#6: Street photography at Christmas
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| Christmas shoppers on the steps of the statute of Eros in Piccadilly Circus |
On Sunday, I ventured into West London, just as the sun was
setting, to document the Christmas shoppers. The area around Oxford Street,
Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square is always busy, filled
with tourists and theatre goers, shoppers and socialites. But, as Christmas approaches,
a new fervour descends and hundreds of thousands converge on the trendy
boutiques, high street chains and designer stores, all in search of the illusive
Christmas present. This leads to a thronging mass of highly stressed, tired and
grouchy adults, over-excited children and over-enthusiastic sales people
promoting whatever it is they are paid to promote. Wrapped up in coats, hats, scarves
and gloves, this mass of people slowly trudges and weaves around each other
like a gigantic, disorientated shoal of fish, awkward bags and boxes protruding
out here and there, the crowds parting around them like ice floes on the bow of an icebreaker.
As the light faded, the experience became very surreal. The varying
light from the shop fronts, adverts and Christmas decorations sent strange
colours dancing over faces. Deep shadows obscured everything below the
shoulders of the tightly packed crowds, with only the occasional beam of light
from a passing bus or taxi penetrating this murk, usually revealing a pram stuffed
full of bags, a baby’s head in a novelty Christmas hat poking out among them.
For photography, and particularly street photography, this is an
ideal location to capture human life in all its strange, exotic ways. The
crowds and darkness offer a protection from keen-eyed pedestrians, meaning you
can catch people unaware (and therefore acting ‘naturally’, or as naturally as
anyone does when they are performing in public).
It was a beautiful sunset on this particular evening, which cast a
lovely sanguine glow over the buildings and the heads of those on the streets,
whilst the violent blues, purples, whites and greens which burst out of the
hoardings, billboards and shop windows contrasted nicely against this. I had
put a 6-point starlight filter on my 35mm lens and opened the aperture to f/2
(partly to compensate for the low light levels but also to empahsise the starlight
effect the filter creates). This gave every image a slightly soft glow,
creating an ethereal atmosphere opposed to the manic reality of Christmas
shopping in central London.
Photography can be a very
isolating activity; you are an outsider, an onlooker, watching moments unfold
in front of you but never fully engaging with them. You step into someone else’s
life for a brief moment, freeze it, and then step out into anonymity again. I’m
usually drawn to the more banal things, which are gone just as quickly as
they occur. These are moments you are drawn to when you are on the 'outside'. In their very banality, they are almost the essence of human existence; the father
and son mock-fighting over a stuffed bear, the family trying to read the bus
timetable, the strange facial expressions people pull in reaction to some
unheard comment or internal thought. It’s these things which unite us all as
people in some way.
I tend to walk quickly, weaving through the
crowds, surveying everything and shooting a frame when I spot something vaguely
different or which I think may evolve (this could be someone reading a map,
pulling a face for no apparent reason, wearing interesting clothing etc),
before vanishing into the crowd again. My aim is to be unnoticed, but I’ve
found that if I am seen, a look of total indifference seems to diffuse any
situation. And given my face’s natural tendency to look inherently bored and
emotionless, this is quite easy. If I look so totally disinterested that I
couldn’t possibly have been taking a picture then, hopefully, they’ll believe I
wasn’t photographing them. Of course, this doesn’t always work, in which case a
smile and nod of acknowledgment works. Maybe even a conversation if they engage
with me. Interestingly though, most people are so wrapped up in their own
worlds that they barely notice anything going on around them (the massive
crowds only increases invisibility).
There are occasions where I spot something about to happen, or
anticipate the event. In these instances, I usually have to double back on
myself, or work out where the best place to stand will be to get the picture
(spotting an advert on a bus about to pass someone, or a pair of unrelated
events which are about to coincide and be frozen forever in an image, which
then gives them an entirely different meaning). Piccadilly Circus was particularly good for this, as it is a major crossroads filled with people all
going to different places. Generally, any intersections where people’s paths
meet will lead to odd moments of serendipity. The ancient Greeks had a word for this: Kairos.
Street photography isn’t an easy thing to do, and for someone who
is naturally shy, it can take a lot of determination to walk up to a
person, stick a camera in their face for a reason they will never really know,
and then walk off, often without even speaking a word. It requires a sort of faux-confidence, a 'camera persona'. I have to push myself into
situations, forcing myself out of my comfort zone and into the personal space
of a complete stranger, but, as Robert Capa famously said: “If your photographs
aren’t good enough, then you’re not close enough.”
