How did I start doing street photography?
I started doing street photography in September 2006. It began as a way for me to get away from my desk while I was working hard on my doctorate thesis (in sociology). After just a few of these trips out on the street with my camera I found it was beneficial to my writing to be do something else creative.
I started suddenly. I had a 35mm film SLR - a Minolta Dynax 7000i - and a full set of lenses that I had inherited from my Grandfather in 1998. I hadn’t used it to anything close to its potential. It was mostly untouched for eight years. In retrospect I think I had always seen my Granddad and Dad as the families’ official photographers and I was probably feeling that there wasn’t room for another photographer in the family. Also, I felt my camera was precious; not in terms of money, but because it was something my Granddad had consciously chosen to leave to me. I guess I wanted to avoid all the guilt I’d feel if it got broken or stolen while I was using it.
I remember my first day out very clearly. It was a warm September day, the first week of the University year. There were thousands of “freshers” - new first year undergraduate students - around Birmingham university campus. The atmosphere was that of a festival. On impulse, I ditched the book I was reading, dug my camera out of the wardrobe, grabbed a few rolls of cheap film and set out, with no plan, no expectations and no idea that what I was doing would become the long-term project it is now.
I strolled around the Uni’ campus, a place I know very well, soaking up the chaotic atmosphere and gradually starting to point and shoot. There are some interesting buildings on campus but my instinct was to shoot people - far more variety, colour and, let’s not be coy about it, prettier. I had had a little schooling in the camera and what the various lenses were for from my Granddad, so I knew that the depth of field he liked came from shooting quite close up with the biggest lens (a 70-210mm). I’d never attempted it before and was presently surprised when I found that I’d got quite a few shots with very blurred backgrounds with very sharp foregrounds. There were some horrendously blurred shots and most of them had too much contrast and saturation (I’m not sure why even now - maybe cheap film and cheap processing? Yeah, let’s blame someone else).
But what I was most pleased with then, and still am now when I look back on my very first efforts at candid portraits, was that I had managed to capture something of the mixed joy and nervousness of freshers’ week at campus. I had managed to point my camera at strangers and take what I think are colourful, engaging portraits that say something about the subject and their environment. This gave me enormous confidence and encouragement to continue. Very soon I was standing right at the heart of the city, in the busiest shopping areas pointing my big lens at anyone and everyone who walked by.
In retrospect, it was a very happy accident that my first day doing candids was at Birmingham University, rather than the city centre. I was familiar with the place, I felt confident there, certainly much more confident than the first-week students. I was a 3rd year Ph.D student, my subjects had been on campus only a few days, were disorientated, anxious and possibly so distracted they hardly noticed me, despite the big lens. Probably it was little unfair to take advantage of this difference, but at the time I wasn’t conscious of it. I just shot on impulse. Also, I looked and acted like a student, so this difference probably wasn’t even obvious to my subjects. Possibly those that stopped to think about it would have thought I was shooting for the University newspaper or something. For whatever reason, I was able to shoot without some of the inhibitions I would have felt shooting strangers for the first time in the city centre (groundlessly, as it turns out, because I’ve always found it much easier to do candids than most people seem to expect it to be, but that’s a topic for another post).
So, in summary, I starred doing street photography because I needed a break from studying, because I had a decent camera going un-used and because by good fortune my first attempt was a success because I was in a familiar environment, shooting subjects who I knew, or sensed, were too distracted and disoriented to object to a stranger with a camera.
Over the next few days I’ll be posting a few of the 25 shots I kept of the 98 that I took at Birmingham Uni’ on the 26th September 2006 (I’ll tag them “first day”).
