On Aesthetically Pleasing Walls, Trouser Triplets and Taking Mental Pictures
The quiet photograph and when to take a mental picture
I’m trying something a bit different. I’m going to talk through a photo, in the moment, as I’m taking it. The process and the narrative behind it.
‘Shadow Tree’
Right now I’m stood by a wall a tiny bit nervous about having my phone out.
I’ve seen lots go on here. It’s an area where people often smoke crack, steal bikes and get into scrapes, but it’s morning and it’s quiet.
Not even the howling cat lady from the Brutalist building across the street is awake.
This caught my eye as I walked past.
‘Flag Red’
I take out my camera and frame the shot. I don’t want any unnecessary clutter and I’m trying to get the 2D flatness I like in my images.
As I’m framing I notice a waft of sweet, almost caramelised, piss.
It’s the brightest day we’ve had this year and the sun’s gently heating up thousands of historical urinations levelled against this wall.
It comes in waves and reminds me of sauna and the heat that ebbs and flows, only it’s piss.
(Incidentally, this a Storybook from a day’s shooting in London. It’s an article that first appeared on my website, Lost in the Trip, here , but I’ve reinvigorated it for Substack).
Inventing Meaning From Meaningless Mess on a Wall
I like the simplicity and the brash, clean colour palette of ‘Flag Red’. I like the accidental canvas from the peeling wall.
The writing itself feels meaningful.
I have no idea what it means but it probably means something important to someone.
It reminds me of being a teenager in history class sitting next to my mate Ian. I’m looking at paragraph in a textbook that talks about the Red Scare in the US in the 50s. I don’t know why the memory is lodged in my head but the words ‘Flag Red’ trigger it.
It’s not likely a reference to that passage in my old textbook but who knows, it might be. It’s probably an instruction of where to drill something for a maintenance person… or maybe a tag from a graffiti artist.
A wall and a daubing of unknowns.
In world that insists on labelling and categorising and defining meaning, this moment of uncluttered abstraction and of not knowing, is welcome.
Knowing When Not to Bother Taking a Shot (And Being Cool With It)
There’s a group of three workmen, just around the corner. I am in their blind spot and they can’t see me. I luxuriate in the time and space I have to get my tatty ‘Flag Red’ wall shot.
When I stop shooting I take another look at the workmen.
All of them are smoking, wearing grey tracksuit trouser bottoms and yellow Hi Vis vests. Fogged up sartorial triplets.
Would they make a good photo? They should.
I think about crossing the road to get a picture, but I don’t.
Years ago I would have wrestled with this.
Get the shot at all costs, think later. But there’s that slight back of mind, sometimes front of mind, hassley element to street photography.
Maybe hassley is not the right word. It’s fear of intruding into someone else’s world.
Some photographers are naturally great at navigating this. Others have to cross the mythical 10,000 hour threshold of doing a thing repeatedly until it loses it’s fear factor.
A key realisation for any photographer, or creative (or human for that matter) is the realisation that if your intention is good and you do something confidently, it puts everyone else at ease.
Nervously stealing photos with a camera held at strange angles while your eyes dart back and forth and your body language is stiff and sneaky makes you stand out.
It’s a creep klaxon. At best you look like a spy, at worst a pervert. Trying to game invisibility doesn’t work.
‘Pee Pee’
If you calmly, confidently and slowly frame your shot with intention in your body and a smile on your face you become part of the scene.
You are unthreatening, you’re not acting nervously. You are meant to be there.
I understand this - and I am better at this now than I was 20 years ago - but I still have a love hate relationship shooting street photos.
From a purely aesthetic standpoint I’m not a fan of subjects looking shocked or surprised in my photos. The ‘Bruce Gilden’ approach isn’t my cup of tea.
With that said I’m obsessed with street photography as an art form. Well done, it’s a blend of wit, surprise, superhuman framing and pure, beautiful happenstance. I just don’t always love doing it.
I say that now, still stood by this pissy wall. But I know I’ll want another street photography hit at some point.
The difference in my photography now, to say several years ago, is that I’m more comfortable assessing whether or not to take the shot.
I still take street photos – especially if I think there’s a potential banger – but I take more time to assess if the background is interesting enough or if there is enough going on in the photo.
That’s what I faced today with my triplet gentlemen. It was a scene that should have the ingredients of an interesting story, photographically.
They had interesting faces. Pockmarked and full of stories. There was also some interest from the plumes of smoke.
But the background was too cluttered. A busy road on one side, an ugly hoarding the other.
They were sat and stood around a stone bench (sounds interesting, it wasn’t), phones out. They weren’t angled in an interesting way.
Not Everything Works Better as a Photograph
I knew it wouldn’t make an interesting photo.
It was one of those instances where my eyes saw and then reimagined, something more interesting than I could have captured with my camera.
That’s ok.
Sometimes it’s good to take advice from some of life’s great philosophers.
As Joey from Friends once said: “Take a Mental Picture”.
‘Wistful’
Know when your eyes and head will do a better job.
I can picture their frowns. Frown lines that said hard living. Frown lines like canyons.
I can still enjoy that they were dressed in matchy outfits in my mind’s eye.
Swarthy men dressing the same is something I’d normally associate with teenage girls going to a K Pop concert.
To have captured all that with the camera I would have had to have taken multiple shots. Close ups of their faces with a portrait lens. A wide angle shot of them together doing something interesting – which might have taken half an hour or more.
This isn’t something any of us would have enjoyed. I’d probably end up peeling bits of camera off the pavement and my face.
So I try not to be too hard on myself and if you’ve struggled with this, you should too.
Not every scene will make a great photo, even if you want it to, even if you feel like it should. Enjoy the moment for what it is. There will be thousands more that will work beautifully behind a lens.
In pursuit of ‘The Quiet Photograph’
The quiet photo, as I pretentiously call it, is want I’ve been drawn to more recently, for the last 5 or 6 years.
It can be a photo of any genre – landscape, urban, abstract, even street – that has an opaque calm to it.
It’s a shape, it’s a sleepy angle, it’s a very still, geometrical tower block. It’s a happy juxtaposition that doesn’t assault the senses.
‘Mondrian and Rothko’s Child’
This was taken outside a corner shop this morning, near where I used to live, which I’m obsessed by.
There’s always something odd going on with this wall.
Usually it’s rubbish or discarded stock left outside, precariously balanced against the wall. It’s like this because they don’t have access to a big enough bins or storage everything sits outside.
Painted crates and other items scrape against the wall and so you get accidental minimalist expressionist pieces emerging.
It’s a contrast to a new development in Hackney Wick which is covered in swanky new apartments now.
But still the occasional jolt of humour.
‘That’s a Nice Contrast’
This graffiti artist, who I’ve only ever seen tag a tiny area in Hackney, just writes the word ‘THATS’.
No context, no apostrophe.