I’m not sure whether this is really ‘street’ or ‘event’ photography. The character was from a re-enactment weekend but I thought he looked a bit like a banker so I dropped in a London background (Moorgate actually).
I don’t know the chaps name. He often turns up at 1940s re-enactments as a Greengrass-type character (from the TV series Heartbeat). I asked him for a photo and found an angle where the lighting brought out the texture in his face and where the backdrop wasn’t too intrusive. A little Photoshop work brought out more detail in his face.
Taken in Trafalgar Square during a demo/protest. The police were keeping a watchful eye on proceedings but who is it in the background watching the watchers? Maybe they were watching the photographer…
Louise treats her face and hair like a blank canvas and creates new looks on a regular basis. I wanted to combine the bright vibrant colours of her face against the glum blandness of a brick underpass. Facing out of the picture also adds a degree of contention.
A summer’s evening in Lyon. I saw these three men and liked their arrangement and the pastel colours of the buildings behind them. I wanted something more in the picture and so I waited. Then suddenly one of them produced a piece of paper and handed it the other. That was the moment to take the shot. I don’t know what the paper was, maybe it was a contract. It could be anything in fact but The Contract sounded fitting for a title.
Taken in Lyon. I liked the diffusion of the frosted glass of the bus shelter and the fact that the legs and feet were sharp below the frosted glass. Their heads were hidden by an empty grey panel presumably there to take advertising. I wanted something to fill the board. Just 2 minutes away around the corner was a closed-down café with grafitti and paintings on it. Above the window, there were three painted heads. It just shouted at me that these were the heads that should be behind that bus shelter.
Taken in Baker Street at Pride London in 2009. He only held that expression for an instant but it was long enough. The guy in the background nicely fills the corner with a similar look but toned and a little softer so it doesn’t impact too much on the foreground figure.
On returning from the Amber Fort to Jaipur, we stopped off to view the Summer Palace in the middle of Man Sagar Lake. There is a bus stop here and it is a popular tourist spot to take photographs of the abandoned palace. It’s probably why these girls were here – they knew tourists would like to photograph them in return for a few rupees.
These guards were at in the street leading up to the entrance of the Taj Mahal at Agra. There had been some disturbances the night before (a curfew was imposed not long after this shot was taken) and these soldiers were relaxing for 5 minutes. It was very much a grab shot as I don’t tend to hang about too long when photographing anybody with weapons especially if there is a chance that their English might not be too good. A little Photoshop work was necessary to remove extraneous parts of other bodies in the shot.