New look website, new look me...

So with the website revamp almost complete and the first of my new work uploaded it's off into the future we go. So, where is that future leading me?  Short answer...not a clue!

So many times I have tried to plan and plot where I'm going with my work, what I want from it, where I want to be in X years time and guess what...it never came off. That's why I am now going freelance in every sense of the word. the keyword from now on is FREEDOM!!! No, I'm not going to paint me face blue, adopt a very dodgy Scots accent and go marauding around Stirling waving my claymore above my head! Fun though that could be!!

No, from now on I will see where things take me. My first projects for the revamped website were planned in the form of notes, ideas, loads of map research, internet research etc. Then I realised that while I had been doing all that the true first project had smacked me between the eyes and was staring me in the face.

I had taken some shots of people sitting in public squares and parks. These had started to develop into some of my most pleasing work, at least to me, and if I can't please my self I might as well work for someone else. I started to think about why people sit down and it's not as clear cut as it might first seem. Some people seem to never sit down, every second on the go. Others never seem to get up from the chair. Then there are those people who sit because they are weary and need a rest from shopping, walking, playing with the kids. There are others who sit to work, either as musicians, potters, craftsmen, office workers. I noticed that peoples body language can be very different when they sit down, especially in public. That body language gives rise to questions about who they are, why are they sitting down, how do they feel. The same body language can give some answers. I love looking at people and watching before capturing their 'attitude' on camera.

Old soldier, homeless, lonely or just waiting for 'the missus' to finish the shopping?

One thing which should NEVER occur is that the subject be portrayed as anything but dignified. I generally feel that it is a privilege for me and other photographers to be allowed to catch people going about their daily business in order to make good images. It would, in my opinion, be wrong to shoot and display images of anyone out of control and behaving in a manner which if seen would cause embarrassment to themselves and/or their family. I shoot openly and if anyone asked me not to photograph them I would delete the files straight away.

The old gentleman above caught my eye in a small market town. It was a warm late-spring day and I was doing exactly what I was watching others doing; sitting down, watching the world pass before my lens. This man sat down on the bench opposite me and his manner caught my attention immediately. Looking slightly unkempt, as a widower missing his much loved spouse could look, she's looked after him for years and now he's on his own. He chain smoked and immediately lit up another roll-up as soon as one was finished. He had an air of having nowhere to go, no one waiting for him, nothing to do, except smoke. I took several shots of him and noticed that, due to his position outside some shops a lot of people passed behind him. The woman behind him in this shot was talking to someone this side of the man and was smiling. I managed to catch the shot just as she passed behind him.

With some manipulation I isolated him and the woman, she being slightly out of focus, and I feel that by isolating the man with the cheery woman passing behind his loneliness has been made all the more evident and powerful.

Shortly after the man got up and wandered off, still puffing on his cigarette and in no particular hurry to be anywhere. I hope he was off to the pub to meet his friends.