Clockers II

How do you do shoot? Do you ask for permission?

Resolutely, no.

I shoot and run. It's become a moto of sorts, a protective impulse that has shaped the way I shoot on the streets. Accountability avoided, blame left behind, antagonism's chance missed.

Clockers clock but that's part of the territory, adds affect, and not just for effect — a shortcut to an emotive scene.

Years ago I avoided taking photos of people that clocked me and my camera. Staying passively in the distance, sneakily taking photos of the decisive moment, discretion was key to my compulsion as a street photographer. I’d shoot from the hip as my camera swung into position, a technique fraught with inaccuracy to the point of maddening frustration, to zone focusing and firing random shots into the crowd.

Seemed a truer form of street photography by not brushing the scene.

History is littered with photographers that have gone to all lengths to conceal their cameras. Paul Martin would document the life around him by hiding his camera in a brown paper bag, resulting in completely candid photography of the life in the nineteenth century. Erich Salomon would hide his camera in his bowler hat of all places to document legal proceedings. Walker Evens hid his inside his shirt. If you have the compulsion, you’ll find a way to capture the shot.

Yet some photographers seem to be invisible despite no attempt at concealing the camera. Vivian Mailer would ghostly drifting through the city cradling her camera at waist level. The doyen of all street photography, Gary Winograd, swore blind shooting from the hip was not real photography. Shooting openly contrasting hugely with those who went to such lengths to hide their equipment.

Then there are the brazen types. The brash and offensive photography of Bruce Gilden is somehow captivating despite there being no decisive moment other than the one forced upon the poor unsuspecting individual. I suspect the compulsion to document using these methods is just as strong, regardless of their subject clocking or not. 

Styles evolve and an aesthetic simmers to the top of all work. Since I stopped worrying, I consistently see these photos repeat in my reels. That of the public catching sight of my poised lens staring back at them, often with my shutter already released.

I shoot with the edict that if I see it, I take it. Sometimes I get it wrong, I am happy to admit. There are times my compulsion has captured true vulnerability that to mindlessly share these photos would rob them and the subject of their dignity. Other times I get it wrong and I am rightly confronted. It’s better that way. Right or wrong, it keeps my ethics at the forefront.

There is a fine line between photographing for the sake of sensation and documenting existence. The buzz of street photography is finding the line out in the field.

One For Money, One For Art, One For Fun?

Ask yourself this:

Are you a photographer shooting for fun, money or art?

If you answer yes to all three, making clear goals to delineate between these differing threads is critical for survival.

I began as a hobbyist photographer, shooting in my spare time and without much careerist ambition. Hell, I was even tentative to call myself an artist. Enjoying myself and simply learning to develop my technical skill set was the sole objective. That wasn't enough though, I soon began to move into a creative mindset, more interested in the art than purely having fun. Seemingly overnight, it all became serious.

Guess where that took me? Yup, I decided I needed to make this my career. I quit my job, switched careers and built a portfolio…making money would be the natural outcome of doing photography full time, right?

Well, let me say it's not that straightforward, but that's an entirely different post. Let's fast forward to actually achieving some success. Currently, as a product photographer, it appears I have come full circle with the triumvirate of fun, art and money.

As a professional photographer, I no longer can legitimately say photography is a hobby. Nope, it's too involved for that - I now paint and sketch to look after my mental health. But do I still shoot for fun? Hell yes. Do I shoot for art? I couldn't justify the money side without the art.

Within my photography journey, I always had one eye on projects, publications and future goals. The trick is maintaining motivation and avoiding burnout by the overwhelming emotions felt when looking into the future. The hardest trick repeatedly is to keep one’s focus on the today.

After all, it is today that the work is actually achieved.

Kit Talk - Part II

Have you read part one?

Oddly, the initial excitement of a new toy — regardless of how impressive — invariably dies down, becomes muted with the deeper realisation that the true greatness of that toy lies not in the immediate acquisition, rather it deepens with familiarity.

I’ve had the Q for two months now, and during the first proper shoot, I felt that deeper realisation. Yet subsequent outings have proved more challenging. Call it beginners luck, but I don't believe in that word. Luck is a human construct that denies intention — even lack there of — that leads to consequences which shape one’s life.

No, I'm certain the issue lies with the complacency that I somehow avoided on my first outing. This is a 28mm lens, where previously I shot with a fifty. You develop habits, habits that you inadvertently repeat for comfort. Simply put, I saw things a metre too soon, firing off earlier when two steps more were required to capture the shot.

To me, this speaks more about style. Forever a hunter, not a fisher, the predatory style of shooting and walking away is losing its relevance. At 50mm, there is enough distance somehow for that to work. I'm just far enough to evade, but at 28mm, I need to be closer.

Perhaps a different type of fishing is the answer, to practice mindfulness before taking the shot; that meditative release eulogised by the fisherman (I'm killing this analogy).

Staying present within the bustle, within the scene is the acme of the street photography experience. Somehow lost in your own presence, the outside world slows down, and yes, you are clocked, but that slips by the wayside. Instead, you are immersed in capturing that next shot.

Movements appear faster, more slick. Intention taken as one’s eyes sharpen to the people drifting in and out of one’s frame. It is this, more that anything else, that my Leica has enabled. This is not a new sensation. Like I said, it is a state I have found myself in countless times during the eight years I have shot street, but more and more, I am realising the necessity to facilitate that state by slowing down.

Shooting with a Leica demands this and I am happy to acquiesce like so many before me.

Access

Solid, immovable, beneath the Southbank Centre lies the open space known as the Undercroft — the birthplace of British skateboarding. Gaining access to this cut-off community would be no pushover. To interact with the Undercroft’s skateboarders, my credibility and intent would be rightfully challenged.

Access — granted through time, without gratuity — is key for compelling, authentic photography. Think Arbus, Goldin or Billingham. Without access, we are outsiders pointing our telephotos into the intimate beating heart of a collective we are barred from witnessing. Unable to portray without stealing.

The Undercroft is a community in situ, understandably evolving a territorial attitude. As a means of controlling the skateboarders, barriers were installed by the Southbank Centre, both separating and segregating the skateboarders from the sauntering public of the Queen’s Walk along the Thames River.

There’s a fear factor about this locked off community. Everything is faster. Tricks are landed with force to whoops and cheers, the sounds of grinding wheels and trucks more intense. It's an aggressive sound, it's meant to intimidate. It crackles and scrapes against hard unforgiving concrete.

“There’s a barrier there.”

“I'm a skater too.”

“I don’t care, there’s a barrier over there. Just don’t stand there taking pictures.”

I clocked minutes earlier Twiggy’s agitated expressions. His languid style belies a territorial aggression.

The man unlike them — with neat hair, a utilitarian bag over one shoulder, clothes worn and torn through falls and scrapes noticeably absent — has crouched beside a mushroom column to capture a dope shot. Twiggy accelerates, yet grinds to a halt inches away, demanding fiercely his expulsion.

Startled at the public telling off, the photographer departs. Perhaps embarrassed for his misjudgment at nonchalantly entering the Undercroft.

——————

“A girl just asked me for a photo and I told her straight up ‘no’. It’s hot to be natural, right?” Filipe philosophising the perils of a resting skateboarder along the Undercroft barrier.

“We’re looked at like we’re in a zoo.” Slim explains, Filipe disagrees:

“See, we're all different, but I find it motivating…you’re skating for the crowd. It gets me confident to try to improve.”

After several months of returning to the barrier, the Undercroft regulars are becoming increasingly familiar. I am growing in confidence and on this crisp late afternoon, I engage freely with the Undercroft folk.

“Can I sign into my Facebook?”

Leaning his back to the barrier, Noodle slowly turns to face me. Taken by surprise, his gaze reassures me I have nothing to fear.

Trustingly, I hand over my phone; showing caution would surely risk his distrust. I explain my project of shooting the Undercroft skateboarders, he responds warmly, eyes half-cut, not necessarily from the afternoon sun.

We have only just met but he has a loose ease with which he tells me he is an author:

“I spit and have my own record label.”

I want to believe him, not to dismiss him as a fantasist. Yet his life seems pockmarked with violence and chaos: “I’ve had psychotic episodes...in trouble with the feds, you know, beating the shit out of some of them.”

Later, keen for me to document his latest performance, and wishing to draw a crowd, he beckons me towards a busy spot along the Queen’s Walk. His gliding, hurried pace mirrors his confessional eagerness.

Strapped to my hand, my camera weighs heavily besides me. I’ve asked to shoot him a few times but now my arm is frozen with anxiety, too scared to look into his eyes lest I reflect a coldness, a detached manner I am desperate to not judge him for.

His honest and brutal lyrics detail the newly healed scars along his arms, fingers tapping imagined keys to maintain his verbal rhythm. But there is no gathering crowd. We stand out, a skater and a street photographer. Late autumn is already biting, his homelessness bodes poorly with the oncoming winter. I wish him well and tell him we can shoot some more tomorrow.

Yet I never saw Noodle again. I managed only to capture his legs atop a battered skateboard crossing my path while I stood outside the Undercroft barrier. It did not escape me that, momentarily, I was granted access to this private world.

Kit Talk Without Geeking Out

My next camera will decide the kind of photographer I become.

In the midst of the pandemic, I bought a Ricoh GRiii. A carving knife of a camera to accompany my Nikon D750 all-rounder, which when shooting street photography, increasingly felt like a meat cleaver, it felt invasive.

Yet years ago, after I got my first full frame dSLR, I immediately headed to Wood Green, an area I shot most hesitatingly, knowing my new baby could handle the speed at which I wanted to shoot to capture those fleeting moments.

Already unwilling to shoot standing still — waiting for the decisive moment — my style of chasing the image meant my entry-level Nikon struggled. I needed something faster, more robust to keep up with what I wanted to achieve on the streets.

Switching to full-frame represented a new beginning to my photography. I could go wild.

I noticed the speed and muscularity straight off the bat. The focusing, a shutter that snaps with a crack, I would rarely miss the shot. During those early days, I relished shooting with a huge camera strapped to my wrist, and still do to a certain extent. The robustness of the whole process dazzled me. Raising my camera to those fleeting moments, emboldened with each scene, I could shoot unnoticed, or noticed with the moment gone, but the picture already taken.

Seven years later though, it feels like time to move on. Certain projects required subtlety. Initially, the GRiii felt like a good fit. I craved stealth, so, this highly specialised mirrorless camera fitted that very specific need: to blend into my home town and shoot without brushing the scene.

Documenting Wood Green had increased in priority during the pandemic, and to do it regularly without sticking out was key.

Wood Green may feel incredibly busy — with a footfall rivalling Oxford Street — it still remains a local community. Thrashing around with a beastly dSLR felt like taking with aggression. The GRiii worked and works a treat, for sure, but ultimately, it's not the photography experience I crave for the next iteration of my career. Perversely, it feels too subtle, almost more invasive by lacking that participatory element.

And so, I bought a Leica Q — a complete no-brainer.

Looking Back

Opportunities, forever presenting themselves in seemingly indecipherable code, each a nebulous step to new a horizons. Crucially, it's knowing when to say yes and to not allow their dissipation.

Having dedicated myself to street photography, and photography more generally, I find myself at a crossroads. I have shot full frame for seven years, a personal marker that things went electric. Today I find myself with a burgeoning commercial career as a product photographer. Paradoxically, finding time to shoot street is increasingly a challenge.

Reviewing my archives seemed logical first step. Yet while I pause, I can’t help wander what might have been from this or that; where instead I may have ended up if I said yes to any number of opportunities.

There are several moments I can isolate — with the sharp acuity of hindsight — that could have proved pivotal. The potential to go deeper. Specialising in a single discipline can rest on the snowballing effects of saying yes to certain crowds more frequently. Consistency and with a little time, you can be a known artist of the field.

I entered the game late, entertaining a different career and lifestyle before jumping ship. Consequently, deciding to focus my work to just one discipline — say solely street, art nude, fashion or even product — seemed to speak of limitations or constraint, structures from which I decidedly wanted to migrate.

Yet it's all too easy to look back with what ifs. Ultimately, I have the career I have due to the portfolio I built, which itself was driven by my personality. I am the architect and demolition crew of my fate — this crossroads is mine to own. Hyper-curious, in no rush for obvious success, and certain I can achieve excellence in any arena I desired, I shot the shoots I wanted.

I am scattershot in phases. I am now stepping out of a two year cycle of dedicating myself to art nude photography, achieving multiple publication. And yet, I have maintained an overlapping process of shooting street. I did so for art nude while I built my fashion portfolio; all the while curating my website and pushing my skills to the next level.

The next iteration is street photography. It is the only iteration, my first true love. My inner voice is increasingly shouting for me to pound the streets more that once or twice a month. My inner voice is shouting for me to shoot as near daily as is possible within a busy, real life.

A successful, or contentious man — depending on your leanings — once said that we overestimate what we can achieve in a year, and underestimate what we can build in ten.

The grain of truth I am forced to accept is the need for patience to play the long-game.

LFW - September 2023

After a three year hiatus, last week, I returned to London Fashion Week. A time-period where I had other projects, priorities and demons with which to contend. Last month, I no longer could avoid the decision: I needed to return.

City wide, is how LFW was advertised on the billboards. Really, what this meant was limited access, with show times and details released drip form to break up the chaos and sabotage of the old order.

The hub at 180 Strand was a hive of activity. Packs of photographers would roam outside, from the cool guys packing serious equipment to the creepy old men wearing over-the-shoulder satchels sneaking towards posed models with their grins and point and shoots. There would be protests. PETA pelting everyone with incessant noise of tortured animals; models doused in blood; civilians stood gaping at the (ridiculous) spectacle of it all.

On Friday morning, Day One of the season, I had to start there, to see for myself the embers of this dismantled community. A morning's pilgrimage to a disappeared world where I found communion and purpose. I was mourning my past. Unsettled, I found a quiet spot and began trawling through Instagram stories to catch the crowds ahead. I soon discovering a show starting late afternoon at the old Selfridge's Hotel, Mayfair.

I took a casual bus ride, keen not to go frantic immediately. Besides, my intentions were to shoot as a street photographer, casually capturing the beautiful people in candid pose, with an occasional model portrait, so, I rocked up with my GRiii ready to enjoy my return.

At Mayfair, I arrived to scenes of outfit changes in quiet doorways and groups of models looking to enter the building. Yet an hour later, the initial joy had dried up, and with barely an interesting shot, the creeping thought of being left behind, being out of the loop started to surface.

I resolved to shoot street, walking towards Soho, yet that too felt off pace. I caught everything a second late, the moment vanished, my camera settings ill adjusted to the bright sun. I felt ready to leave, to accept this was no longer for me.

Yes, I felt like being sorry for myself and running away.

I held on, waiting to see my dear friend Ramario, the first model I ever shot at fashion week, and within minutes of meeting up, I found myself inside again.

I returned home to edit the days work, and the next morning, headed to Day Two with my full frame dSLR. Somehow, shooting with a tiny mirrorless wasn't cutting the job. Yes, I was fully sucked in and back after a three year - pandemic induced - hiatus.

‘Be patient, be kind, and the universe will listen’; a phrase that Ramario yells at me like a peaceful mantra.

He is of course right, within hours of accepting the need for patience, I found myself back inside, rubbing shoulders with an old friend who - in those three years - merely changed outfits.

Composition is a Boujee Concept

An Ode to Street Photography & Street Photographers

I rarely stay still on the streets. Agitated, I move with the sway of the crowd, snapping my shutter to their momentum.

Staying still, waiting for the action is simply not part of my affect. Boredom takes hold. I fidget, my mind wanders. Traipsing around London, I avoid these pitfalls, instead forcing my mind to only engage with what next I am seeing, I allow myself to see.

Composition falls from the forefront of my mind. Shooting street, I have a total disregard and disdain for the entire concept. My pics are chopped, skewed, an anti-composition. Form fights content, and invariably, form loses. What I gain is outside the structural limitations of composition.

——————

Yet, first I stilled myself shooting buildings. Architectural photography became my first love. The first subject I could engage in safely, without consciousness. Buildings don't shout back. Lines are inherent, buildings remain stationary. Symmetry and balance are all there for the taking. I could obsessively count windows to align to the building's midpoint, study how best to fill the frame, where the negative space would influence the emotion conveyed by these inanimate monoliths.

I repeated this with such frequency and obsession that it became second nature, the repeat visits reducing with each cycle of my burgeoning workflow. I did this until I ran out of buildings to shoot in London. Eventually, I lowered my camera down seeking facades, and while that briefly satisfied, I needed something else.

Something without the symphonic structural constraints of architectural photography. As these constraints weighed heavy, the freedoms of street photography became increasingly irresistible. I eschewed what I’d learnt about composition to shoot purely street.

Shooting street felt like jazz. The old cliche of jazz, or rather the old misunderstanding of jazz is that each band member plays to their own accord, keen to express solely their tune, their voice. Yet if that were true, there would lie cacophony. For all its virtuosity and freedom, without structure, there is no music.

——————

I feel integral to the scene when moving to the rhythm of the crowd. I'm not as bold as some to create the scene, nor do avoid its bruising, and so, as I gesticulate and forget myself, clockers regularly feature in my pics. The photographer’s eye is analogous to the jazz musician’s ear - forever seeking the next note, the next movement. It is the jazz mindset that does not await permission to join the music.   

After making the switch, I would suddenly spot street photographers not hiding in plain sight. I was mesmerised as I watched the current crop of seasoned street photographers shamelessly shooting people, being watched shooting people, seen by those shot. They practiced a boldness I could not comprehend, a leap I knew though that I too had to take if I wanted to class myself as a street photographer.

After those experiences, I pointed my camera away from the skies, and towards people, towards faces. I felt like I had suddenly plugged into an art form that was undergoing its most recent iteration. I would hit the streets multiple times a month, often twice weekly, and on back to back days.

Today, on the streets I often forget myself. Daily anxieties trivialise. Existential angst irrelevant. My immediate surroundings, the people, their movements dictated my next action. I become thoughtless in the gloriously literal sense - feeling only within the milliseconds of my consciousness.

Street photography not only saved my life, it gave me a reason to live.

I arrived late into street photography. Where previously my life revolved around measurable results, I longed for a creative, qualitative life. That transition happened with a cost. Nothing worth while changes without consequences, and so I consider myself privileged to have made the leap.  I have been blessed to have carved a career in photography late on in my life, shooting a variety of fields, but at my core, I am a street photographer.

Something Old - Something New

And so, as I close one chapter, a new one opens.

Today I begin a new blog. A new writing venture built on my experiences as a photographer and writer.

Many years ago, while I studied MA journalism at Birkbeck, I attempted a blog of similar description. A venture that soon fizzled away because of competing demands - a growing family, building a photography portfolio, writing a degree, blah blah.

Back then I had no serious intentions of consistency. My scattershot approach and obsessive nature steamrolled ahead with all the components I felt necessary to transition into a professional photography career. I couldn’t be certain which areas would fulfil me the most, so I did it all.

Maturity comes with a slowing down, a more considered approach, and it is this mindset I aim to bring to this blog.

More to follow from tomorrow.