Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

The high calling photo play titled Get Out In Black and White challenged us to look at things differently.

As I was in the city taking a photo of a statue for someone on Flickr in Dublin who needed a photo from Brisbane, I decided to plop down on the corner of a busy intersection and just shoot in the two directions that were immediately 90 degrees in front of me. I then cut down to the top 27 pictures of people - just average every day people going about their business, mostly unaware of me taking photos (the advantage of a 70-200 zoom lens.

Claire challenged us to do the following:

• Find a place where there is a lot of activity.
• Fade into the scene by finding a comfortable place to sit or stand.
• Identify an object or person you would like to capture.
• Capture your subject in relation to the whole setting.
• Covert to black and white or use the black and white function on your camera. Email me if you do not know how to do this.
• Blog about the experience and tell us how it stretched you. Also tell us about the boredom you feel, or don’t feel, when it comes to taking pictures. If you want to just give a description to an image on Flickr, that is also acceptable.

How did this stretch me? It forced me to evaluate the actual surroundings. usually i just shoot people - because people interest me. today I was challenged to consider the context. I tried to get the same spot for most of the shots, showing the slight uphill climb, the busy corner, the wait for the crossing lights, and to capture the people in that space. I used a very shallow depth of field deliberately as I still wanted the people to be the primary focus point, but there's enough detail in the multitude of images to display the life of the corner as people pass through it.