Recession Hits like a Hurricane

For this post I thought I'd show some of images I've taken for a long term project I'm working on.  The recession has hit British high streets very hard and it has not taken long for many shops, including those from major chains, to close.  These empty spaces are usually stripped bare and 'sanitised' so they can be put up for let.  As the recession has worsened I have noticed that newly emptied shops are being left in a worse condition.  It is almost as if the owners grabbed all they could and made a run for it.

Whenever I visit a town or city I'm always look for the tell-tale 'To Let' signs and making a beeline for the abandoned shops.  The spaces are usually left in darkness and the only light is from the street.  This makes capturing the images tricky as I need to use a long exposure and a steady hand.

I find the spaces eerie and they remind me of scenes from post-holocaust movies where disasters have swept through an area.  The bare walls and muted colours create a sense of loneliness and abandonment.  Some of the shops have been stripped right down with even the carpets removed but the majority are left with magnolia walls and dark blue carpets.  A scant few have traces that leave clues to their previous existence and the images shown here are amongst those.

So far I have managed to take pictures of over 80 empty shops in three locations, Shrewsbury, Wrexham and Liverpool.  There is definitely a pattern in where these spaces will be found.  In busy towns, like Shrewsbury, the main street there is little sign of the recession but if you step down any side street you can easily find empty shops.  In smaller towns or less affluent areas the closures are far more obvious.  I was shocked by how many empty shops I could photograph in the main shopping area of Wrexham, it felt like every other shop was closed.

Despite the implications of these empty spaces I think each of these images has a calm beauty about them.  They give an opportunity to see everyday spaces in a completely different way.  As a photographer I have found it very easy to take these pictures without being challenged by members of the public or security personnel.  If the shops had been occupied I have no doubt that I would have been moved along in a brisk manner and told to keep away.

I would like to think that we are near the very bottom of the second dip of this recession and that things can't get any worse.  I have returned to some of the shops to see what condition they are in and have seen signs that work is being done inside them for new tenants.

The final image I'm sharing with you may not look like much but perhaps there is hope that the British high street can be saved.  there is still life in these empty spaces and new shops will hopefully step up to take the places of those that fell.

Book Review: Baghdad Calling

Book Review: Baghdad Calling

Geert Van Kesteren

ISBN 9789059730830

Much of the talk during the presentations at The Eye festival this year was centered around the future of photo-journalism.  This book is a great example of many of the professionals fears - that the 'citizen reporter' will soon overtake the paid veteran.  

This book has been printed on two different types of paper.  The bulk of the book has been printed on what looks and feels like newspaper.  The colours are subdued and the image quality is low.  This is obviously a deliberate choice by the publishers to make the book feel like a collection of cut-outs from contemporary newspapers at the time of the trouble sin Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Turkey.  The images were all collected by Kesteren and his team to give an exclusive insight into the lives of everyday citizens.  By using these images, many taken on mobile phones, he is able to present pictures from locations and situations that a professional journalism would never have access to.  Many of the images seem mundane, a wedding, men in a public park, a market place but dispersed amongst these shots are scenes of dead bodies in the street, bullet riddled buildings and the aftermath of suicide bombings.  These images are not exceptionally graphic but there placement amongst the 'banal' serves to shock the viewer as they skim the pages.

In addition to the collected images is a photo essay by Kesteren.  His images are presented on a higher quality a paper on pages that are slightly smaller than the rest of the book.  The difference in quality is huge, both  of the print and the actual photographic skill.  Kesteren is clearly fighting the case for the professional journalist.  The level of access he has is less than that of the amateurs but his use of light, framing and composition add a level of beauty to his images.  

Each chapter is a compilation of images from one 'hotspot'.  At the start of every chapter is a few pages of text, extracts from diaries or eye witness accounts from people who lived through the troubles.  Much like the book 'It's All Good' these stories really add to the book.  This is a device I will need to consider for any future work I may be attempting. 

For me both sets of images are equally important and are strengthened by being shown together in one book.  Photo journalism is close to a tipping point and the future is unclear.  Books like Baghdad Calling show how the amateur and professional could work together.  The amateur images give a greater level of access but the sheer volume of images produced during any event requires strict filtering to capture the essence of the moment.  This can then supported by the images from a professional who is able to pick specific topics to represent and, in a way, act as a figurehead for the massed images.  Without Kesteren many of these images may have been lost forever and that would be a terrible shame.

Baghdad Calling can be bought on Amazon HERE

Lumix GX1 Test Shoot

Shrewsbury flooded

First Shots with Lumix GX1

If you saw my last post you will know that I have recently bought a Panasonic Lumix GX1 with the 14-42mm power zoom lens.  I decided that I would take it out for a test run and see how it coped with some street photography.  I have a Canon 5D Mk2 but trying to shoot subtlely with this beast is impossible and so I needed a smaller camera (but couldn't afford an X-pro1!).

I decided to see how good that camera would be in its iAuto mode - it looks at each scene and chooses an appropriate shooting mode based on what it thinks it is taking.   All of the images shown have been tweaked in Lightroom 4.1 to try and get the best from them.  If you click on each image you should be able to see a larger version.

Speeding Cyclist

The shot of the cyclist was taken with me standing stationary and panning as the cyclist shot past.  The image seems dark overall but this is because the clouds were gathering and it was about to rain.  

Flick the Vees

For this image I was walking towards the group of lads and gave the camera about a second to focus before pressing the shutter all the way down.  There is a little bit of blur at the feet but the shot is definitely usable and prints well at 8x10 size.  The conversion to black and white was done by simply desaturating the image in Lightroom so more work would be needed if I was using this image properly.

Grocery Store

The camera handled all the colours of these bright shelves really well and only some very minor tweaking was required to get this to an acceptable level.

Newspaper Sellers

Another B&W conversion but for this image I used Silver Efex Pro 2 to give me much more control over what was happening.  Once I was happy with the conversion I added some film grain to give a slightly more retro feel to the image.  I took this shot by shooting between passing groups of pedestrians but despite the tricky conditions the camera did really well.  For future shoots I am going to look at setting one of the custom functions to work in iAuto mode but with a black and white LCD display (still capturing in RAW).

Smoker BW

Silver Efex again to adjust this image.  I've included the original shot as it appeared when imported into Lightroom as a comparison.  I had to remove a few distracting light spots but you can see just how much detail this little camera is able to capture.  I was walking past the doorway at a normal walking speed and gave the camera barely any time to focus and shoot.  There is some blur visible in the image but I think it is perfectly acceptable.  If I needed a sharper image then all I would need to do is halt briefly mid step and the shot will be sharper.

Smoker original shot

Passengers 

I have taken quite a few shots of passengers as they travel and I know how tricky this can be.  My Canon G9 would never be able to handle it and even some of my 5D shots were pretty poor.  This shot was taken as I waited in my car at traffic lights.  The bus pulled up alongside and so I wound down my window and fired off two shots.  I had to increase the vibrancy and contrast in Lightroom to pull out all the details but the camera coped well.  The sensor has a dynamic range of 18EV and so it is easy to shoot dark and recover highlights later - the clouds in the top left of the frame appeared 'blown' but reducing highlights in LR easily recovered the hidden detail.

Summary

I love this little gem of a camera.  I took 102 photos during the two hours I was walking through the streets and after importing them into Lightroom was delighted to discover that 80 were usable.  A similar test with my G9 last year gave me about 10 usable shots out of 100!  Although it was initially hard for me to trust the camera in iAuto mode it actually works very well.  Since taking these shots I've discovered an iAuto+ mode that does all the hard work but allows some additional control over depth of field, focus point, exposure and white balance.  

The power zoom kit lens worked well and was fast and responsive.  It is possible to set the zoom into a faster mode but the level of fine control is lost so I stuck with 'standard' speed.  A lot of the images appeared to have problems when bright reds were captured.  This problem was less obvious when looking at the same shots on an iPhone and MacBook Air, so it may be time to buy a calibrator for my monitor (although none of my G9/5D shots have this issue).  

I had the camera in my pocket without a strap attached and it definitely cost me a second or two to get the camera out.  I would recommend a neck or wrist strap if you were trying to capture street candids but the benefit of keeping the camera in my pocket is that it wasn't on display and so didn't alert my subjects.

The camera is not weather sealed and there are warnings all through the documentation about this.  I was shooting in drizzle for some of the time and this caused me some concern.  When the camera is powered down the telephoto lens retracts and this drags any rain droplets on the lens into the lens housing so use with caution!

The battery is still showing a full three bars after the shoot and I'm using a genuine Lumix battery pack.  I have ordered a third party battery as an emergency back up and I'll report on that later.

More of the images from the shoot are on my Flickr stream and can be seen HERE