DISTINCTIONS MOMENTS IN LIFE
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THE FRPS My Fellowship panel is based on a body of work which I built up between March 2009 and April 2014. Most of the images were taken on holiday as this was the time when I had most opportunity to spend time in situations where I was likely to capture useful images. Sometimes, I saw a scene which I thought would make a good background for a successful image and I waited for something to happen. For example, in ‘Lifestyles’ where I saw the shop and the bike leaning against the window and I stopped in a shop doorway opposite waiting for the right juxtaposition of people coming down the street, and ‘The Man in the Passageway’ where I waited in the passageway. At other times, it was a matter of seeing a fleeting moment and capturing it before it was too late as,
for example, in ‘Down’ and ‘The Man on the Bus’. To do this, I set up my camera as a ‘point and shoot’. Normally, I shoot using a focus point in the centre of the screen. I try to leave enough space around the subject to allow for cropping to get the final
composition. I use aperture priority, normally with an aperture of f/2.8 to f/4 to help to isolate the subject from the background. The ISO is set to Auto with a minimum shutter speed of 1/250 and a maximum ISO of 3200. I use matrix metering but I set the
The Encounter
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one of the images in my FRPS Panel is posed. My work is ‘street photography’ in the sense that I go out with a camera and take candid photographs of people doing what they do rather than posing for the camera. I find this kind of photography very engaging. It is challenging and exciting to go out with the camera and not know if you are going to capture anything worthwhile. As nothing is set up or prearranged, you are completely dependent on chance. However, my aim is to take candid shots which tell a story and I want to create images with an ‘artistic’ feel to them which could be considered as ‘Visual Art’ images. For me, the image I get in the camera is almost a working drawing or a sketch, which then needs to be developed into the final work.
The Bartender
Man in the Passageway
DAVID F COOKE FRPS
CREATIVE EYE GROUP MAGAZINE NO. 84 JANUARY 2021
