Planning assignment 1

My first assignment has been submitted.

Since the assignment brief was very loose, it should have been easy to select a field and a theme. Nonetheless, I had to think long and hard about which field of photography I wanted to use. Looking back on the last year and my photographs the ones I most enjoyed taking were the urban landscapes with a bit of street photography thrown in.

I like to be able to plan my assignment and have an idea of the photographs I intend to take and at the same time as being opportunistic and taking photographs that present themselves. I think this must be the way the majority of photographers work - if all they took were planned photographs their work would become boring and stale. The next fantastic unexpected shot is what keeps me going.

The timing of this assignment coincided with my holiday to La Rochelle, France. I researched a number of suitable locations and looked at hundreds of images on the web. Unfortunately, the weather was dreadful and it rained every day but one, thus my planning went out the window. In hind sight this might have been a good thing, but at the time it created a degree of panic.

This 'opportunity' allowed me to develop a new skill - wet photography. Actually, once you've learned how to keep the rain off your lens and protect your camera with your arm, the rain opens up a completely different view of your environment. I found that you have to be much more nimble on your feet because wet people invariably don't look where they're going - they just launch themselves at the next dry refuge.



Just walking in the rain

Standing on the corner of the street, using the buildings to protect me from the worst of the rain was a great vantage point for photography. Another bonus was that people slowed down to cross the road giving me a fraction longer to frame them.

Sun and rain

 I realise this photograph breaks a lot of the rules: ensure eye contact; don't shoot into the sun; avoid lens flair or at least clone it out. Regardless of these I like it - it has character.

After the rain

I passed this puddle en route to the car, there were numerous puddles but this one grabbed my attention because of the way the sunlight bounced off the tarmac and added to the cloud effect.