Old Age...

This is meant to be a difficult picture, both to look at and in what it portrays.

I am very happy to intersperse beautiful and technically challenging long exposure landscapes at night, such as yesterday’s – thanks SO MUCH everybody for getting that right up to the TOP of the spotlights – to a grabbed mono street shot.

I have only cropped it on the right, not top or bottom. This very tight framing seems to be crushing our stooping elderly shopper, making him seem all the more vulnerable. We follow his stumbling forward gaze, the empty street ahead of him, we are unsure of how far he needs to go.

I had been out with the fast and wide Sigma 20mm f1.8 on the full-frame D700 as I had set out to visit an inner city church that I was told would be open again after an extensive restoration, due in February. Never having been inside, I was keen to visit. I had gone back a few days ago but it was firmly locked. It seemed to say that it was open between 11 and 3pm.

A wasted journey again, it seems it’s on Saturday’s they open up. And on Sundays, of course too, but I want to be in there alone. And not to worship either.

Returning from, via a route I don’t usually take, I spotted this gent crossing the road. Quick thinking, I had the camera on continuous focus and literally walked up from behind him and walked past, shooting without looking through the viewfinder, getting three or four frames. His poor sense of hearing and traffic noise meant he wouldn't be any the wiser.

The first couple of shots he was well in the frame. But being pedantic and a bit awkward, I wanted this one, and for it to work. I liked the way the I was being constrained by the framing. I did crop out the out of focus cars in the road on the right, I liked the way that the edge of the pavement made a natural partition. The almost maximum aperture allows for the subject to remain the main subject, through a narrow depth of field, at least for a very wideangle lens.

He had a dark blue coat on – in the black and white conversion, I slid the blue filtration to make it paler, he stands out better that way. I was also able to darken the bricks in the wall on the left, by sliding the red filtration. Black and white is SO versatile, once you get the hang of it, that is!

So yes, uncompromising, challenging and possibly a little cruel, but I like this – I like the variety of Blip and I like the variety that I can do. Or at least try to do. Thanks for sticking with this one, guys!

Blip from one year ago - thumbnail right - was one of my first and very most successful night-time long exposures and was used by Blip on Facebook and Twitter - it's surreal! Blip HQ has just sent it out again on FB with "This time last year in the UK"! Now, that's co-incidence.