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In Search of Saul and Ernst

I am a great believer in crossovers in photography, where one technique or approach to a particular genre can influence another. Although my work is primarily focused on landscape, nature and the outdoors, I do have a fascination for architecture and street/urban photography. As a kid I always wanted to be an architect, but as I didn’t make the grade, I ended up designing life-saving medical equipment – not sure how that happened!  Still, my love for architecture and the urban environment remains to this day from a photographic perspective, and recently I came across the work of Saul Leiter and Ernst Haas.

Putting their particular style into words and how it resonates with me is almost impossible, but inspired I was, so on a rainy wet night in February, I set off to the largest known puddle in Newcastle, just outside Base Coffee where I knew I would be guaranteed neon lights and unlimited spash activity.







It was a short lived venture as faulty battery made it an early night, but it was enough to get me hooked. A few weeks later I found myself walking round the Waterfront in Belfast, with Ian, a photo buddy, in search of “some urban”. It was definitely a “no rules” night with no agenda and long exposures being steadied by careful balancing on railings or pedestrian crossing controls.














Did I learn anything? – Well, primarily the observation that if you are near a puddle with a camera, some drivers will accelerate toward you at speed in the hope of giving you a dousing. From a photographic perspective I got a lot out of the post-processing. In particular, the world is not pixel-perfect especially in the abstract domain. Just because you can sharpen something, it doesn’t mean that you should, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the image will benefit from it. Quite often it looks out of place and unbalances the picture. This was certainly the base where I caught the back-end of a bus in the frame. The image was slightly soft and warm, but sharpening the bus completely destroyed the affect. Similarly, over-use of the Dehaze tool to reduce the grain caused by the high ISO setting can actually detract from the image. Grain is not always the enemy of the photographer. They were both nights of "photographic freedom". There were no rules and certainly no expectations. but with slow shutter speeds for intentional blurring, ICM, a few multiple exposure shots the outcome was always going to be unpredictable Even if you dont get any hits, there is always so much to take away from this type of photography.

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