At the request of Nokia, and armed with one of their Lumia 920 handsets, I’ve spent the last 2 days at the ONE campaign’s agit8 concert which aimed to raise awareness and protest against world poverty. Concerts are certainly not a new scenario to me, but it was Monochrom’s first time and I was curious to see how it coped.
Jools Holland and Sir Tom Jones
It wasn’t my intention to seek out the always present paparazzi, but gravitate to them I did. I thought they might know more than I did about the layout of the event, but no. They’d received calls and just turned up. After I’d shown them my copy of the line up and schedule, we were life long friends!
Juliet Stevenson
I have to say, as a slightly minimalist street photographer, I find the large throngs of people difficult to photograph. Singling out behaviour and situations amongst a mass of people can get stressful, so I decided to find the small moments by concentrating on my fellow photographers and the exiting artists.
Jeremy Irvine,Richard Curtis and Ellie Goulding
Amelia Lily, pausing for the media.
All, bar one, of the photographers were freelance. Their days are long, often starting at 6 and working through multiple destinations throughout London. Any opportunity is grabbed to dump compact flash cards to their macbook pros, select candidate images, straighten, crop and upload. It’s easy to see why they shoot primarily in JPEG. So who was the one? The Getty photographer of course. Universally hated for their near constant ability to get the best locations, often well behind the impenetrable line of security.
Jeff Bright
I have to say, the streets are far more enjoyable, but Monochrom performed admirably! I’ll probably do a follow up post with a few more from these 2 days.
Have a great weekend all!
Michael
ps, Did you get the Annoying Flies reference? Paparazzi?
The presence of kids in street images either makes or breaks them. This one is all the better for the two faces of skepticism and awe at the inverted juggler.
My default frame orientation is landscape. It’s just easier and quicker to raise and focus the camera like this. Every so often, tall scenes come along and require me to step out of my comfort zone into … portrait!
Enjoy 100% portrait images from London’s streets.
Dapper in purple
The Ghost Bus
Shopping Tall
No. 197 Blackfriars Rd
My camera came back from Leica last week, repaired, calibrated and cleaned, so I took the opportunity to wander the streets in search of life in through rangefinder.
St Christopher’s Place
London Visitor
Bench with a view
Soho Square, at lunch time. Literally hundreds of people commanding a few feet of space for the precious sun.
Like sardines!
I couldn’t resist this architectural shot when I walked through Southwark Underground Station.
…seems to be the 20 working day turn around they claim. An eternity. Although I did take one with my cell phone during this hiatus.
Graffiti (Nexus 4)
These next 2 with Monochrom.
Store Windows I
Store Windows II
You may think there’s little apparent difference, but I couldn’t extract much tone and detail from the Nexus 4 image.
It does go to show that opportunity on the street is still an opportunity not to be missed. Even with just a cell phone.
Michael
When I picked up my Leica Monochrom, one of the first things I did was to look up other Monochrom shooters. There are quite a few around the globe, but Stephen’s work really stood out to me and I immediately ‘bookmarked’ him as a Photographer to follow.
It turns out my work has also attracted his attention and, this week, I am featured Photographer on his quite excellent blog.
Please click the image and have a read, but also stay to check out Stephen’s work; he has a wickedly keen eye for street photography.
