There are so many things that catch your eye and grab your attention on the street, but there is nothing as powerful as colour. Nothing. It dominates and drowns out everything else. A busy street with hundreds of pedestrians milling around and a woman in a bright green coat is seen approaching and I know I have to get that green in an image. This is all I know as I see her get closer. How I will frame and construct the image I do not know yet, but I know this bright green will give a dramatic and vivid strength to whatever image comes.
As we gets closer, I see that instead of continuing towards me she turns. I weave amongst the crowds to get closer to her, closer to her and that green coat; all the while I am calculating and constructing the image. I visualise a streak of fluid green of her in motion set against the dark of the rest of her clothes central in the open street. Recalling it now, I realise how concentrated I become; how the construction of the image consumes me. In the time, it takes her to walk 20 metres I have shot several images. Each one is immediately reviewed on the camera’s small screen. One or two are instantly deleted and I rush to get that image that has taken form in my imagination. I don’t get close to it in reality.
This is the first one. Again, this is an image I would most certainly have deleted before as she is not fully in frame. But taste and style evolves. Now I like images like this.
What I like about the iPhone is that you can get in close to get a candid image. This one here was shot just at the moment before collision. The three girls are unaware of me and that little moment they are enjoying is uninterrupted.
