The real Manchester: only a half turn away

I've been playing around editing some architecture images in the last few days and it occurred to me that the real industrial heart of Manchester is never more than a half turn away from the main streets where I have been trying to develop my street photography skills.  In fact, most of the time I have literally been passing an alley only to turn and snap it before moving on without barely giving it a thought.

This said, I thought it might be interesting to share a few of these dark, sleeping places and give you an idea of the way I try to frame the world.  I'll leave you to guess where these were taken, suffice to say that they were all taken no more than 5 minutes walk from Deansgate.

Manchester portraits

Just a small selection of some recent portraits I've taken around town - I spoke to a lot of the people here (apart from the buskers) so I have a few stories to pass on which I'll save for a later day, but for now here are the pictures with captions so hope you enjoy.

Oh, and by the way, if you happen to bump into any of these people around Manchester, please mention that you saw them on here. 

One-man protester at Barclays bank

Big issue seller - Deansgate

Homeless man - Under the big wheel

Violin boy - St Anne's Square

Big Issue seller - Deansgate

Busker - St Anne's square

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I've just stumbled on this incredible site - some disturbing images but also one of the best collections of photojournalism I've seen:

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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.

  

A 50mm lens and the subtle movements of Horses

Horses are a truly magnificent subject for the camera, and with this in mind, on a complete whim last weekend I decided I wanted to have a go myself in capturing their stunning beauty.  

But how?  The only place where I had immediate access to horses was my local farm and the potholed field they lived in was hardly suited to the kind of windswept white mare on a beach shot I had in mind (hmmm .. personally I blame the Guiness adverts).

However as I trundled up on that overcast day with my eager child serving as bait - carrying a bag of cut apples of course - the way they were flicking their heads at our approach provided me with an idea - if I was to get in close and exclude the grotty setting entirely, perhaps then I could focus on the beauty of the creatures, and what better way than by setting a wide aperture of f1.8 to truly vignette their magnificent detail in all its glory.

So without further ado, here are the results.   Let me know what you think.

For those who are interested in seeing more of this set, you are welcome to check out my DP Challenge portfolio by clicking here

The Salford Boys and my changing perceptions of privacy

As a person who values his own privacy I have always been both inspired by the bravery of street photographers, and also challenged by the idea of the genre in general, which often seems to invade people's personal space in taking images they may not be aware of, even though they may sometimes be too far from the lens to notice.
But whether they notice or whether they would care are two different issues, and these were very much at the forefront of my mind as I went into Manchester recently to try to move out of my comfort zone in taking some street images of my own.

A key factor in my mind was something that happened to a friend of mine, who was recently filmed as an unwilling passer-by in a feature on a popular weekly TV show.  Now what bothered her wasn't the context in which it was shown (she wasn't portrayed in a derogatory light) or even the way that her image was used (she was just used as a mere prop in a 'typical' street scene, for just a few seconds at that) but simply that they hadn't asked her permission.  She felt that this was important as a basic human right and that, as such, she had been taken advantage of, which I find perfectly understandable.  In addition, another, real-life consequence was that many people she knew constantly referred to her appearance on the programme and its subsequent repeats several weeks later, which once more as a private person she felt very uncomfortable about.

So ... with this in mind it was with some trepidation that I approached the session.  In fact, I would go as far to say that, after what had happened to my friend, people's privacy was very much at the forefront of my mind and as such my initial intention was to (try) to take images that paid attention to this fact, whatever that might mean.

But what did it mean? How could I take interesting images, directed fully towards finding and depicting that special 'decisive moment' while at the same time protecting people's privacy?  The truth was that I didn't have the answer but was just going to try it and find out, whether that be to decide NOT to take identifiable images of people at all, or simply to take them and be respectful and considerate of their privacy in doing so.  Oh, and I also decided it might be a good idea to not depict them in an unflattering way, which I felt was a given.

So much for cutting edge street photography then!  Armed with my camera (preset for any instant photo op of course) I went about my merry, moralistic way trying to somehow produce something worthy of my photographic idols.

Starting on the outskirts of Manchester, I made my way up to Piccadilly, taking the odd random shot that seemed afterwards to fit in with my agenda i.e. 'respectful' (very safe, not necessarily outstanding) images of the public taken from the hip or distance without invading people's privacy.  In these, I told myself, I was looking for shapes, patterns and contrasting tones rather than character.  So far so (almost good ...

So, mildly happy with my non-invasive efforts so far - and in need of more than a little help from someone, somewhere to prevent the expedition from resulting in nothing more than a collection of pretty (i.e. dull) patterns that would only look good in black and white, I fell so lucky I can hardly believe it now.

Just when I was losing hope and packing my camera away, I walked past a pair of dishevelled mid-fifties men sitting on a bench, only to hear one of them shout over "Do you want to take a photo of Manchester biggest pair of P***heads?"

When I turned around one had started mock-running away, laughing and shouting "He's not taking my picture" as, without further encouragement in the blink of an eye (or should I say "Silent Shutter"?) I snapped him doing so:

I then, dear readers (if there are any yet) spent one of the most blissful half hours of my photographic life, snapping away quite happily as they not only told me about their colourful existences, but also shared wonderful tales of the same part of town that I myself grew up in, which helped immensely in the way they engaged with me.

What a wonderful moment in time. Surely best described as follows ...

The Salford Boys

So, back to my initial fears over how to deal with people's privacy.  Did this experience help or not?  Has it made me formulate an agenda?  An approach to take forward in other street photography shoots?  Not a lot but maybe a little.  

There's one thing it definitely did teach me though, that to be invited to take photos, and to make yourself approachable enough for people to be comfortable with you pointing a camera at them is far, far better than skulking in corners and trying to use them as poignant shadows, or worse still, as ornaments for a tv feature that they have no say in whatsoever.  So cheers for that you Salford Boys, and good health to you both. 

Welcome one and all and why "The Silent Shutter"?

So here we are with my new photography blog - thanks for stopping by.


I'll explain more about myself and my own deep passion for photography later on, but for now it's enough to say that I'm starting this blog as a stimulus for my own creativity with a passing thought that it may interest others and in doing so provide them with ideas for the development of their own work.


So why the title "The Silent Shutter"?  I'm sure this is stating the obvious for many of you but for those who haven't guessed it yet, it is thinly veiled metaphor to the workings of the eye, or the eyelid in particular, using the photographic term "Shutter".


This has come about because in the last week or two I have had a bit of a reawakening in photographic terms (in particular in terms of street photography - more about this later on) and it has really made me think about the way that the eye works in noticing the arrangement of subjects in front of it before we even lift the viewfinder to frame the scene.  In other words, in the snap of our own shutter the moment can be gone if we hesitate too long.


Of course I know the existing photographers among you will already know what I am talking about and make your own references to Henri Cartier-Bresson's "Decisive moment".  If not, I urge you to look him up and read how he felt that this phrase described "the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression"  which most definitely is a phrase that I agree with. 

Luck or craft?  Cartier-Bresson's 'Decisive moment'

Anyway, look him up if you haven't already and muse on his genius (or not, if that is your opinion) for a while before my next entry, all about my recent trials and tribulations while trying my hand at street photography. 

Meanwhile, here's a taster of one of my own attempts at catching the moment, albeit on perhaps a lesser scale than the man who coined the phrase.

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