Despite bringing my Nikon D700 and 24-70mm lens with me all the way to London last Friday, apart from 10 minutes during the seminar and 5 minutes during an afternoon break, it stayed in the bag for the day and my first port of call for most of the photos I took during my travels was the iPhone 3Gs. I’ve started viewing the iPhone as a documentary tool to capture what ever is going on around me, and its lack of controls encourages me to do so without worrying so much about white balance or aperture or ISO or “correct” exposure. Taking those elements out of the equation focuses the mind on composition (and to some extent lighting) and I think that’s a healthy exercise for a photographer to engage in every now and then. Incidentally, all shots in this post were processed on the iPhone also.
The photograph at the top of this post was captured in Dublin airport at a little after 6am. I posted it to Facebook with the title “Sheeple” referring to the queue of people silhouetted in the image. That queue is a bit of a Ryanair phenomenon in that one minute it wasn’t there – all the people were at the gate, but just sitting down – and the next minute, due to someone’s impression that the gate would open any moment causing them to stand up, 80% of the people at the gate were scrambling to queue. I captured this from the back of the queue and what caught my eye wasn’t so much the queue itself, but the light from the rising sun and the flare that it gives.
Skip forward 12 hours and I’m on the tube to Liverpool Street after the seminar, en route to Stansted Airport for the flight home. I find myself standing at the end of one carriage, looking through the doors to the next carriage. There is a photograph here, but this isn’t it:
The photograph that was for the taking was being obscured by the two passengers standing up. Had they not been there, or at least not in my view, I probably would have risked a shot with the D700 to capture the boredom obvious on the faces of the rest of the passengers making their way home from work.
Actually it turned out the tube didn’t make it all the way to the station – due to “passenger action” at Liverpool Street police stopped all services outside the station, so the last leg of the tube journey had to be made over ground on foot.
Two hours later and it’s time to board the flight home. More queueing, this time not only to get through the gate but also to get on the plane.
What caught my eye here was the slightly unusual perspective of the airplane, which looks a little deformed from this angle, and the light from the evening sun catching the length of it nicely.
An hour after that and we’re on approach to Dublin. This time I wish I had taken my “proper” camera down from the overhead locker before we started our descent, because it’s a clear sky and there are nice views of the countryside as we approach the runway from the west. Instead I make do with getting one last snap using my iPhone camera (with it on Airplane mode so as to not cause the plane to crash) before turning it off for landing. Again there was a shot here, but one that probably deserved those megapixels and controls I mentioned at the outset. I did the best I could with the camera I had, and framing using the window made for a better image.
In the case of the first one, which I love, all I can think is: “Don’t walk towards the light!”
It’s a picture that works on so many levels.
For me the bowed heads and slumped postures of the passengers say so much about the airline they are about to fly with. They may be walking into a glorious heavenly light, but they all seem to know the experience won’t live up to the billing.
Great picture.
Thanks for the comment Roger.
I’m delighted that you love the picture, and I love your reading of it. I must be honest and say that I was just hoping to capture the bigger picture of this necessary evil that is “the queue” which, as I mentioned in the post, seems to be a particular quirk of flying with that airline, but you’re absolutely right in what you say about the posture and bowed heads of so many both standing in the queue and sitting down. I’d love to claim that I was also trying to capture that, but I have to admit that was just lucky!
So instead I’ll just blame the fact that I too was a feeling a tad gloomy about being up since 4am and the flight that was to come!
As a side note, I learn a lot from your blog, so it’s an extra bonus to learn something from you on mine!
Luck and talent are often confused I think. You took a photograph with a purpose in mind and in a particular mental/physical state – that’s storytelling. That you overshot the mark in your own estimation could be happy coincidence, or just a reflection of an ability that hasn’t yet revealed itself fully to you.
Either way, it’s a cracking photograph.