Here are another seventeen personal favourites from 2010, moving on chronologically as always.
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| 3805 - London, England, 2010 |
This one may look familiar to some of you, it's appeared a couple of times now - as part of the Photography Collective exhibition earlier this year, and now also part of the very long composite piece Ten Faces. It's part of set of images I took of the wonderful facades of this building that is now, it seems, set for demolition. I picked this one to show here as it shows one of the doors, giving an idea of the sheer scale of the image.
It took quite a bit of time on the day working with the viewpoints for each one, and getting an even light and exposure from them all. A good afternoon's work! I think the new piece that links them all together was a really worthwhile endeavour, you can look over the whole length of the facade in a way that just isn't possible on site. You can see it on the website at www.paulclifford.co.uk/images/photographs/tenfaces.html, and the originals here.
I like the dispassionate and diagrammatic aspect of it. So often I see details in my pictures that even I didn't notice on the day - really taking my time and looking a thing over is perhaps easier and more enjoyable when the subject is reduced to a flat image rather than the overwhelming options and scale of reality.
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| 3809 - London, England, 2010 |
Not sure if I like this one or not. Often when I see an image locked in place in the viewfinder, I just know it's going to be a winner. I had that feeling with this - I took quite a while getting this together (and on a very busy street!). When I saw the result on screen and in print, something wasn't quite right, just not interesting enough. But I keep coming back to it, to the geometry and the symmetry, the flat grey line down the middle, the reflection top right. I still can't decide!
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| 3811 - London, England, 2010 |
Sometimes a lot of the work is done for me. A big, visually powerful object like this just cries out to be photographed, my decisions then are where to put it, where to shoot from, and what else to include. I think this one worked out really well. The counterweight of the block on the left anchored by the cables and the orange balanced with the yellow sign and litter. Miserable, tired and beautiful.
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| 3813 - Bromley, Kent, England, 2010 |
Getting down and dirty on the ground again, focusing right in on this little family. A complete contrast to the huge, unmissable, bombastic 3811 above; this one is a small, quiet ignored corner. I really like the image, it has an intimacy and closeness that I find touching. Very strange thing to say about a few cables and cases I know!
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| 3816 - London, England, 2010 |
This one is a nifty little composition that is maybe unrecognisable at first, but becomes clear fairly quickly. Once you work out what it is, you can see how beaten up and used these are.
Horizontals and verticals dividing the image are important to me, and it's pretty much all this one has. If you can't work out what it is, the images that come next (taken elsewhere) should give you a clue...
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| 3820 - Christchurch, Dorset, England, 2010 |
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| 3821 - Christchurch, Dorset, England, 2010 |
Ah, steps. Ascending stairways have appeared in my photographs all the way back to 1993. The obvious appeal is the visual motif to lead you through, up and around the image. Ones that are a little different, like these, are always appealing to me, the bends and corners that make these climbing pathways so interesting.
Steps also carry a feeling of something more beyond the image, that what you're seeing is an in between state, taking you from one thing to another, leaving the steps without their own identity.
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| 3822 - Christchurch, Dorset, England, 2010 |
An interesting counterpoint to the Doors and Windows images I have always created, a selection of which you can see at the Photography Collective catalogue here. This setup struck me as weird - I don't want to say too much about what it is, but it does look photoshopped, so I will say again, I never fiddle with my images. Look out for the bench through the door!
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| 3823 - Christchurch, Dorset, England, 2010 |
Another optically strange one - again, I don't want to say exactly what the situation was.
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| 3824 - Christchurch, Dorset, England, 2010 |
I really like this one, and I can't say why. It may be to do with the colours that day, maybe the way the plane trail somehow supports the lamp, I don't know! Ones like this that I like for no definable reason often become my enigmatic favourites.
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| 3827 - Christchurch, Dorset, England, 2010 |
Lovely colours again. I've got a few pictures of lamp posts - another exhibition in the making I think.
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| 3829 - Milford on Sea, Hampshire, England, 2010 |
And of course, numbers are an ongoing theme too. A whole range of them will appear in the forthcoming (and long awaited!) Countdown exhibition on the website. This image is again about the balance of colours and tones.
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| 3832 - Milford on Sea, Hampshire, England, 2010 |
Another enigmatic favourite. The placement of the three main elements makes for a relaxing yet compelling image, making the mundane important.
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| 3835 - Milford on Sea, Hampshire, England, 2010 |
Horizontals, verticals, divisions. I like cutting the picture plane into two, and in this case four. Again, this is all real with no compositing or fixing in Photoshop.
On rare occasions I will wait for the right moment to take an image, and it's usually down to an animal or a person getting themselves in the right place, or out of the wrong place. In this case, it was all down to whoever was in charge of that little sailing boat.
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| 3838 - Milford on Sea, Hampshire, England, 2010 |
It can be a real delight taking pictures when the weather is just right for your location. With blue skies and bright sunlight, white walls take on a whole new quality. The colours and contrasts alone may have carried the image here - the steps to nowhere add an extra focus to the image.
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| 3839 - Milford on Sea, Hampshire, England, 2010 |
A lot of my recurring themes coming up this time - I do love a bench! Apart from the history they carry and the inherent loneliness of an empty one, for me they are a great compositional element. The proportions are very appealing to me, and how the design usually falls back to the bare minimum of parts required to make the bench a bench.
They become blank canvases, every single one different, carrying its own character depending on where it is, and how it's been used.
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| 3841 - Milford on Sea, Hampshire, England, 2010 |
Some more steps to finish, downwards this time. Many of my images have taken a long time to compose, lining everything up just as I want it. Try as I might with this one, it just wouldn't fit into that mould. The slope here was so uneven that the step design wasn't even either. What we end up with is an image that to me doesn't feel quite right - and I like that.
Well, as you might be able to tell from my rambling text, I am learning a lot about thinking and writing as I go, so apologies if you're not getting a lot from the text - but do enjoy the images, and let me know below which ones you like or don't like, and why!
Harvest of 2010
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Part Seven
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