Exercise: developing your confidence

For this exercise I was to choose an outdoor situation where there would be lots of people and activity, and in which I would feel confident using the camera.

The 'event' I chose to photograph was an open weekend in Lincoln, where usually fee charging venues are open to the public without charge. I started at the cathedral, where many people were looking upwards, which when in a religious location such as this, to capture people looking skywards, implies more than just locating the 'Lincoln Imp' which was about to be illuminated.

The main thing I noticed was that whilst looking for interesting images, I mainly found that my frame was full of either people walking away or toward me, which were on the whole, not very interesting, I think that I would need to situate myself in a cafe in order to people watch and see what goes by

Comfort levels were ok but I felt the need to take the image quickly.

On anther image, I cropped in to focus attention on these people independently looking upwards. I think the wider frame may work better as the context is clearer.

This group of people on a tour was reasonably comfortable to take

This on the other hand was uncomfortable to take and I question whether it was an intrusion of privacy, this was one of the chapels within the cathedral where people light candles of remembrance. I pretended to point the camera at something else, then quickly moved for the shot.

I took this photo from the top of an open top tour bus, I wanted to see if this angle would work for a 'street' photo, if there was something interesting going on then it would have been ok but on the whole I don't think the angle really helps this composition. I didn't feel comfortable enough to take photo's of the people on the bus, but they may have been really interesting.

This image again was taken from the open roof bus, it was really comfortable taking this image, one of those situation where taking a photograph is perfectly acceptable.

After looking for an interesting photo  to leap out at me I decided to just shoot as I walked as Daido Morayama walks the streets of Tokyo. I considered cropping out the people walking into the left of the frame but felt this would avert the focus solely to the person just off centre of the frame, I did though convert the image to black and white:

The focus is less on the blue sky and the cathedral although the lines still take the eye to that part of the frame, I prefer the monochrome version, I may return to this spot and wait for something interesting to occur

There is a little more interest in this image as the person on the left of the image is stepping out across the frame, there is often people sat on the left of this spot, maybe this is another future street location