Images: Albany Road

Albany Road is my closest shopping street. I have not taken pictures with any dedication for weeks. I'm writing up my thesis, and the only predictable time I leave home is when I go to drink coffee. I am getting into having a little half an hour stroll around Albany Road when I do so. There's not much going on. People shopping, Tesco eating and spitting people, Iceland all red and charity shops. Sometimes workers giving a new look to a shop or building. The brighter days, at four in the evening the sun starts to elongate the shadows along the pavement. Again at eight in the morning. It's strange to shoot in my neighbourhood as sometimes I bump into people I know (and I'm unable to really stop for a chat).

Story: the story of Maz

I met Maz at a party. It was sometime in the early Autumn of 2005, maybe September. It was probably before October, I think. Everybody left in October. It was at the house of my friend Petra -when she still was here-, next to the tracks of the train. I spent time picking raspberries in my way there and then we took buckets to go down to the tracks to keep on picking. There was a fire and a barbaque. It was warm for Cardiff. The sun was setting and I picked a guitar and played with this guy that had bongos with him. His name was Maz and he was the boyfriend of this one girl from Swaziland I had met before. The girl was savage -in a nice way-, so straightforward and fun, really lacking that British defect (or barrier) of the Politeness. Once over dinner, when a friend said that she was vegetarian, my Swazi friend replied disgusted: "vegetarian? you're useless!" I really enjoyed that. She was even more surprised when I told her that I ate my meat raw sometimes: "you're evil!" That was great, I love teasing people. Anyhow, we got on well and lots of times spent drinking till late (beer, wine, the bottle of vodka, that bottle of whisky she had at hers when I walked her back with a friend a long long way at night very very late to the residences where the students are so so noisy).

Well, so there was Maz with his bongos, me with a guitar, a fire taking care of the loads of meat, the sunset behind us -making the sky blue and bright like in a summer day- and buckets full of berries. We played I'm Waiting for the Man at least three times; before, while and after drinking, which meant that we never played the same song. It was great, it just got longer and better and more twisted and it had more stories and that drumming got louder and more monotonic and faster till it was part of the night like the stars above us. Which means that nobody cared a shit, excepting Maz and me, of course. Maz told me that he was going to visit Quasi -his girlfriend- in Swaziland. I thought he was mad, just never do those things for a girl unless you really know what you do. We have all been young and mad, which is the reason why we are all old and mad now. And the night turned morning.



I met Maz in the pub. Since that night with the Man and the berries I hadn't seen him or heard from him. My first question was... man, did you really go to Swaziland? He did, he really did. I was amazed. It was one of those places I hadn't heard much about, where white men go with cameras to say they've been there. We kept on chatting about it with a beer, we kept on chatting about it in the urinals with a beer in the hand and then back in the pub. Maz went to Swaziland for a month in a quest of adventure and passion. Brilliant. When he got there he found that she had met another man and this guy was not very happy about Maz being around. None the less he took part of the ritual ceremony in front of the King. I can picture it. This huge flat dusty plain full of men dressed with a piece of animal skin, a shield and a spear. In the middle of it, our white and chubby Maz popping out like a raisin in a scorn. He told me it took a bit to get in synch with all his Swazi, that children all skilled with their spear were giggling at him, but after a while he got into it. "It's all about hitting the shield with the spear" he said and jumping to the sides (Rocky Horror anybody?). There he is, the white man with the shield in the middle of those muscular black bodies dancing in a velvia sunset of reds and purples, almost naked, in a country not of his own, with the trance-like drumming going on for hours, without really a girlfriend anymore and wondering what to do next. I forgot to mention that her parents talked about marriage. Yes, he met them. In the backroom her father said that ten cows would do. Some other girls were more cows, but she was getting a bit old (mid twenties) and had a child, so that seems to give you a bit of a reduced price. But instead of leaving, Maz stayed in Swaziland. And he had fun and adventures for a couple of weeks and he really loved it. He was a bit disappointed about not learning more drumming techniques there. At the end of the day it's an adorable place. He tried to call me but I was in Italy.

I met Maz in the pub. It was about a month ago. We watched rugby. We drank a pint. We drank a couple of pints more. It's a long time since I've touched a bottle of whisky. We talked about music, the Underground, the Pistols. He plays with a band. At some point I got home.


(The image is some random house party I shot before the end of the last term.)

Life: the end of the Staff Club?

Anthony just sent me an email to this news from the South Wales Echo. It seems to be that the councils have taken action on the club and locked it. There is a note on a window saying:

"Take notice that we, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Bridgend, Caerphilly and Merthyr Tydfil (county borough councils), owners and persons entitled to possession of these premises, have today re-entered thereon in accordance with our power to do so and as a consequence of such re-entry, the premises have been secured."



That sounds quite dramatic. For what I had understood the club had been in a bit of a 'limbo' in terms of who posessed it or who took care of it since Mid Glamorgan was divided in those four councils. In the shadows, in the bottom of some pile of bureacratic scribbling, the club kept on going and eventually managed to be the Real Ale club of the year. The atmosphere is the one of the forgotten club, with the old wallpapers and old customers. Hopefully things change to better in the next days. Fuck, I need a pint. Strong one. Who does serve me now?

(Image is a composition of two slides shot by me. The guy sitting down and smiling is Maciej, the guy standing and shooting is a local with Maciej's camera.)

How far is close enough?

What do these two images (first by Jonas Bendiksen and second by Susan Meiselas) have in common?






Well, believe it or not, both are pictures of somebody stepping on a puddle. I love the colorful and twisted image produced by Bendiksen, the sense of scale... but the first time I saw it I completely missed the girl in the bloody DEAD CENTRE of the frame stepping on a puddle. In this unreal image, a girl in an absolutely deserted street carefully lifts her foot towards the water. What if I had seen it directly, as if we were very close to her? Probably the whole aura of mystery and the game would have died. But what if I never got to see her? I guess I'm lucky to have the book, in which she's a lot easier to see that in this poor jpg...

Street in the web: Hardcore Street Photography on flickr

I guess that most of the virtual readers of this blog (if there are any) know about the flickr group hardcore street photography that I've been helping to administer for about a month. As an online street photography group is probably one of the biggest and most active that can be found on the net. Many people knew about street on the first place, or learnt to shoot it by reading the threads and looking at the images that make up the pool. This pool grows every day with the addition of an average of five new pictures. This is quite a slow intake if we take in account that the group receives about two hundred submissions and thirty new members a day. The images are sent by all kinds of people: those who give their first steps in street photography and managed to take a good shot and maybe later on manage to make more of a track into it, those who have been shooting street for a while or try ocasionally and even those who have managed to make quite something out of it. In general, a very worthy group to give a look at if you are interested in street photography either for viewing, showing your work or for improving your style. After all, it's an open forum.

Ok, so instead of that much chit chat, lets go to see what the pool looks like. I've selected some shots that came out since I started curating. This is just a personal selection and it's not by any means comprehensive of styles or highlights.


(by james1hour)


(by keith15)


(by Hugo*)


(by buchanear7)


(by | GW |)


(by hinius)


(by shveckle)


(by eyeblink)


(by macskata)


(by David Solomons)


(by flat5five)


(by rafmad)


(by bennybedlam)



It's nice all that mixture of photographers and formats actually.

Life: going for film to Grangetown

-I was not sure what to write today. A male pagan poledancing? Why three midgets dressed like tomatoes are Marks and Spencer food? A paper about individual differences at different stages of visual processing?-

Today, this evening at twenty past six, I left to Grangetown to get film. Somehow Royal Mail had managed to not deliver it to me and left one of those notes saying "sorry, but you weren't home". I checked redeliveries and the website didn't find my package. So I had to walk to Grangetown, one of those dingy areas of town populated by big huge shops (IKEA, a supermarket, a car dealer), empty roads and ambar coloured street lights. Actually, I took a train from central. It left me in this train station with a small roof and bench in the middle of it. Some blokes run to the departing train shouting something about killing somebody. I walk down the stairs and into the road.

I get my film, unpack it and ditch it in my rucksack. Forty rolls of thirty five mill and thirty rolls of one twenty. Total, a hundred and twenty quid. Better this way than the last one, when my Amazon package of books was left outside the door and somebody had just opened it (sorry pal, it was not a mp3 player).

Back on the station some guys chat under the dim light. Two guys on the stairs smoke and one of them asks the other, "is he foreign?", "no, don't think so". The bunch of people on the bench make me look posh and stylish by comparison. One of them is a woman with a stray dog. Half of the group departs for a train. A man, small, without many teeth turns and asks "what's your names?" and they exchange a few names before he finally jumps on the train. And I still have to wait eight minutes there.

On the way home I stop in Subway for dinner. When I sit down a woman enters and orders her sandwich with double cheese and bacon. Wow, we still have higher classes. I check her out, but the additional money spent doesn't make her any less unattractive.

Spotlight: People I have Asked by stpiduko

Finally a touch of colour in this blog. stpiduko (I call him Eamon) shoots portraits of strangers. He's quick. Approaches a person, asks politely, and has probably shot by when the subject is getting out of the shock. Apart of all the blablabla that he does in the previous blog you can also see his stuff as a more stylish photoblog.









People shot anywhere stopped in the middle of their daily affairs. Something catches our eye in the images. The girl that has been shopping, the dressed up man in a party, somebody's new sunglasses. A very simple cross section of what the street looks like in 2007.












The complete series of People I Have Asked are here. Every now and then there are new images added. I think that Eamon wants to make a thousand...

Shoot like... Bruce Gilden

You walk minding your own business in some street. At day, at night, doesn't matter. Maybe in Tokyo, maybe in New York. If you're unlucky, even in Puerto Principe. Suddenly, a big figure, with head covered with a dark hat, lots of clothing creates a bearlike embrace. A tremendous flash of light follows. You're blinded. He dissapeared. Was this an alien abduction? A kidnap attempt? Well, most probably, it was Bruce Gilden.





If there's somebody that shoots physically close, that's Gilden. And he's not subtle, no way. He shoots with flash even in daylight. He's probably not the invisible photographer, but the stunning factor is on his side. His images of New York make it look like a frenetic and mad city, even if he focuses on the individuals that populate it. Japan is nasty, dark, full of tough yakuza guys with tattoos and cigarettes. His fashion magazine is an ode to mafia capos and beautiful femme fatales. He's cool and blunt. His aesthetics follow that bluntness.














You need

A small 35mm camera and a flashgun. It doesn't matter if the x-sync of your flash is not the fastest ever (no leaf shutter needed!) as a bit of that blurriness of slow shutter speeds add to the feel.

A wide angle lens. Accounts vary, but Gilden seems to shoot with a 28mm or a 24mm lens. Probably with both.

Lots of practice shooting with the camera in one hand and the flash in the other. Come on, it's not easy to focus when you do this! Also, take in account that the power of the flash or the aperture have to be set in accordance to the distance to the subject (to not underexpose or overexpose). Try to do this with one hand. Hard, innit? Well, after all you'll end up pre-exposing almost every shot. So you need to know what to shoot.

Bodyguards. I mean, you can't do this and stay alive for very long. You can call them assistants. It sounds cool, and makes you sound more like a photographer than a local godfather. (There's a cached blog entry about this.)

Lots of balls. In the female version you can find your local equivalent. You shoot close and people see you. You shoot closer if you just can't be close.

A strange eye for composition. You focus in parts of people. An expression, a few hands. The woman with the nice hat and the man with the watch look promising... get close, closer, you have nothing else in the frame, you shoot. That's it. Get rid of the backgrounds and streets, who wants them.

Good dresscode. First of all, silent shoes or trainers. Don't try slippers, they don't give that slightly rough image you have to keep for keeping your subjects away from you after shooting. Dodgy hats and gloves help. A beard. Make it look as if you just stole that Leica in your last 'job'.


Pros

Some stunning images. So close, so big. Wow factor guaranteed.

Fashion editors think that you're so odd that they want you to shoot some beautiful models with nice handbags. Gosh.

You find subject matter everywhere. After all, you only need people. The more variety and the weirder exemplars found, the better.


Cons

You have to compete with Bruce Gilden.

Risk factor: you can end up badly beaten by your local version of mafia or criminals. Even football hooligans are nasty, man! Remember, even if you are invisible, your flash is not.

You depend a lot on good and tight editing. After all, most of the shots are done in a similar fashion and the ones that work really work. Lots of chances to get beaten up before you finish a book.

Short life expectancy. Do I have to repeat this? (Wait till we review Robert Cappa, a war photographer whose motto is "If your photos are not good enough, you're not close enough.)

You can run out of batteries for your flash. Seriously, you need to carry plenty of crap unless you shoot with an XA2 with an A9 flash.

Your pictures are not that popular with all audiences.

Overall

If you have a taste for action, give it a go. After all shooting like Bruce Gilden teaches you lots of technique. And balls. You can also meet some interesting people. Anyhow, if you apreciate having legs, you might still want to stick to shooting like Henri Cartier-Bresson. If you have a thing for shooting people with flash and don't like the risk involved in shooting like Bruce Gilden, you might want to consider shooting like Diane Arbus. Soon we will have her 'shoot like' in this blog.

Life: last night

Yesterday I joined Maciej to help out in a shooting for Kruger magazine. He shot this one guy, Scott H Biram on the middle of a not-busy-enough road in the center of Cardiff. I tried to reflect light from the headlights of a car while one of the fellas from Kruger lit the other side of the face with a torch. It's not like the setups made by Crewdson, but it already puts you off about shooting arranged scenes. (Scott seems like a nice chap, even if we managed to almost kill him a couple of times and basicly kidnapped him for half an hour of torture... he earned his pint really)

After the disappointment of the shooting I went to watch the France - England rugby match. France lost, so I ended up at Mathieu's drinking half a bottle of cheap LIDL vodka. While we drank and listened to something similar to Daft Punk but that's not Daft Punk (I couldn't tell the difference, really) we left the slideshow of hardcore street photography in the background. I'm happy. The pool looks coherent and it has enough single hits as for keeping people's attention for a while and make them wonder what comes next. Good job.





I then went to town to shoot (maybe the time was about 1?). These two blokes were staring at the sky and pointing at it, hugging each other. I shot. The flash went off and I thought they wouldn't see me. One turned around:

- If I see any shit published about Cardiff City I'll beat you up.
- I don't work for Cardiff City.
- We're Cardiff City supporters. We don't want any more shit about us in the newspapers.
- Oh, I see, I don't work for a newspaper, it's my project, I shoot at night. A lot.
- Cool! Were are you from? Give us a hug!

I should have never said that I prefer rugby to football. The thing kept on going on. They wanted to keep on drinking and I said that the Great Western is still open. It's a pub after all. Some girls were walking past, with short black trousers. One of my new friends shouts to them if they want to be in a picture. No way, I think. This guy is so drunk that nobody is going to get at range from him. The girls walk to me and one holds me. The other guy takes the camera. I have never seen so many framings crossing somebody's head in a second. It twists and bends in his hand, from forty five degrees to one side to the opposite, he barely is able to put it at his eye and even less to keep it level. I have the other guy at my right and this random girl at the left. She's fit and I put my hand on her left shoulder. I should do like Anthony and put it on her arse. Never going to see her again anyhow. God, sometimes I wish I was Welsh. And half a bottle of vodka is not enough. The flash goes off.

Later, when a police truck crosses the street I end up at the other side of the road. I decide to leave. I eat chips with curry and cheese. On my way home I see a bunch of girls with boxing gloves. I pass them. I keep an eye in case something happens. Up in the Hayes a car slowly passes them and stops. Two guys inside start a chat with them. You can smell the moment. I turn around and walk towards them, take out the XA1 and wait. I shoot. Two girls were talking with the guy in the car, with boxing gloves hanging from their necks. The third girl had the boxing gloves on, was fed up of them and walking towards the camera. I call that a moment to shoot, come on.

- You freak! she shouts.
- Hi. That was good.
- Delete that picture!
- I can't, it's film.
- Give me the camera!

The other girls come towards me.

- I can't, I think it's private property. It was a good moment, car stopped with two guys, lots of girls with boxing gloves. I don't see that every day.
- Freak. Keep on walking!

I keep on walking back home. They tell me to walk the other way. I don't listen, I walk faster. At the end the shot will be crap anyhow and fall out in an edit, I think. I chat in a corner with some people about photography. This one guy tells me that he has a relationship with his friend. Obviously they don't have one, but he leeches on his neck. I cross the church, some girls stare at me. I should talk less with my subjects.


Picture: Advantages of the roman dresscode - Cardiff. J. Karanka.

Story: cats are stimulated ovulators

I was yesterday evening at the Pen and Wig. At some point I ended up listening to a conversation by a biologist that I had to write down. It was by far better than the one about blokes from some island in the Pacific coming over to London to look for some godlike English prince. This is her story:

My cat was still a kitten when it got into heat. That's very early. In a discussion in a party a vet friend told me that cats are stimulated ovulators. That means that physical stimulation makes them ovulate, even if it's before the time. And in heat, my kitten would display to all males. Display by a female cat involves lingering around, exposing the back and lifting the tale, spraying gently, etc. At some point, because nobody in the party could find a pencil, the vet decided to stimulate the cat with the only thing that could be found: a matchstick. Figure it out. You have this two guys, a veterinarian and a normal bloke that's allergic to cats. One of them holds and immobilises the cat and the second sticks a matchstick in its vagina. Probably scared, or maybe absolutely freaked out (how would you feel?) the kitten produces a huge spray of liquid. The allergic guy suddenly is all soaked and freaked out. And in the room -in the middle of a party- you have a cat running with a matchstick hanging out of her bottoms. Later, the matchstick was retrieved.

In the meanwhile I was chatting with a guy in the middle of a (complicated) divorce in the patio. My best friend ran away with him to travel the world.


Picture: Run Zumi! Run like the wind! by Malingering.

Life: "want to run out and take pictures"

Somehow reading this one post by Alec Soth sticked in my mind: Reflections in the helmet shield. It starts by describing the complicated equipment needed for a magazine shot. Later on it describes the even more complicated setup used by Gregory Crewdson for creating what I would say is an extremely elegant and boring image. Alec notes: "As with the VF cover, this doesn’t make me want to run out and take pictures."

When do you feel the drive of going out to the world and tell something in images? It's amazing to see the joy that the process can produce. At least the result. This is the only image I have ever seen that makes drying negative look like a romance:



That there is Trent Parke, who develops his film every day, no matter where he is. Gosh. Seeing something like that makes me want to go out to take pictures and at night nail them over the window, hear them bend and twist and crackle as they dry, and watch that spider that lives with me keep on building its net. I just pity my film because it will not dry here:



Time to go to the pub approaches.

Technique: how to hold your Leica (or things that Garry Winogrand didn't know?)

Here is my first go at explaining technique. Where to start from? Oh well, how to hold your Leica, of course! Lets see it in images:



How does it feel? Nice, eh? As can be seen on the picture on the left, this technique is easy. You grip robustly your small 35mm camera with both hands, surrounding it gently. The right hand goes around the right side of the camera, and the left around the left side of the camera. Don't forget to make the lens point forwards! Feels nice, eh? Well, now you have to place your right index finger on top of the shutter (without pressing, that might waste your film, mate!) and place your eye on the viewfinder. Depending on the camera the viewfinder might be located in different places. Look at the back of your camera to figure out where it is. Usually it is a round or rectangular hole and you can see through. In case of using a SLR, search on google, as you might have to take the lens cap off before seeing anything. You might have noticed that we have been talking about the right hand till now. But we have two hands and cameras are complicated. The left hand is usually used for focusing the lens. The lens is that element with glass that protuberates out of the front of your camera. Light gets in and sucked into film by the use of magical chemicals that we will cover some other day.

Do you feel comfortable? Does it feel nice, eh? That Leica is almost under your thumb now. Now, you have to do what Garry Winogrand never managed to do. Hold the camera at level. Yes, nice. Looking through the viewfinder things should look straight. Also your bearlike grasp will make things sharp. You might get all kinds of funny blur and shake if you do otherwise. Lets see an example. In case you hold the camera as in the example on the right, the result might look instead like this:



Flawed. I've taken the liberty of correcting this image. If Winogrand had not been in a hurry to go to buy more doughnuts he would have shot it as in the example on the left handside. Then the image would have looked as seen next. I must say that I took off the man on the right handside for ease of rotation and cropping. It also makes it just flawless:





Picture: World's Fair, New York, 1964, by Garry Winogrand.
First image comes from the instruction manual of the Leica 3F.

Life: at the Staff Club

It's a bit over half past five, on a Wednesday here in Cardiff. Already one hour ago Maciej texted me that he had had three pints at the Staff Club. This place is our Mecca. It's also Maciej's Paris. I would say that it's Maciej's Doisneau's Paris, but I'm not sure if the English language can strech words and sentences so far. Like any place that you know as well as your childhood neighbourhood, the whole life is represented there. It's also a great place to chat, meet people (or should I say wonderfull characters?), drink very cheap beer and sing in the karaoke. At least I sing in the karaoke till they take the microphone from my hands.



Enjoy life. That's the message in pictures that could be told of the Staff Club. Some other day the rest of that will be in the spotlight over here. In the meanwhile I think about how important is to have one of those meeting points, a secret cave, house on the tree or haven where everything is comfortable and feels like at home. You know everybody and everybody is accepted. Where do asses go?

I'm now off to enjoy myself, chat about things that matter, have a beer and later on go to my own small private Paris.


Picture by Maciej Dakowicz.

Exhibition: Paul McDonough at Sasha Wolf

I just read about this exhibition at in-Public (the home of street photography ;-)). I was not very surprised by any of the pictures. They have a snapshot tendency, they are close, but they are not complicated enough for my taste. They are somehow extremely true: an expression, a gesture, a couple kissing, a handshake... that kind of stuff. All shot in the late sixties in New York. Amidst all the pictures, I must say that I love this one:



It fairly much summarizes the style of the exhibition: simple, straightforward and not pretentious at all. It's harder to define what I like of the image. Maybe that it's not a lie in any sense. Somehow it strikes me for it's poor framing. The legs are not in there! I mean, he's small enough to aim at, I guess. There's a bit of a light leak on the top, or maybe it just needs some burning. He looks worried and I have no clue at what's going on at that side of the frame. What do we have there at the bottom right? And the top... oh, headless people, sweet.

Many more images at the Sasha Wolf Gallery.

Conversation: explaining me (to Gareth Jelley)

Gareth Jelley: My brain goes "ah, I want that moment", then the camera comes up. I used to worry a lot more about where everything was in the frame, but I don't worry so much now. I tend to trust my instinct... but it is hard. Bryan made a comment about knowing when not to shoot - when you see something but know it won't make a photo.
Joni Karanka: Yeah.
GJ: That is the key - eliminating the "moments" that are good moments, but can't be good photos.
JK: The funny thing is that most things will make a picture.
GJ: Well... yes...
JK: Oh, moment-wise? Yeah, I know I'm not the right person to shoot many things.
GJ: But there are certain things I don't shoot. I'd never shoot the things you shoot.
JK: I just went with Maciej to shoot the rugby matches, and it's not my place to shoot. I know it, I just don't like it. One reason is because there's too much content already. There are situations that are so loaded with meaning that they don't mean anything anymore. I don't shoot that.





GJ: Yeah. Too much clutter hurts my brain, sometimes.
JK: It's not the clutter. It's the meaning. A French fan is a French fan. It's so loaded that it's not surreal anymore.
GJ: Hahaha.
JK: You recognize it, and then it's not a picture of a person doing something strange. It's worthless. It's just a fan. It makes things make sense.
GJ: You are definitely moving more and more towards abstraction.
JK: Sure, at least now I know it. I didn't know it.
GJ: Your shot of the girl hiding I liked, on one level. I wasn't sure about the composition. But I could see exactly why you shot it.
JK: That, yes. I had two shots. The other composition was more strange, less perfect and better. Not so balanced.
GJ: It was a very Joni-moment, in lots of ways…
JK: Yeah!
GJ: …but the composition seemed to kill it.
JK: Too much composition is another loaded gun…





Captions to my pictures:
French fans before the match - Queen Street.
Girl in wall - Milano.

Blogalizing

Just got my first link from another blog. Flickrfy blogged one of my pictures. Slowly it starts to leak into the net.

Spotlight: They called me a corporate whore, by Hin Chua

The daily commute to the City. The skyscrapers and the glass gurkin casting their shadows on the passerbies. The expensive clothes, cigars. It's all black or grey. The day never ends. You wait and wait as the watch ticks slowly. You catch your boss for a screwdriver in the corporate bar. He's earns twice your salary and still complains. When you get home you've lost your tie.










That's what Hin Chua's series of black and white pictures make me think about. Finished off with a nice neorrealist style and some sense of humour, they give me a feel of something I don't want to be. It's too obvious to say that Hin's world is made of men in suits, spreadsheets and clocks ticking, but well, it's also true. I wouldn't miss all the references to other photographers in the complete series. First one here: