The Hacienda boys - signs of a changed town

If you mention the word Hacienda to most people of a certain age i.e. MY age, certain images will immediately spring to mind .. of the 'Madchester' rave culture, Tony Wilson's ridiculous haircut, the pretty outstanding soundtrack for the period that he and Factory records was almost entirely responsible for, smiley shirts - did anyone actually own one of those or has that been made up since? Bloody fluorescent whistles, lost nights in fields somewhere in Cheshire, endless bottles of water and, of course, Bez's maracas.

But alas, this golden age(?) is no more and as if to mark it's passing into a much less reckless era, for those of you who didn't know, the site of the Hacienda club in Manchester is now a trendy apartment block retaining nothing of the original building apart from the name.  Which I say is a shame as watching the assorted weirdos come and go from there when I was on my way to normal clubs on a saturday night used to be one of my favourite pastimes. 

Now, on to the reason for this posting, which has a lot in common with my previous Salford Boys post, and before we go any further I want to make it clear that I don't go around looking for random invitations to photograph people - it just seems to happen, and this week more than most.

There I was, passing the Hacienda, minding my own business while trying to take an extremely boring picture of a street cleaner - yawn - when a young lad shouted me over - Oy will you take my picture?

Now ordinarily I would have been taken aback, but as a veteran of no less than one similar 'shoot' with the Salford Boys, I had to oblige - and what better way than to use the images to tell you how it went.  

Now I don't know where the hell this is going but these random invitations are quite handy in photographic terms and I am learning quite a lot from them, as follows:

1. Always have your camera set up and ready to shoot immediately (the lad was still asking me to take his picture when I took the first image)
2. Don't be afraid to give directions e.g. don't look at the camera
3. Get the subject's details to pass on the images too - I took an email address on this occasion
4. Run with it and enjoy!

On an even more technical note and for those who are interested, the images were took with my s3 pro and my 18-55mm lens.  I post processed them in a sixties style (as it had a fashion shoot feel) and did some recovery work on the faces.