeing how it contributes to the composition? What’s the real subject? Is it the landscape/cityscape or an object within it, or both? Why must the photographer make everything so easy for the eye of the beholder? After all, as mobile beings we can see 360 degrees by moving our heads, taking in all around us.

For too long, so-called photography experts have been fobbing off their readers by calling for greater simplicity as if it’s the only true way to forge a photographic style. Surely, the notorious Ken Rockwell, with whom I rarely agree, goes miles too far in saying: “Simplicity is the most important concept in photography… Simple ideas are stronger. Expressing them more simply makes them clearer.”

Ken, you sound like a meerkat: “Simples!”

If we reduce every idea to its most simple form we end up with slogans, propaganda, sound-bites, and all the other snippets of nonsense that serve as substitutes for thought, communication, art, and understanding. Complex ideas that have been reduced to a point at which they become nonsensical clichés include: “A picture is worth a thousand words,” “Shoot from your heart,” “Zoom with your feet,” “The camera is only a tool.”

“A picture is worth a thousand words?” Really? Which thousand words? Would a photograph have been better than the 272-word Gettysburg Address?

“Shoot from your heart.” Are you kidding? Your emotions on their own will not automatically enable you to take a great or even a competent photograph.

“Zoom with your feet.” Impossible! If you walk towards the subject you’re changing the whole perspective, not just the focal length.

“The camera is only a tool.” What!! You mean like a chisel? Or maybe a hammer? To say that the camera is only a tool is a bit like saying the Palace of Versailles is only a house.

All of the examples, above, are the result of reductive thinking where the thought has become so cryptically expressed it’s now essentially meaningless. I suppose it’s happened because we’ve had a century or more of advertising slogans which encapsulate a sales message to make it memorable.

“Good to the last drop.” (Maxwell House, 1915)
“The pause that refreshes.” (Coca-Cola, 1929)
“Look, Ma, no cavities!” (Crest, 1958)

Flick, and Move On
On the Internet, most photography is normally presented for instant appreciation and consumption. Users of Instagram, WhatsApp or Line are accustomed to flicking through images, spending about a second on each one before either moving on to the next or becoming “engaged” by clicking through to related content.

Did I say one second? That’s how long users seem to take when I look over their shoulders on the train. But photos have captions, don’t they? According to AdWeek, writing about Instagram: “Brief copy is popular. The average caption is 138 characters long, but Simply Measured [social analytics solution] found no significant correlation between text length and engagement rate.” I’m not surprised. I doubt if anyone pauses to read the captions.

The trend is towards ever-shorter expression of ideas and towards photography that can be appreciated in a single glance.

The very fact that still photography survives in a world where movies are every bit as easy to create should give us pause for thought. Movies require more than a single glance. They chew up time whereas a photo “embalms time” and makes it instantaneous.

I’d love to reverse this trend in my own street photography. I’m working on it. It may be a quixotic enterprise that’s doomed to failure, but I think it’s possible — just possible — to grab viewers’ attention on one level and encourage them to linger for a minute or two or longer in order to reach a deeper level of understanding.

If you can’t keep the viewer’s attention for more than a second, what’s the point of street photography? It would simply be another meaningless activity in a throwaway world where everyone seems to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

My images tend, therefore, to be quite detailed, a bit cluttered but certainly never disordered. Sometimes I isolate a subject, such as the Woman In Red (the featured image, at top). Sometimes I take a subject that’s partially concealed (The Hidden Chef, above). You can take in these images at a single glance, but even these images — among my most simple — contain essential details which I think add to their meaning.

Fortunately, street photography is an art form that can accommodate complexity with relative ease in comparison to most other forms of photography. Elsewhere on this blog I discuss the use of layers and other techniques that bring complexity under control. We expect there to be complexity on the street and we miss it if the photographer consistently excludes it. You can’t show people interacting in an urban environment if you’re always cutting out the detail and replacing it with blank walls and negative space.

A virtue in life, simplicity can be an encumbrance in art.

 

Using Posters and Graffiti in Street Photography

If you’re a street photographer it’s almost impossible to resist taking full advantage of posters and graffiti: readymade artworks that provide a colouful and sometimes meaningful backdrop to your pictures.

Do we overuse them? Probably. But I think street photography would lose a vital element if everyone decided to ignore the posters, scrawls and daubings which either enhance or spoil the urban environment, depending on your point of view.

The Big Con
Using posters and graffiti in street photos has its pros and cons, and I’d like to start with the cons. The big con (in two senses of the word) is when the photographer simply steals the artwork and adds very little value to it. The end result is then little more than a reproduction of the poster or graffito, with maybe the inclusion of a random passer-by to give the photo a touch of credibility.

Frankly, that kind of street photo is no longer good enough. If the subject is the poster or graffito rather than people in the street you’re not creating anything new. The original artist should get all the credit, along with the brilliant technicians who designed and built your camera.

Theatre Posters
The featured image (above) is a shot I took recently of a woman walking past a theatre bookings office in London. As you can imagine, I was attracted by the vivid colours of the posters and so I hung around for a few minutes to see if I could get a valid shot. I was looking for something more than just a snapshot of the posters, although I think I could be forgiven for selecting the location: a lovely corner building with fabulous architecture, covered in posters that are reflected in the wet paving.

One or two people walked past, but I selected this cheerful pedestrian whose blonde hair stands out against the black window frame and whose scarf matches the deep red of the posters. It’s a decisive moment owing to her exact positioning and the fact that her arm is precisely vertical. I was lucky that her trailing foot is right next to the word “Stomp,” and that the “School of Rock” poster is so lively.

Looking at the posters in the photo I realise now that they’re mostly very masculine images. The word “Boys” appears prominently inside the shop and there are several hyperactive males depicted in the posters. The pedestrian seems aware of having entered a male domain and she keeps her eyes looking firmly towards the ground.

Fly Postings
In the image below, taken in Hong Kong, a man walks past a wall covered in repetitions of the same delightfully sleazy Uptown Rockers poster, indicating that we may actually be in a bad part of town. Fortunately, the man looks pretty cool with his reversed sunglasses reflecting his yellow backpack. Is he heading uptown or downtown? We’ll never know.

You may have noticed one interesting element in the Hong Kong image: the date. It’s very specific, March 11, 2016. In fact you could be sure that these posters would soon be replaced by others, not long after the stated date. Wall space is valuable in a city like Hong Kong, especially if it’s free.

I notice how quickly posters change in the city, sometimes through being defaced or else by having others pasted on top of them. This is not so true of my first image where the changing elements are the pedestrian and the rain. But in the second image we’re more conscious of the temporary nature of the posters. They’re here today and gone tomorrow — yet preserved forever by photography.

Everything Is Changing
When we take pictures in the street it’s a good idea to consider the different speeds at which the various parts of the environment are changing. People, animals, birds and traffic are obviously changing their position quickly because we have to raise our shutter speed to freeze their movement. Objects such as parked cars come and go after an hour or two, while the same news-stands and hamburger stalls open and close every day.

Posters like those in the Hong Kong photo are around for a week or two, while those in the London photo can be with us for as long as the show remains open. Yet please remember that everything in the environment — even the oh-so-solid buildings — are only temporary. In a century or two, most of them will be transformed out of all recognition. Your street photo will then have a different appeal for the viewer: it will be a record of life and the city as they existed at a certain time long ago.

I’m suggesting that we may not fully appreciate the street photos we take today because we don’t yet have the perspective of time to see them afresh. The photos taken by Berenice Abbott in the streets of New York in the 1930s would have looked very different to her contemporaries than they do to us today. We see a particular time. They saw only a particular place.

It’s really only in posters that we can capture a feeling of nostalgia without having to wait for the decades to pass. Their short life-span is just what we need to signify the passing of time, which is, after all, part of the very essence of photography because photography defies time.

What’s On
So here’s my parting shot. I call it “What’s On.” The EXIF tells me I took it on May 23, 2012, which surprises me because it seems like yesterday. The couple are checking out the entertainment events in London, the man looking towards “The Vocal Orchestra,” his partner checking out “Havana Rumba!” Clearly, opposites attract, a fact confirmed by his black “Tough Mudder” tee-shirt with its various pledges in contrast to her plain, silent white vest.

The photo suggests romantic summer evenings in a big city where there is more than enough to do. A person looking at this image in fifty years time might be reminded of actual events they attended during May/June that year. “Did we see The Girl with the Iron Claws? Or was it The Boy with Tape on His Face?”

Already, I can look at this picture and appreciate how everything has changed in the interim. It delivers the bittersweet feeling of ephemerality, the sense of “…Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips / Bidding adieu…” It suggests that there, in London “…in the very temple of Delight / Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine.” (Keats).

In Street Photography, Let the Viewer’s Imagination Go to Work

Cameras are magical instruments because of their potential. When you look at a brand new camera, just out of its box, you can imagine all the wonderful photos it may eventually take. You mind completes the equation. That’s why we’re all suckers for a new camera.

Now here’s the thing: why not use this extraordinary function of the human mind when you’re actually taking pictures? In street photography it isn’t necessary to spell out every visual word. You can let the viewer’s imagination go to work.

Look at the image above, for example. These guys are not going to work, they’re coming home. At least, that’s my interpretation, the viewer may wish to interpret it differently.

The photograph can stand on its own without commentary, but the viewer is obliged to pause and think about it. Why is everyone huddled together? Ah, yes, they’re on the back of a pick-up truck. What time of day is it? Early evening, surely, given the warm rays of the sun.

Having come to the conclusion that these are workers on their way home, you can reasonably say that it’s been a tough day for them. They’re probably tired, but they’re young and strong. They’ve survived and they’re looking forward to an evening meal and a rest.

I took the image at Kata Beach on the island of Phuket in the early evening. Naturally I was drawn to the colours — blues and blacks — and the fact that the people were huddled together in a cohesive group. The only problem was the speed of the truck, which was going fast enough to miss if I hadn’t been prepared with appropriate settings. In fact, the truck’s movement was fortuitous because, despite noticing me, the subjects didn’t have time to make a strong reaction before I got the shot.

In my normal style of shooting I like to introduce mysterious elements while still keeping to a representational mode. These elements are sufficient to set the viewer’s imagination working, but there are also other ways of doing it. For example, you may wish to make the image ambiguous by blurring it.

In her book, “Why It Does Not Have To Be In Focus: Modern Photography Explained” (Thames and Hudson, 2013), Jackie Higgins gives reasons why fine art photographers often blur the image or do other things to it that sometimes go beyond the realm of both everyday reality and even photography itself. You needn’t go that far. To generate ambiguity and mystery you don’t have to jettison the conventions which make street photography both accessible and compelling.

Something In the Shadow
In certain situations, such as shooting at night, you can scarcely avoid ambiguity and mystery. Yet it’s not enough simply to show areas of deep shadow to trigger the viewer’s imagination. There has to be something in the shadow — a half-seen figure, a hint of a gesture, an object partially occluded — for the technique to work properly.

I’m a great believer in allowing viewers to continue the action, explore the image or complete the composition in their imagination. When you look at Henri Cartier-Bresson’s famous shot of a man about to step into a puddle you mentally continue the action — then you draw back from it because he’s frozen in time. In this way the photo comes alive with cerebral motion.

A similar process takes place when you read a novel and imagine the personalities of the characters portrayed. I’ve explained this fully in my book “Modern Japanese Novelists” where I discuss how Japanese writers are more inclined than western writers to use an impressionistic technique. An example I give is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s “The Makioka Sisters,” a long novel devoid of detailed descriptions and explanations. In fact, it’s full of contradictions, with characters acting “out of character” — just as human beings sometimes do in real life.

In street photography we can follow the way of the Japanese writer and give free rein to the viewer’s imagination. Here, for example, is a street portrait taken from behind the “sitter.”

In my blog post “Why Don’t Some People ‘Get’ Street Photography?” I list photographing the backs of people as being one the most despised aspects of street photography. This is understandable because there are far too many “easy” images of subjects scurrying away from photographers who have not risked confronting them for a head-on shot.

Understandable or not, I don’t agree with the prejudice of those who hate back shots. Not only does the human back tell us a lot about the person who owns it, it stops just short of telling us all we wish to know.

The woman in my picture may or may not be pretty. She certainly looks sexy while diligently selling her wares in the market. The way she sits on the chair, the shape of her body, the relaxed pose which is so difficult to get from a model in the studio — I like all those aspects of the image. I also like the fact that we don’t see her face. After all, it might be a disappointment! Instead, we can just imagine that she’s a vision of loveliness (which she probably is).

There are dozens of ways of triggering the imagination of the viewer. I’ve mentioned only a few of them. You can do it with shadow, empty space, occlusion, blurring and other forms of indistinctness. You can do it with ambiguity, mystery, or incompleteness of movement. You can even do it with discordant elements, touches of surrealism, anything to make the viewer pause and wonder what’s happening.

Don’t worry! You may have left something unexplained, but the human mind always finds a way of completing the image.

 

Street Photographer Goes Birding

If you’ve just built a hide in the woods and bought a 600mm lens, please stop reading now. This morning I looked out of my bedroom window and snapped a baby goldcrest with my Canon 5DIII and 40mm lens, using settings unchanged from the night before.

The fact is: I didn’t have time to change the settings. My street photography instinct is to shoot first and ask questions later, so that’s what I did.

I’ve often caught a glimpse of these tiny birds — Britain’s smallest, at around three inches from beak to tail when fully grown. The babies, like the one in my featured image (above) are between one and two inches long. They flit rapidly from twig to twig among the branches of the Scots Pine in front of my house, looking for spiders and small insects.

A skilled bird photographer could get a much better shot, but I’m quite pleased with my opportunistic effort. The settings, as you can see from the EXIF, were 1/2500th second at f/2.8 with ISO 2000. When the bird sat on the exterior door handle I just grabbed the camera and took the shot quickly, hoping for the best. There was no time to lower the ISO, which I’d been using previously for night-time shots outside.

In fact, the high ISO and shutter speed may have delivered a better picture than I could have expected with more sensible settings. They froze the bird’s movements very well. The biggest problem was getting focus through the double-glazed door, but I aimed for the bird’s eye and that, at least, is sharp. Depth of field is pretty much non-existent, but I like the out-of-focus railings of the balcony and the bright light from the river beyond.

So, does the street photographer’s image of a bird differ from one taken by a professional birder? I think it does, and the difference comes from my motivation for taking the shot. I was not out to document the bird’s appearance or to get the perfect shot of what is, after all, a fairly common bird.

I was struck by the bird’s fragility and innocence — not to mention it’s bravery in venturing close enough for me to photograph it with a 40mm lens. Even an adult goldcrest weighs only six grams. It clings to life at the best of times, and perishes easily in a cold winter. I think my photo shows the poignancy of such a life.

Not the First Time
If I see birds in the street (other than pigeons) I’m sometimes tempted to photograph them. Walking along the sea-front at Phuket in Thailand I came across these two Common Mynah birds (Acridotheres tristis) standing side by side, apparently surveying the beach.

Again, I was struck by (for want of a better word) their “personality.” I’m not sure what else to call it. Presence? Aura? Attitude? They’re obviously not “persons” — as no doubt a fully trained mynah bird would be able to tell you — but they seem to be intelligent and clearly in cahoots with each other.

I was tempted to draw speech bubbles (“Look out, it’s the paparrazi. Let’s pretend we’re just good friends”) but I didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere. With the sun going down and the two birds looking out to sea — just like people do — I thought the image would remind us of our commonality with them. Their evolutionary journey has been no less improbable than our own.

At least this time I was armed with a more powerful lens, a 24-70mm zoom, and I had time to adjust the settings: 1/200th second, f/9, ISO800. The smaller aperture has allowed me to get both birds into focus, despite shooting at 70mm. I focused on the closer of the two, then edged slightly forward.

Much as I love seeing them in their natural habitat, I don’t wish to take up bird photography full-time. Other people do it so well. But if I see an opportunity to take a shot which says something about birds and our relationship with them, I’ll take it.

It’s another form of street photography. With feathers.

The Trailing Street

I wish I had the perfect shot with which to illustrate this concept, but I’m still waiting for the right opportunity. Let me explain what I have in mind.

I imagine a scene in which the camera viewpoint is slightly higher than usual, looking down on the subject from a height of around eight or nine feet. The subject itself — well, that could be anything: two people in conversation, four men in dinner jackets, someone wearing outrageous dress. It doesn’t matter too much, because even if the subject is really striking I intend the eye to be drawn to the background.

In this shot the background would be the real subject of the image. I want it to be the entire world!

Failing that, I hope to find a street that’s teeming with people and traffic, its figures foreshortened by the lens, but still in sharp focus so you can see them clearly.

Oh yes, and there’s another thing. I’d prefer to have a street that twists and turns, “curling up like smoke” beyond the foreground subjects. Wouldn’t that be great? It would be like an endless trail of people, trudging their way through an Eisenstein film. The background of my image would become a stand-in for the whole of humanity — the perfect contrast to the individuals seen in close-up near the camera.

Concept Versus Reality
I like this approach of applying conceptual art to street photography, but the two art forms don’t easily mix. Conceptual art requires you to organise the subject with meticulous care, precisely following the blueprint of your concept. Street photography, on the other hand, waits for the world to present a combination of forms for capture in the way you see fit. But you can’t start telling reality to be different from what it is.

My featured image (above) takes me some way towards fulfilling my concept, although it falls short in several respects. Yes, I have two people in conversation, one of whom is hitching her backpack to a more comfortable position. Yes, Wellington Street snakes in at an angle to London’s Waterloo Bridge which is clogged with people and traffic. And yes, everything’s in sharp focus in the original photo (heaven only knows what WordPress does to it when delivering it to screen sizes).

So the picture gets three yesses, but for me it still doesn’t quite capture the full strength of my concept. Although there’s a sense of life buzzing all around the two subjects, the image doesn’t distill the essence of individual life versus collective living. There are too many distractions: the tall surveillance camera, the workers and road signs, The Lion King banner.

Fortunately, I have a solution. I just stop looking at the image as an illustration of a concept and start enjoying it as a street photo with plenty of context. That’s makes me feel a whole lot better.

Another Example
Having taken the above photo I walked around London’s West End finding several more subjects — but my concept was already beginning to nag away at me. I even gave it a name: “the trailing street.” I wondered whether to go to one end of Oxford Street, but finding elevation there would be a problem.

Four hours later with the rush hour beginning, I found the following scene outside Embarkment tube station. Villiers Street doesn’t “curl like smoke” but it does bend sharply into the foreground and has the advantage of a gentle incline. At this time of day it was packed with people.

“Was Life Created?” The lady with the religious pamplets seems to be qualifying her remarks to the lady in azure blue. Everyone else is hurriedly getting on with the more immediate tasks of commuting or shopping.

I think this image comes closer to my concept, but I’ll keep the idea in mind for future work. Meanwhile I can enjoy the Villiers Street photo as an example of simple, colour-dependent street photography. I like the way the Jehovah’s Witness placard contains several shade of blue — and how this is repeated in the clashing coats of the two women. The light was fading at this point and I changed my camera setting to ISO 1600 before turning around to take the shot.

Fully Intended
Academic critics of photography still complain bitterly that our medium lacks intentionality, unlike painting where every brushstoke can be placed with precision. I hope these images can help to prove otherwise. It’s possible to look for photos in the street that correspond to existing ideas for meaningful compositions.

Sometimes you find them and sometimes you don’t. That’s the joy of street photography!

Sometimes the Devil Is in the Detail

If you’re like me, there are occasions when you look through the shots you’ve taken and you come across one which prompts the question: “Why on Earth did I take it?”

The composition is poor, there are yawning gaps in the corners, and there seems to have been no point to taking the subject whatsoever. Then you look closer and realise: it’s the detail. In some shots, the devil really is in the detail — and somehow you have to extract it and show it to its best advantage by cropping.

An example is my featured image (above). I was crossing the road in Phuket Town and saw a group of people standing behind a huge Harley Davidson. Make no mistake: this was one mean hog. Unfortunately, the onlookers appeared to be on the point of leaving — the owner was taking a letter to the mailbox and starting to move out of shot — so I had to take the photo quickly.

The result was very disappointing. One onlooker had extremely bad sunburn but couldn’t be excluded without removing most of the background: the highly customised “Biker’s Bar.” The bike was also at an awkward angle, leaving lots of bare road surface that spoiled the shot. Then I saw the detail: a stack of skulls not only on the windshield but also on the gas tank. I hadn’t noticed those on the tank when I took the shot.

Yes, the bike is truly insane: tempting fate with human skulls on a full tank of gasline, right between the rider’s legs. If God had a sense of irony — and who’s to say He doesn’t? — He might be inclined to terminate the journey before the rider reaches his destination.

But of course, for this rider it’s a case of “Destination Unknown.” Luckily, he’s still in the picture — and by removing his head, and those of two of the bike’s admirers (the owner’s friends, customers?) — I’m able to make sense of the photo. Just one onlooker remains more or less intact, her skirt blending nicely with the bike’s design. The owner’s arms are slightly splayed, almost as if he’s grasping some imaginery Harley handlebars. The diagonals balance, the corners are filled — and the picture makes sense. Because of the detail.

Waiting for Customers
I have little doubt that it’s more profitable to run a lively Biker’s Bar than to sell heavy drilling equipment from a small retail store. In my second photo to illustrate the role of detail (below) I offer an image of two men in adjoining stores, waiting for business.

Now, let me see…your partner has gone out to buy sugar, milk, eggs and a new roll of kitchen paper. You unpack them and say: “Honey, where’s the 12-inch diameter drill bit I asked you to pick up?”

I’m always fascinated by these shops on the fringes of Bangkok’s Chinatown, mainly because I’ve never seen anything like them in the UK, Europe or the USA. They’re right there, on the street, in places where you’d normally expect to find a newsagent or a liquor store. I wonder if they have regular customers — because I can’t imagine anyone buying a massive drill bit on impulse.

In this photo I’ve given equal space to the human and the metallic subjects, on the understanding that it’s the detail in the twisty bits which “makes” the image. Their vertical shapes are echoed in those of the columns and folded grills. The two guys are the very personification of patience, quite unlike the restlessly spiralling drills and the clusters of coloured hooks.

On previous visits to the area I’d photographed similar scenes, such as men sorting through stacks of metal girders and pipes, but they always looked like dull corporate illustrations (“here’s our man in the girder department”) rather than proper street photos. This one is different. It has tension and contrast — and the whole composition revolves around the position of the man’s hand.

Like I say: sometimes the devil really is in the detail.

The Subjects Are Hiding

When subjects are fleeing into darkness, or when they have their backs turned towards us and are studying something unseen with intense concentration — that’s when you can get a good street photo.

Street photography does not always have to be open and explicit. The idea that you need subjects to be facing you, with the camera just a couple of feet from their noses, is pure nonsense. I prefer to take shots that allow ambiguities to enter, because then the human figures cannot be seen with sufficient clarity to explain their actions.

Take my featured image (above), for example. It’s a grocery stall in Hong Kong with a row of Chinese sausages hanging from hooks and gleaming in the morning sunlight. The sausages are the most prominent objects in the picture. Those dark ones appear to be selling well! To a western eye they look a lot more appetising than the scrawny birds (surely not wading birds?) hanging beside them. The stallholder has turned his back on the customers as if trying to avoid looking at the dead birds — but their shadows pursue him by clinging to his dark blue tee-shirt.

The other feature of the image is the row of newspapers (or pamphlets?) on the makeshift counter. Are these merely for wrapping the sausages, or do they serve some other purpose? Are people actually meant to read what’s printed on them? They seem to be too neatly arranged to be merely wrapping paper. The darkness of the stall’s interior adds to the feeling of mystery, even on a bright, sunny day.

Behind the Truck
From a pictorial point of view, a plain, dark background makes the subject stand out and gives any photo an organised appearance. Of course, if the subject is “standing out” — illuminated by the sun against the darkness — the sense of mystery or ambiguity can disappear. The onlooker may not tempted to speculate on the content of the darkness when there’s plenty to see in the light.

My next image (below) is slightly different. There seems to be an interesting coffee bar beyond the three shoppers who are about to walk behind a parked truck. Yet there are no tables, no chairs — nothing to see whatsoever, except for the banners which proclaim “Original Phuket Roasted Coffee.” Can this be where coffee is unloaded to a warehouse? The logo of the firm has a ship on it, suggesting the importation of goods.

I took the shot because of the banners, the darkness, and the dun-coloured truck which was covered in dust. A minute or two went by before some pedestrians moved into position — and happily they add colour to what could have been a drab and pointless image.

The sceptical viewer may still think it’s pointless. I don’t. I think the shoppers are walking in between two mysteries — the dark building and the heavily padlocked truck — and into another mystery: the rest of their lives.

The Mysterious Stall
Street photographs are doubly appealing when they offer intriguing content as well as satisfying composition. At first glance, my photo (below) seems to be of two ordinary customers standing in front of an ordinary stall where you can buy a tee-shirt. There are thousands of similar stalls in the Far East. Yet, somehow, this one is different.

For a start, it has lots of large pots in front of it, which would be completely superfluous to requirements for a typical trader who’s intent on making money. Then there’s the hat. Or hats. One of them is a pointed hat of the kind you can purchase from beach vendors, the other is a helmet woven from dried leaves. There are brushes and palette knives in the stall — which is more like an outdoor workshop than a stall — and there are framed pictures hanging up, for display or sale.

Even after studying my own picture carefully I’m still mystified by the purpose of the stall. The only real clue is the girl who is wearing a tee-shirt similar to those hanging up. Is she an existing customer? Does the man customise the tees with designs while you wait? Is this a part-time job to make money to support him as a painter of pictures?

The image of the painter’s stall is every bit as mysterious as the others I’ve shown, despite the full sunlight and a wealth of detail which can be seen quite clearly. The point of the image is actually in the detail: the comb sticking out from the girl’s back pocket, the object (a soda can?) in the man’s right hand, and the colourful hat.

Above all, it’s the girl’s hesitant gesture and the man’s smooth talking which complete the image. Maybe he’s saying: “Sorry, no refund.” Your guess is as good as mine.

Something Mysterious is Going On

Cities are deeply mysterious places because it’s almost impossible to understand the full truth of what’s happening. People are moving around, occasionally pausing in doorways to chat on the phone, but what are they really up to? Are they simply asking: “What’s for dinner?” and: “I’ll be home around eight” — or are they planning some complicated scam or plotting an assassination?

Maybe it’s because in my early teens I enjoyed too many Agatha Christie novels — around forty of them in succession. As a consequence I’ve always been aware that life is not as it appears on the surface. I’m wary of other people and I’m absolutely sure a lot of them are “up to no good.”

In another article, which I’ve not yet posted, I complain about the shape and style of the Agatha Christie Memorial at the corner of Cranbourn Street and St Martin’s Lane in London. Somehow, it doesn’t seem to sit nicely when there’s a crowd of suspicious-looking people hurrying past.

The Memorial
However, a few months ago I succeeded in getting a shot of the memorial (above) when the pavement in front was completely clear. OK, there are some very honest, hard-working men digging up the road behind it, but all the panhandlers, city-slickers, con artists, would-be showbiz personalities and street musicians who normally hang around it are nowhere to be seen.

It actually looks quite good! It’s a fitting tribute, as they say, to a woman whose work is so much better on the page that it is on the screen. Film and TV adaptations of Agatha Christie’s novels are nearly always dreadful, unlike the many brilliant versions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.

The Clawhammer
Street photographers who enjoy mystery novels can easily find people, locations and incidents on the streets of London to inspire their work. When I walk through the West End I come across such scenes all the time. On a recent trip I was deliberately looking for “Places Where Bad Things Have Happened” — the title of an article I have in mind — and so I was ready to think the worst. Then I saw a man clutching a clawhammer (below).

I suppose it was the white protective clothing that attracted my attention. It reminded me of an incident in a recent TV police thriller in which a rogue pathologist dons a white jumpsuit before attempting to dispose of his victim by chopping up the body. Fortunately, there are no bloodstains on the man in my picture, so I’m sure he’s “on the level.” In fact, he’s wearing a visitor’s badge round his neck (the ribbon says “visitor”), so I’d guess he’s a hands-on designer who’s been working on the shop fittings.

The Incident in China Town
Later that day I was in China Town, south of Shaftsbury Avenue, trying to locate a restaurant where the Chinese Triads used machetes to chop up some customers, many years ago. On my way there I came across a scene which I’ve called “Incident in China Town.”

This incident appeared to be somewhat less serious than the one involving the Triads, but it was certainly attracting a lot of attention. I didn’t hang around to find out exactly what was going on (I’m not a photojournalist!) so I can’t tell you how it all ended. A woman was shrieking blue murder at the police, who were methodically going through some items on the ground.

I can read only one word on the white sheets hanging from strings in front of the shop. Because the word is on the other side of the sheet, the letters are reversed. I can just make them out. They spell the word “blood.”

The Plaque
The British public has always had a healthy appetite for murder stories. I remember when my late Aunt came back from London, having seen Agatha Christie’s new play “The Mousetrap.” She said she’d enjoyed every minute of it.

Ten or twenty years later I went to see the play and fully agreed with her. Although it has since moved from the Ambassadors Theatre to the St Martin’s Theatre next door it’s still attracting audiences after 26,000 performances over 64 years. Honestly, I can’t tell you who-did-it. It was so long ago!

Before diving into China Town I walked past the two theatres and found a trio of visitors enjoying themselves taking selfies under the blue plaque. They’re clearly fans of Dame Agatha.

Will “The Mousetrap” ever close? It seems improbable in the near future. The run is guaranteed until at least 2018 and I would like think it will be running for many years in the future. I recall it as being superior to the film adaptations of the Christie novels, not least because it was written by her specifically for the stage.

It’s not long before I turn my attention back to the people in the street. Even before leaving the vicinity of the two theatres I see two men who are in step with each other, although they’d heading in different directions. Is that suspicious? Are they in secret communication with each other? The man in the suit certainly appears to be saying something as he passes the man with the rucksack.

It’s all deeply mysterious.

In Praise of Shadows in Street Photography

To write a blog post I enjoy switching on my computer in the morning and be greeted by another splendid landscape from Microsoft on the start-up screen. Mostly, the photos are well chosen: spectacular icebergs or beautiful rolling countryside. But today’s image of trees on a tropical beach was almost entirely devoid of shadows, even in the deepest shade. In this age of HDR (high dynamic range) it’s time I leapt to the defence of shadows.

I would not, of course, be the first person to do so. Most famously, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, in his 48-page essay “In’ei raisan,” (In Praise of Shadows, 1933-34) wrote poetically of the rapid disappeance of shadows from the Tokyo cityscape. All the shadows fled before the onslaught of electric light, a Western invention that destroyed the conditions necessary for viewing Japanese paintings, houses, theatrical performances, and even the rice served in lacquerware bowls.

Wrote Tanizaki: “…only in dim half-light is the true beauty of Japanese lacquerware revealed.” “Our cooking depends upon shadows and is inseparable from darkness.”

The Mystery of Shadows
In photography, shadow is every bit as important as light. Deep shade makes us appreciate the well lit areas of an image; it provides essential contrast without which the illuminated parts make very little sense. Even in a high-key portrait, there has to be a hint of shadow, here and there, to delineate the face and show that lips and eyebrows are darker than surrounding skin.

The fashion in photography for HDR will probably disappear when people become tired of it. Nine times out of ten it looks wrong, whether in landscapes, cityscapes or interiors. This is because it’s almost entirely artificial, generated by computer calculation.

While it’s OK to “lift the shadows” so we can see in the photo what the eye sees in reality, it’s not often acceptable to banish shadows completely. They contribute more to the image than you may at first suppose. They set free the onlooker’s imagination, stimulating a vital response which is fundamental to the appreciation of any work of art.

In his novels and short stories, Tanizaki liked to leave as much as possible to the reader’s imagination, guiding it with hints and suggestions rather than directing it with detailed description. There is no reason why the street photographer should not do the same, even though a modern digital camera captures detail with utmost precision. Mystery can occupy parts of the photo, replacing some of the extraneous information that gets revealed when we chase away the shadows.

Shadows in Chinatown
In homage to Tanizaki I’ve called my featured image (above) “In Praise of Shadows.” It’s one of my favourite images from Chinatown in Bangkok, partly because the subject is clearly not typically Chinese. In itself, this fact gives the image (in my eyes, at least, because I know the location) a sense of mystery. But the mystery is accentuated by the deep shadow which conceals another figure and the interior of a shop.

The bright sunlit area on the left becomes connected to the deep shadow by the roll of purple material on the beat-up scooter. Light and shadow need each other in this picture!

When I took the photo I was very conscious that the man’s face was half-concealed by shadow. That and the purple roll are what attracted me to the subject. Fortunately, the image is balanced by the scooter’s illuminated handlebars and the sloping bamboo cane. They draw our eye to the scooter’s unusually capacious bag which leaves little room for the rider’s legs. Whatever does he carry in such a bag?

Go Where the Shadows Are
It would be easy to ruin the picture by dampening the highlights and filling in the shadows so that we can see more detail in both. With my love of shadows I can resist this temptation and leave you wondering about the missing content. The man with the beard has raised his sunglasses to see more clearly in the shade, but we don’t need to do the same. The shop has no artificial light so why should we make it brighter than it really is?

Here’s another image (above) which conceals more than it shows. On first glance you can see only the orange pillar and the main subject who is resting her arm on a box. As your eyes become accustomed to the shadow you may become aware of two other figures: a woman with a colourful dress and, in the background, a man silhouetted against the pale light of the interior.

In this case, there is no balancing object to stop our eyes wandering off to the left, but it doesn’t seem to matter too much. We’re anchored to the right by the pillar against which the subject is leaning. It gives the impression we’re “on her side,” whatever thoughts she may be having. Do those thoughts include the man in the distance or someone even further away? When an image raises lots of questions it holds our attention and goes beyond the superficial appeal of visual entertainment.

At the end of his essay, Tanizaki writes: “I have written all this because I have thought that there might still be somewhere, possibly in literature or the arts, where something could be saved. I would call back at least for literature this world of shadows we are losing.”

So my advice to street photographers is this: don’t just go where the people are. Go also where the shadows are.