When you fall off the horse, get back on!..

After my disappointing weekend I thought I would take advantage of reading week at University and go into town and cover one of our projects by walking around Manchester taking portraiture photographs.

I thought I would cover all my bases and use the techniques I discussed in my last post. I kept my shutter speed above 1/200 and the results were a lot better. While not perfect, the blur I was experiencing has definitely reduced and it really shows, especially as I was photographing moving subjects.

I had a mixture of results, some I was please with and some I was not so pleased with but at least now I can move on and focus on my technique and the technical side of compositions etc, rather than worrying solely about blur. 

I tried to work on single image narrative and I managed to get one image that showed the contrast between poor and not so poor, the irony of the picture was that the words 'the difference' was written above the door. The concept I feel worked but the picture was poor as it was busy as people walked right into my shot as it was busy, and I was rushing to get the image before I was seen and I have my elusive blur that crept in.

I attempted narrative shots and portraiture with a background story. Brian who was drawing on the street was an interesting guy. At first glance his pictures were not much to look at but when you take a closer look they were very technical and after a conversation he was extremely fascinating.

While he could hardly stand while he was speaking to me, he was telling me some of his history and all about his work as an artist. He was telling me that he has some of his art work exhibited in Greece and he also shared some of his conceptual work with me that he had on his mobile phone. His van had been stolen a few days prior so what he had on show was just a few pieces that he had managed to get together for the day. It was well worth standing with Brian for half an hour chatting.

 I decided a few portrait shots could not be missed, so I honed in on the street musicians to test out my blur control.

I thought I would do some environmental perspective shots while we were in Piccadilly Gardens at the fountain.

 My narrative portraiture shots of the day...

The obligatory street cleaner shot.

The girls in fancy dress..

The funny rude sign...

 It was freezing but it didn't stop some from enjoying the cool sun rays...

and of course the police interrogation...

and the street vendors..

and of course some religion.