Taken at Canary Wharf, Docklands many years ago when the buildings were fairly new ans security wasn’t as tight as it is now. Today, without written permission, I doubt it would be possible to set up a tripod with a medium format camera on it and take pictures.
Lyon has an old town and the patterns and colours of the pantiled roofs make an interesting composition. The scene is almost timeless – only the modern Velux windows suggest that this is modern times.
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.
Bletchley Park, 2009. OK, so this ‘girl’ is actually a mannequin but I tried to tackle them as street photography subjects in terms of angle, filling the frame and having some kind of background to ’set the scene’. Unfortunately, their faces seemed so plain that I added a canvas-like texture in Photoshop that took away the plainness. This shot in particular has a rather eerie stare at the photographer.
Bletchley Park, 2009. This lady was dressed in elegant 1940s dress (actually, she was one of the guides) but she willingly posed for me in the Bombe Room (the Bombe machine is behind her).
It was the pink hair and clown-like face paint that caught my eye. Then there was the surprised stare as he posed for the camera.