some photos

London Calling

Hey all,

Finally got round to writing and making this thing go live!

It’s quite hard to start these things…what do you write? I was thinking of writing an overview of my life from the inception of project Tom in 1981 up until I started this blog a few minutes ago, but it’s probably best to save that for a rainy day…

So I think I’ll stick to the stuff I’ve been doing these last few weeks.

………So, here goes for starters!

Thought I’d start by writing about the series of images I was taking for a couple of weeks to meet the street photography brief. In short I took candid street portraits of people talking on mobile phones in the city.

I reason is when I went out looking at what kind of relationships people are having on the street, to me it was really interesting to see how often we all communicate and relate to others through mobiles. They’ve become such a integral part of our lives that they’re almost invisible and life without mobile phones would be unimaginable…unless you run out of credit.

The reason I find the city an interesting setting for the portraits is because to me it has a certain feeling to the place. The old financial institutions, the seemingly high pace of life and high pressure jobs these people are involved in create an interesting mix of elements. I know these are preconceptions about the nature of the people I shot, for all I know they could be very smartly dressed tourists. But for me half the fun is imagining the sorts of conversations these people are having and what kind of lives they lead, which I guess is more accessible if you know a bit about the setting. Okay, I’m waffling a bit now…

Actually, after I showed these to Jocelyn, he told me about a book on people on mobile phones that Martin Parr published a few years back. Dagnammit. But I’m going to still carry on shooting the series of images because after I checked out parts of Martin Parr’s book on the net, to me, although the subject matter is the same, I think his photos deal with different themes to what I’m trying to focus on. It seems to me that Martin Parr’s book concentrates more on the relationship between the person and the phone itself, whereas I guess I want to capture the relationship being conducted by the person through the phone.

Btw, city-boys don’t seem to appreciate candid portrait photography! I was surprised how colourful they could be with their language…I don’t think I’ve been verbally abused like that since I kicked the playground football on the gym roof in second year…