Evening: The Grand Canyon

I was down Moore Street/Henry Street way again, taking some shots before heading to a poetry reading with Liam Ó Muirthile and Gabriel Rosenstock in the Unitarian on Stephen's Green. I took a couple of okay pictures in the market on Moore Street and was heading home when I noticed the luminous rose-orange-lilac sunset pressing above the dark canyon of Henry Street. An interesting backdrop for the passing faces, apart from and yet colouring all of us, the light that lifts and buries us.

As a street photographer I often find I have to work my way into the groove, especially when I'm alone, as I was here. I noticed a man holding up a handmade sign for fortune-telling (you can just about see him in the background to the right), but as soon as he saw me clocking him he moved off his patch, obviously not wanting to be photographed. I don't pursue people like that, unlike the New York photographer Bruce Gilden, whom I had a discussion/argument about on the Blipfoto forum recently. I really love some of Gilden's shots, but he is undeniably a hustler, very in-your-face. Not my style, though there is I think an element of what Gilden might be looking for, those who are 'lost in thought', in the image I posted above. I thought the man's apparently preoccupied expression (serious or possibly mournful) made an interesting contrast with the light in the sky and the passing streetlife. We are all interior beings and I think the best street photography often brings this out, not only the contrasts of shapes/colours/light/dark but also the interior/exterior (or at least that's what I look for).

Later walking past Benetton's on Stephen's Green I came across this unusual little tableau in the shop window. One of the mannikins was moving. a woman made up to look like a window dummy. I was surprised when another woman standing watching beside me asked me to keep taking photos; they were shooting a music video and wanted some high quality stills from a different angle. Here's another shot of the woman. I don't think I really managed to get anything strong; the light was too tricky, or I was just too fumbling and maybe a bit tired by that stage. Sometimes when I'm presented with a delicious opportunity I fu*k up, while, elsewhere, a quick glimpse of something/someone walking out of frame in an unpromising situation leaves me with an images that holds some kind of resonance, something that haunts.