Insight into my Associate Panel (hopefully)
Life on the London Underground
I have been travelling to London for over 25 years, getting around on the underground and seeing all kinds of people going about their daily lives.
I should explain, I am not a real street photographer but have always loved the idea of doing some kind of street/candid photography, which I think this panel falls into this genre, but I never saw anything that set me off, that I wanted to go chase and shoot it all the time, until about 3+ years ago. I saw this man sitting reading his paper on the underground tube and I just happened to be reading a text I received. I then got the idea to use my phone to try capture him, and this was the start of it, I had found my project to do. I also wanted the images to have a different feel to them. An Old approach, giving my images a feeling like they were shot a long time ago, like turn of the century. I thought about the old Tintype process, early 19th century, it was done on plate cameras and most were wet plates…well I could not really do this on the London underground. If I did I would have been most likely been arrested and locked up. Also a camera would take the candid look away, as people would not be relaxed or in their own little world if they saw me with a camera taking their pictures.
So I have an app on my phone which allows me to set up and shoot in the fashion of Tintype photography technique so I married the idea of an old process Tintype with todays technology my IPhone to produce my body of work. I have been working on this project for a couple of years now. Any time I can get to London I go shooting on the underground trains and platforms.
What I noticed about shooting on the underground is that everyone is in their own little worlds and unless they were with someone they knew there was no interaction between people. They would not even make eye contact, just start looking on their phones, pads, tablets maybe even open a real book to read or a newspaper. But there was all sorts of emotion there as well, I have seen people crying, sadness, laughter, even praying, or just lost in their thoughts. And me being the nosey type watching to see what everyone was doing, I then tried to capture what I saw in front of me.
A few things about shooting this type of image on the underground, it was all done unknown to the people I shot, in the world around us these days, people are just not as friendly as they used to be and if caught taking their photographs I could be in a lot of trouble. So using a real camera could be a problem. So what I did was shoot my images from the hip on my phone. I could not see what I was getting on my phone most of the time, until later on, and then what I was shooting on the tube was long gone, I did understand the angle of view of my camera lens so with a lot of practice I knew what I was shooting, but this still did not mean I got everything I was after. As I said I did this without people knowing I was shooting them, but if you look, you will see some people kind of knew I was shooting but were not really sure, So I got away with it. One of the problems with shooting from the hip is you don’t know what you really have until you get home and study your days shooting, I got some really great shots but I also got a lot and I mean a lot of rubbish as well, such as hands, feet, walls, floors and doors etc.
My other issue was the lighting on the tube, most times it was quite low just what is on the tube but the phone handled it well enough I think. The old Tintype process also added to the effect I was looking for, because with this process the images were not always razor sharp because the tube was moving or on the platform in the station I was walking, and the old Tintype process well it was a slow ISO so with long exposures, poor lens’s and emulsion that was wet on the plate and so moving as well, so the images had this unique feel to them, So when I could see some movement in my image, which I though added to the effect I was after.
The printing I have in my head and the way I want my panel presented, is to be printed on an art/textured type paper to add to the mood of my images.
All the processing has been carried out on my phone, all images have been brought into Photoshop to just level out the exposures and to get an even tone across my panel.
Thank you for your consideration, your time and your expertise in looking at my panel. Podge Kelly