Colonnade and Shadows

Visited Brompton Cemetery, here in London last week. This was my first visit, I'd been to Kensal Green and Highgate before, but not Brompton.

A good spring like day for photography, with the sun dodging the clouds, and being early in the year, still relatively low on the horizon, even in the afternoon. You can see, I like shadows,  as the images here of the Colonnade show.

Final Project

The final project for the BTEC photography course is due tomorrow. This one was rather different to the previous assignments in that the theme and number of photographs to be produced was to be my own choice. A Statement of Intent was asked for and produced. It ran as follows –

 “The theme for the project will be the street performers, buskers and tourists along London's South Bank, roughly from the London Eye to London Bridge and additionally in Trafalgar Square, London

The final presentation will comprise a printed triptych. A triptych typically contains three elements, usually an image. Each of the three elements of the triptych itself will contain three images. This implies that a total of nine individual images are required. All nine images will have a connection in theme, content and mood. However the three images of each individual element will have a closer connection with each other, when compared to the other two elements”

So I took my walk down the South Bank, as per my statement of intent, but avoiding Trafalgar Square for now (another day?) taking photographs of what was going on.

Had them printed as 6x4 size from a one hour photo machine for group discussion in class – which has put me off using those machines again – the quality is so poor (I should have known previous experience).

The net result of the class group discussion was that I abandoned the original theme – think the word ‘contrived’ was used here – in favour of developing a theme of  ‘people and shadows’ began last year – see my previous post here.

Several of the images taken on my meander feature people – on their phones – and shadows.

Here is my selection

Not a triptych in sight. Pity. Don't think the triptych idea wasn't as contrived as was suggested to me - but I'm sure I'll get it done another day. And am happy with 5 pictures as selected.

Self-Portrait

Another exercise for my BTEC evening photography was Portrait. That's fine I thought, I'll bring in some from my recent trip to the Notting Hill Carnival, this year, when I concentrated mainly on "street" portraits, as distinct from the Carnival as an event. No such luck for this exercise, the catch was the portraits had to be self-portraits.

Hmmm, don't want to put my face up here.

Winter hadn't quite arrived here in London just yet, there were still some sunny days around, and I'd been developing some ideas for the last few months - photographically - I'd been making images of people and their shadows. You can read my previous post on these pictures here. Anyways, I thought I'd make use of the sunny days (while they were still available !) and combine the self-portrait exercise with the shadow idea ... and here are some of the results ...

 The photographs were taken on 3 different days and at 4 different locations. I'm not sure I like the results, especially the 3rd and 4th in the sequence - I was very concious of the patterns made by the different coloured paving stones and was looking to make a pleasing composition. Think I prefer the other shadow pictures taken previously, they've got more mood. 

 

Shadows

Lately I've been photographing people and their shadows.

Having found the location - it often means coming back to the same place at different times of the day  - with the sun shine (and more importantly the shadows) at different angles - to assess its suitablity, and then asking someone to walk through the appropriate place.