A “proper” Street Photography blog today !

Lots of the images I create are made instinctively , the very nature of “STREET” does not allow me the luxury of slowly considering , composition , structure or the “visual hooks” I intend to exploit , that’s not to say I do not understand all this stuff , I do buts its deeply buried in my subconscious and sometimes I only get the chance to “READ” my own actions & technique after “The Moment” of capture, when the pic exists …

Many moons ago , when I was 20ish I came across a fashion picture by John Swannell that not only relied on a cut off (decapitation) composition but featured a second models head appearing in a head lock under the first models arm , not unlike “That Street Pic” of mine , truth be told I was really taken with Swannells fashion pic both graphically , conceptually and more importantly the lesson that this pic held within it’s frame …

Swannell had pulled off one of the great visual tricks of all time , he had taken the classic fashion model and rearranged the form , everything was in the frame but in the wrong order , the head had been cropped off and appeared to reappear somewhere else , it appeared that the model had her own head under her arm …

The picture relied on two models but was still very striking at first glance …

The average person expects life to be delivered in a certain order , heads usually live on top of shoulders , its quite discombobulating when they don’t !

This trick works because the brain needs to match things up , its how we perceive the world , we have built in expectations of things being in the right place ,so much so that even when the elements are not associated we will subconsciously associate unrelated parts …

Try it , exploit cut off composition and rearrange life on the streets , in no particular order ????

Do two halves make a whole ? Understanding why some pictures work is important …

MORE…

If your blessed with a bit more time feel free to visit highlights from my Another Day Off project , The State Of Britain series or The Testing Times pictures , they represent the most turbulent years in modern British history and ten years of my life…

Forty of my Foto What I Took Blogs are still available too …