Street: Honorable Mention 2022 (professional)
ENTRY DESCRIPTION
New Change next to St Paul's Cathedral in London, offers intriguing perspectives for street photography. With asymmetric glass structures over several floors, one can look to capture silhouettes for unusual angles as shoppers come and go from the centre.
This particular shot was taken from the third-floor balcony and used strong light to create both silhouettes and long shadows from the shoppers. I shot many versions trying to achieve the perfect balance between the positions of the shoppers and their shadows. This image seems to have achieved my objective. The effect looks swarm-like at first glance.
AUTHOR
Photography has entranced me since the age of 13 when given my first SLR film camera. Since that moment, it has been a lifelong passion, hobby and now career. Initially, I focussed almost exclusively on monochrome – fine art landscapes, architecture and cityscapes. For the last few years, I have been working in colour, in particular cinematic street photography.
My creative output is strongly influenced by my work within the design and advertising industry. In a competitive creative industry, you quickly learn to recognise the importance of simplicity to create drama and to elicit an emotional response. My recent landscape work following numerous trips to Iceland was well received with numerous images winning awards. Following my Iceland experiences, I formed a working relationship with the Royal Photographic Society and deliver both online lectures as well as leading a number of their online landscape group workshops.
Although I have tended to focus on landscapes, cityscapes and architecture, I have also recently returned to street photography. Living in a city like London, the interplay of a large multi-cultural urban environment and its inhabitants provides a rich tapestry of subject matter.
I order to broaden my street photography portfolio, I have recently embarked on a number of personal street photography projects. As part of this project, I am exploring the ways in which urban environments impact the shadows, silhouettes and reflections we encounter in our streets and public spaces. Finally, I am looking at how architectural design in our cities imposes an informal geometry on our lives.
I am a strong advocate for the importance of storytelling in photography. Although there is a belief that the image itself should communicate the story, I believe that more often than not, an understanding of the context of the photograph and the reasons behind its capture.
back to gallery