Beaumaris, Anglesey

On the margins

I've said before that street festivals offer the photographer a kind of blank canvas, a backdrop against which to work. For several years now I have gone to the Chinese Qtr to photograph during the Chinese New Year celebrations – not to photograph the event per se, but to see what happens on its margins...

Museums and black & white...

This little set began as an experiment. I was shooting some B&W film pushed to 1600ASA. I wanted to se how it exposed, what the grain looked like and how it would scan.

But then when I saw the pictures, they had the rather lonely melancholy of a winter Sunday afternoon in a provincial museum... The hushed gloom. Time hangs heavily, as if spilling out with an extra density from the antiquities on display.






I also realised that just as B&W can make an otherwise interesting picture duller by stripping it of a dimension, it can also give an unexceptional picture an unexpected grace and beauty...



Click on the image for a larger view: they look better full-sized.