Multi-storey

Andrew, I am afraid I am going to be a cantankerous git again and say I am not keen on any of these shots. Of the car park ones, I like Stain the most, and second the (perhaps cropped a bit more top and bottom) Slice, but I don't think any of these are among your best by any stretch of my limited imagination. The street shots all seem a bit noisy and soft. In fact most of them look like massive crops from larger pictures.

I love a lot of your work, and I don't want you to think I only like your delapidated decaying detail stuff. I think you are a very talented photographer, and I know you can do much better than this.

I think if you set your mind to it you could take far better street photographs than these, capturing far more of early 21st Century life than these "humdrum (quote)" shots capture.

I would also love to see what you could do with a wide-angle lens on landscapes or series like the quarry pictures..

Apologies for being blunt and perhaps out of order.

Rant over,
Jon.

Hi Jon,
Thanks for taking the time to comment on the above. I quite agree with everything you say about the street shots which are really only posted to show how excellent Mike's pictures are and how difficult this branch of photography is. They may, as I said, have some value in the future.

I found the whole thing a step too far, really. I'm too self-conscious and felt furtive whilst doing it! But that's just me. I wanted to try something different and get out of my comfort zone. Which I certainly did!

I appreciate your bluntness, honesty and integrity. Please rant and be cantankerous whenever you feel like it!

Now you know why I stick to shooting the birds and the bees, I just cant compete with all this Andrewesqueness

You just wait till I upload my multi-story birdhouse pics

I would hardly call your pictures " a step too far" Andrew, but I know what you mean about taking street photographs. I went out yesterday on a similar mission and came up with a bunch of blurred, badly composed and totally useless pictures. I was trying to follow some advice I had read in a magazine on how to get good street photographs, but to no avail. The only decent ones I have ever managed to get have been by being furtive, with the camera dangling on it's strap, nonchalantly pressing the shutter while hoping that I have something worth recording in the frame! Any decent pictures I have got in this manner have been more by luck than judgement. Some people seem to have a knack for it, and I often wish I did. I also always seem to have the wrong lens on the camera when I am taking street pictures.

Strangely, though, it seems much easier in the third world, where people are generally less suspicious of people with cameras, and are used to seeing foregners snapping away at everything in site.

Street photography seems to be the hardest to get right. You're reliant on everything coming together just so and you won't have time to fiddle with settings.

Weirdly if I do take a camera out in an urban area I find myself pointing it at first floor level or above. In many places the ground floor of shops has been mangled beyond recognition to suit modern retail chain corporate image, but if you look higher up (as hardly anyone else does) you see that originally these were all part of the same building, or that you can make out the cast lettering of the original owner, or similar. Hereford is particularly good for this - there's even a Tudor shop which was simply lifted up and placed on top of a 1960s built ground floor when the town centre was redeveloped then, much like you or I would put a book on a shelf!

Yet when you do see a great street photograph it's so memorable.

My experience exactly, Jon!

My son did produce a really nice set on his A level course a few years ago but that was using a silent and tiny Ricoh R7, one of the best compacts at the time and one I still use occasionally. I'm still waiting for Pentax to produce a compact which isn't universally slated by testers... Much more discreet than a DSLR.

Street togging is one of the hardest genre's to acheive success at. You have to be very confident and up front with poeple sometimes and not care how your perceived by the general public. I have had people shout, "no photo" and you have to respect that. The more you do it the easier it get's

Here is a slideshow of a few of my street efforts.

I heartily recommend people take a look at Stephen's (snappychappie's)slide-show. It's a great set of pictures which present a very different approach to Tim's. The results are more staged, almost but not quite posed, technically very sound.

Thnaks for supplying this link, Stephen.

Excellent slideshow. I like the man with the Sousaphone, but then I would, wouldn't I?

Nice slide-show, I really like the punks with beer.