Walking the dogs

While Missy was at her Pilates class (eh?) the other evening I took the 'Blad out for some candid street photography.  Yeh, I know - not usually the first choice for street stuff but there you go.  My reasoning was as follows.  As I've said before, people in The North East Liberties of Coleraine - as you might guess - are not like those city folk in New York or Tokyo or even London and aren't that used to having cameras pointed at them.  And I'm not the speedy type who can dash around, take a shot and move on before people realise what's happened.  When I was thinking about this the other day, I was reminded of one of Roger Hicks' articles when he suggested a possible solution to the 'problem' of street photography.  There was a shot of him wearing a high-visibility vest standing next to a 4"x5" camera on a tripod, looking all important and official-like.  At the same time, he was taking what one might assume were proof-pictures with a handheld camera. Of course the view camera was purely a distraction...the handheld camera was the one he was actually working with.

Anyway, I carted the tripod with me and set the 'Blad up with a 50mm lens (equivalent to roughly 28mm in 35-mm land), composed and pre-focussed.  Then I locked up the mirror so as to minimise the shock-wave normally associated with taking a shot with the 'Blad - quiet it is not.  Even so, there was still (to my ears) a very audible 'click' when I released the shutter via a long cable release.  But I figured if I wasn't actually looking at the subject when they came into shot they might not be too concerned.  A couple of times I was on the mobile phone when I tripped the shutter.  

By Portrush Arcadia - an iconic building in this part of the world.  Back in the day it housed a 'speakeasy' which  was the venue for bands such as The Stranglers, Ian Dury and The Undertones.  Nowadays it's more of a community venue for Pilates Classes and the like.  HP5+ on Ilford Warmtone paper.

The downside of not always looking at the people walking into frame was that I missed a few shots but one or two were OK.  Next time I'm going to try framing more 'head-on' shots and see what happens.