Man vs crowds
Having not held a camera in anger since 1992, yes I know that is years ago and yes I realise some of you may not have been born.
I touched base with a good friend who is now heading into his 4th year to get some guidance and advice. Date sorted, timing arranged and in the calendar all I had to do now was relax and look forward to the meet up.
I did not do that, instead I chose to consume photography content on YouTube, like some sort of addiction I found myself running head first into rabbit holes on shutter speeds, aperture and camera settings.
A friend during the week asked me are you not too old to be learning something new?
Maybe, maybe not, who knows?
Anticipation, the constant thought process the night before and maybe too much pasta for dinner had me wide awake at 1am the night before, come 6am the vibration from my whoop on my wrist brought me from my slumber, checking the app I was reliably informed I was in the red for recovery and I should consider a day of rest.
No chance.
Leaving the house and a walk up past Liverpool Street my route took me past what we would later discover was a closed set for either a movie or a tv series being recorded.
Snapping a few pictures along the way of things I liked, I noticed upon viewing them they all had a blue tinge to them. Knowing a little bit about lighting conditions I found comfort in my assessment that the morning light has a large element of blue to it and I carried on with my walk down towards Tower Hill.
My eyes did not let me down as I walked into the park and noticed my friend, akin to a young Dick Van Dyke in the park, he was armed with his recording equipment and making efforts to shepherd pigeon’s towards an area where the sun had split the park via the long casting shadows in the early morning sun.
I have never seen anyone shepherd pigeons but he did a decent job of it and made it look quite easy, despite the looks a few passers by cast toward us.
The dogs boat.
Coffee time followed with a sit down and a chat through settings on the Sony A7 III and a discussion about aperture, shutter speeds and f stop, following that we were on the move, down towards the South Bank.
Take pictures, don’t over think it, just point the camera and click the button. Pushing on and walking through areas I have walked a thousand times, I noticed something I had never paid interest in before.
Crowds.
The enormous volume of people, a collection of bodies in an area.
The difference today? They were all in some way using a device for capturing video or still images. Feeling at this point as if I have wandered around the city many times like some empty headed vessel I found myself asking myself “how have I never seen this before”
I can explain, its the same aspect as buying your chosen car, you pick it, get the keys and hit the happy road of motoring and what happens? Yes you start seeing different colours of your car all over the road, depending on the car and model some have some type of code that involves waving or different light flashing.
Photographers, videographers, content creators, models, fashion shoots and tourists all climbing over each other at certain choke points to grab that perfect shot for their portfolio or instagram collection.
Portfolio, that reminds me, my portfolio page will update in time as the quality gets better and I find my area for photography, I do have a plan but at the moment it has a collection on there that are there as a filler items to pad it out a little bit, as time goes on I will add pictures to it that I feel are portfolio worthy based on my own love of an image.
As Sam was spotted by people that knew him, he took time to talk to them and that gave me more opportunity to wander off without the parental control and find more areas to look at and capture that appealed to me.
A great day with some valuable education, catching up with our mutual gaming content creator friend was the cherry on the cake, it was a super relaxing day with a good amount of exercise and exactly what I needed to get out and start this development journey.
Twenty five thousand steps, 2 pints of Guinness and a fish and chips later, oh and a visit to the DJI store in Regent Street on the way to the tube station I was heading out of the city and north to Cambridge.
I have dropped some of the pictures from the day on here.
I feel I need to fully discover what composition is and the difference between good and bad.
Some of the pictures I took will turn up on the site soon, I am building a content library that will allow me to update regularly and keep a flow of new items appearing on here and other social platforms.
The links are on the header, feel free to follow me, if you have any questions or suggestions then please get in touch.
To check out the friends I have mentioned on here head across to YouTube and search for Snaps by Samosh for your photography fix and check out Mr Sneakz for your gaming content.