Journeys From A Small Room

“Victoria!” by Annette Johnson

3^rd place in SaPP (Street and People Photography) Competition “People commuting through the city)

About me:

I currently live in Korat in Northern Thailand having spent most of my life living in London and the South of England. I am retired and enjoy my time photographing the world around me and travelling.

Back in 1982 I bought my first film camera, an Olympus OM10 and progressed through many more SLRs until the advent of digital.  I have to say I was slightly reluctant to engage with digital at first, but the lower costs and the delight of getting instant results won me over. A Nikon D70 was my first digital camera, followed by a variety of models including a Sony, before arriving at my current camera a Canon 70D. Funny how I have gone from D70 to 70D, that still makes me smile!

My passion for photography has quickly taken over my life alongside my love of travel. I have combined the two in the hope of inspiring people to go and visit amazing places, meet wonderful people and experience so much more of our wonderful world. If they can’t then hopefully my photography will give them an insight into other people and places and let the creative side of their brain relax and enjoy the world.

About “Victoria!”

I find London a fantastic city; a mix of people, sounds, smells, architecture and culture that makes it a wonderful location for photography.

During 2015 when I was undertaking a photography course, that I started working on a project called “making people anonymous”.  I had researched other artists and photographers to get some inspiration and ideas (always a good thing to do). I visited an art exhibition at The Photographer’s Gallery in London which was exhibiting the work of Viviane Sassen. I was interested in her as another female photographer and also because she has a great way of using “colour” and “anonymity” within her work. Sometimes this seems deliberate in the way she forms the models in her final images, but at other times it seems almost accidental. I became a great fan straight away and got ideas for how I could approach my project to make people anonymous in my own work.

The second inspiration I found was much closer to home in L S. Lowry, the great 20^th century “matchstick men and women” artist from the north of England. I found that anonymity in his images came from the number of people, the lack of features and the dark dress of his subjects. Many of his paintings display a mass all shuffling their way along to work, city or parks.

I wondered how I could mimic this photographically, so I decided to experiment with light and shutter speed in the digital format. I spent the best part of a day in London trying to capture images of people where the subject would remain anonymous or where I could “make” the subject anonymous.

As I was waiting at Victoria Station for my train home, which was delayed by about 40 minutes, I started to look at the area around me.  As you come into Victoria station you have to traverse across the concourse to the ticket machines to reach the platforms. On the left are some escalators that lead to a Sushi restaurant and a pub. Outside of these is a gallery overlooks the concourse.  You can see almost a football field’s width of tiled floor and the beautiful glass vaulted ceiling that makes Victoria such a beautiful example of the period’s architecture. Mixed in with the brick Victorian walls and door arches are cast iron columns holding up the enormous framework needed to support the vast glass ceiling.

I positioned myself where I could see the whole of the station floor. The gallery is edged with a glass and steel balcony giving anyone an unobstructed view across the whole scene in front of you.  Now normally I would have my tripod with me for this kind of slow shutter work, but London streets are not so “tripod friendly”.  I started to shoot hand held standard settings just to get a feel for the light and angles of view. I find that I get a better feel for such large spaces this way and it gives me a chance to try to see what works or looks best. I am aware that what my eye sees the camera doesn’t always capture.

As I watched the hordes of commuters pouring into the station, my eyes were looking for colour, shape, pattern, numbers, direction, and most important of all movement! As soon as I saw the right point in the flow of people I shot the first few frames off, this time resting my camera on the bar rail. I dropped my shutter speed until I got just the right amount of blur in the movement of the many commuters. I must have fired of another five or six shots and remember looking at them on my camera screen and feeling delighted that my images were coming out as I had intended. I continued for some ten minutes, catching different groups of people and their movement or lack of movement and the different directions they were moving in.

The next few days were spent going through the many images I had taken before I finally arrived at “Victoria!”  This image captured perfectly what I was trying to achieve i.e. making people anonymous. Although you can clearly see that people are present in the image, their features are blurred through their movement. However, there is still a strong sense of direction and colour as people rush to get home. I see this very much as people photography, even though the subjects are not clearly defined.

I noted afterwards how it was ironic that I had spent all day planning and shooting in London and finally achieved what I set out to do at the very end of the day and somewhere I had never planned to use for this project.

Border Life

This is the story behind the set of images I shot at the Thai Lao Friendship Bridge in Nong Khai that was posted on SaPP recently. I often see something when I’m out and about and think that I would like to spend more time there or take pictures of what I’ve seen. This was the case with the Friendship Bridge, an area I’d been to and that wasn’t far from where I was living at the time.

The next step is to think about the style of photography the situation lends itself to; street photography, landscape, a 52 Week Challenge Project, architecture etc. etc. This is the point at which lens selection becomes important alongside my ability to carry equipment which depends on the distance I have to travel and my mode of transport.

As this project was relatively close to my home, I was able to visit it by motorbike and I knew that the location would be ideal for people and street photography. I selected my 18-135mm STM lens as my current 70-300mm is broken and pretty unusable now. I had in mind to use this as a long distance capture lens to photograph scenes and people discretely. I also took my 50mm 1.8 lens. I actually found having to make a choice of lens before I got to this location made me work round or move to positions I might not have done if I had had the long zoom. I went to the bridge at the start of the day to get a feel for the layout of the area, what happens where and to experiment with various viewpoints.

My first shot is of the drinks and tea lady. With her hair covered and her apron she reminded me of the ladies that used to do the lunches at my school. She and I had been chatting in very broken Tinglish (a mix of Thai and English). She understood that I wanted to photograph daily life around the Friendship Bridge and was happy for me to capture her at work. I waited until she wasn’t looking directly at the camera and photographed her as she was engrossed in her work. I like this image as it shows the border area isn’t just about officials and people entering and leaving Thailand but about the people who support this daily migration and build their own livelihood around it. This image also shows the beauty of the 50mm 1.8 lens giving a real 35mm length of 80mm. I felt distant enough to balance her in the frame making her the centre of attention whilst maintaining detail.

The other things you will notice around the Friendship Bridge are the large numbers of Tuk Tuk drivers and their vehicles. There is a strict pecking order, not only in fares, but who parks where and in what order they are able to pick up passengers. I took several images of drivers pushing and pulling these cumbersome vehicles in a co-ordinated dance that maintains this unspoken hierarchy. Some drivers appeared to be outside of this system, waiting further away from the designated parking area and they attracted my attention. Although they had to wait longer for passengers and presumably had longer gaps between journeys, they looked relaxed and in no particular hurry. My next image captured a young driver, not yet part of the organised system with his headphones on waiting for a fare to come his way. I like that the image also shows the span of generations working the Tuk Tuks here and the different ways they relax. The young man plugged into his mobile phone, whilst the older man sits still on a stool smoking an unseen cigarette.

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As the morning progressed, the area became busier as more people crossed the bridge and the food stalls that dot the area, the cafes and 7/11 in the small parade of shops came alive. Many of the stalls serve grilled chicken or hot dogs but my eye was drawn to one selling fresh cut fruit. There was lots of traffic passing this stall but I sat and watched this stall holder serve a few people until I found exactly the right angle and position to get this shot in. What made me photograph this young man was his height. As soon as I saw him I could see how he would give the image balance and draw the eye. Positioning him in the frame was tricky as you never know which direction people are going to move off into. Watching and reading body language helps a bit with predicting this and in this instance I felt I got it right.

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Soon the first wave of border crossing buses had arrived and the next image of the two ladies carrying their bags together across the post just told me to shoot! This is so typical of the people around this area the women working together to get the items across to their destination. They conveyed to me an image of hard working women who have little choice but to carry their precious sack across the divide. What also struck me was their age. I didn’t see one young person carrying anything as heavy across. In fact they were more likely to be crossing with just mobile phones and day packs! I converted this image to sepia in PP in homage to their youth and their generation now.

This brings me to the last image from this shoot which I have called “Mum and Daughter”. I couldn’t help but want to capture the obvious excitement displayed by this child as she crosses into Thailand . Is this her first visit? Will it be a short visit or the start of a long adventure? The photo begs you to wonder at what lies ahead for this young child and share in her excitement. This scene reminded me that when I was 18 months old my mother took me across the border from one country to another. We travelled from Cyprus where I was born to England (my father was in the RAF at the time) and I’m sure people who saw me then would have seen a look of wonder and excitement in my face as I embarked on a new chapter in my life. Yet again, I aged the image to give it the feel of reflecting the past, in this case a link to my own history.

My contribution this issue is not so much Photographic but what we photograph with and why.

A big subject I hear you say and it is which is why I am going to keep it just to my thoughts and examples.

I currently own a Canon 70d a very capable and commonly touted as an “enthusiasts” camera. I am very happy with it, it is a good workhorse of a camera, it’s tough, and it has a plethora of settings and adjustments to keep me happy for many years. “Where’s this leading?” I hear you ask.

Well the one thing I have noticed is that the more street photography or actually the more any photography I do the more I am exploring the options. I find myself using my rather battered but still fully functional   Lumix Lx3 and occasionally my mobile phone the Samsung J5. In fact I am experimenting more with that than anything else at the moment.

So this article is to explore the view on them, a short discussion where is the future of photography taking us?

In this ever technological world or making things smaller, lighter, faster, cleverer! Photography has been hot on the heel of mobile phones and vice versa. From top of the range iPhone to Olympus OMD Mirrorless and even Canons 100D the smallest dslr currently in production.

Where will it all end? Many say the future of Photography is in the mirrorless camera, but does it really matter what you use so long as it does what you want it to. So many Photographers I know will only ever consider their CANIKON DSLR as the best thing ever to photograph with and they will never switch to anything else, not even their phones.

Some photogs become what are commonly referred to “addicted to GAS” or “Gear Acquisition Syndrome”. The biggest, the latest, the most expensive…. And so it goes on. I personally don’t have any issue with GAS if you have the budget and skill to match it. So often though it is overlooked at what exactly they are trying to achieve? Quite often the inexperience will show through with poor images or lack of image quality because of their lack of experience. This can be remedied by trying and learning different formats that are easily and readily available. This brings me back to the mobile phone and compact camera.

I am a great believer in trying out all the ways of doing something, some ways will work and others won’t, but until you try them how do you know does what? Only by experimenting and trying these formats will we learn what we can truly create? For me creativity is the key to success, it makes you unique, it gives you something no one else has. The perspectives, the adjustments, are all down to the individual and like all humans we are all individual, with a commonality for viewing pleasure. We all like to view images but once again the images that suit one will not suit another. It is this that we are trying to achieve the pleasure that you give another person from your image and purely on a selfish but human level  Self-actualization, which  occurs when you “maximize your potential, doing the best that you are capable of doing”. That is something I think we all strive for.

So back to the means- What is wrong with using compact, mirrorless or phone cameras? Nothing in fact I would advise people to try out all forms and settle on what they like/get on with the best. Don’t worry just like all human beings you will continue to develop and grow with experience and move onto more technical equipment as you go. For example I started in my photographic experience buying my first SLR when I was 18. An Olympus OM10, from this camera I learnt the fundamentals of photography and some. Waiting was the name of that game, no instant image on the back of the camera. No other way of creating the image I saw in front of me. It was guess work and practice.

Things have moved on and I have embraced the technology and practice and delighted at the reduction in the cost of the images. Sadly this has been added to the cost of the technology, but as technology is moving so fast what is deemed as older or dated models still produce outstanding results with practice.

So my Lx3 images look pretty good considering the small sized sensor. Its ability to shoot RAW makes it that much better if you need to adjust in PP. My experience has been I have had to do very little if nothing to an image coming out of this little beast, except when I want to process artistically. As I have here in the image below. Opting for a gritty grunge HDR effect brought this image out even more than the original, which I was also happy with.

The LX3 carries the images off well for a 10.01megapixel and a wide 24-60mm. with image stabilisation and video. The Samsung J5 has video too but alas no image stabilisation.. The Lx3 is no slouch of a camera though.

So the possibilities with an instrument such as this are still perfectly acceptable unless of course you might want to print a billboard with it and as the files are RAW that can still be done!

This view above of the rocks at Koh Lanta Yai at near sunset show that even in poor light this Lx3 behaves well and so it should with its f/2- 2.8 apertures. This image is SOOC completely unedited.

Same beach and not quite the same aspect but again fading light. The 70d captures more tones and is a lot less processed than the Samsung J5 and even the superb Lx3. Personally I can’t see the difference in IQ between the two and neither do most people looking at them (Pixel peepers excluded). Please note this was a Raw file imported into Lr5 then immediately exported as a JPEG

This image above same location is taken with my J5 mobile phone. This sports a 13 megapixel camera, which is one of the reasons I gave it consideration when replacing my broken Samsung S3. I wanted something with better image capabilities but didn’t want the bulk. Sure enough it’s photo interface is basic although it does allow you to change modes from Auto to full manual and adjust the ISO (800) WB(standard range) and exposure compensation(+2 to -2) as well as metering. It also carries a sports mode and panorama which I have found useful. I have found that although the parameters of this Mobile are far greater in limitation to my 70d for example I have been able to work around these and learned when and how I can use them to their best.

So what I am trying to illustrate here is that anybody can take decent photographs with what they have so long as they take time to learn the camera and its capabilities. It seems that too many people are missing the point! It’s not the kit you have it’s how you use it! It’s also not how much or how new it is, it’s how often do you take it out and use it?

So….Maybe after reading this you might have a wider view of the options for you.