Stroll through Enniskerry

There’s quite a bit of evidence these days that we are going back to the 1980s – not just the recession, but things like the resurgence of Wispa bars, the apparent popularity of this year’s Rose of Tralee, and I read in the newspaper today, the comeback of DJ Simon Young to the airwaves.  On a recent stop off in Enniskerry, a village not far from home but one I rarely visit, I was amused to see an old fashioned phone box still sitting proudly on the main street, and it felt for a moment like I had gone back in time also.

I had my camera with me, but, for a couple of reasons, only had a few seconds to take a shot of the street so this photograph is pretty much a case of point, click, and walk on.  Just out of frame on the right, a couple who had been walking down the street stopped and waited for me to take the shot, so that put me under some pressure to be quick (although I would have rathered that they continue walking into the frame to be honest).  More importantly though the people you see at the left of the frame are my wife and her parents, and we were on our way to a little coffee shop at the end of this road, which meant that the quicker I took this shot, the sooner I could have cake!

If you’re going to take a “grab shot”  (as they are often known) this particular scene isn’t a bad choice.  The problem with a grab shot is that you are relying on the camera to be smart about the exposure, and hoping that the autofocus can do a decent job all by itself.   A grab shot is an auto-everything shot, where you as photographer, become relegated to shutter squeezer, and the camera deserves all the praise, or all the blame, for how the shot turns out.

This scene is, therefore, reasonably suited to such a shot for two reasons.  Firstly, its tone is not a million miles away from mid-grey (18% grey in fact) which the camera meters exposures to, so automatic metering is likely to do a good job at getting a proper exposure.  Secondly, there are lots of contrasting lines in the scene to make life easy for the autofocus, meaning your chances of a sharp shot are increased.

It’s not a particularly good photograph – if I was to have taken more time to compose it, for instance, I would have had the phone box more to the right, and my in-laws away from the edge of the frame.  But its a snapshot that could almost have been taken any time in the last 20 years, and for that reason I like it.  Besides, lets not be too critical – there was cake waiting.