I found this exercise extremely difficult as I didn’t come across many situations that involved people that I could shoot easily. In the end I took a walk around a near by town, Godalming, and took the sequence as I walked down some of its streets. I was to take the pictures as I went recording everything I saw even if the shot was not near to being perfect, getting closer to one photograph that I felt was the best image of the series.
I started at the beginning of one of my favourite looking streets and took the first shot without much thought and noticed some people casually making their way towards me. I took two more shots trying to get the people and the street in together. The first one worked better than the second as the people were blurred in the second shot and we’re more aware of my presence. It seems people get rather shy when they see someone with a camera!
Then I came across an interesting wall outside a house that had been squeezed into the street. I felt i should angle the shot with the symmetry of the stone wall and use my aperture priority mode to enhance the way the wall would stand out against the long road behind it. I think the second image comes across slightly better as it has focus right into the very end of the road where as the first image focuses mainly on the wall. This was my intention at first, but after getting the shots on my PC to view them I could see it worked better with my second attempt overall.
Almost opposite the wall was a shop that had some items in the window that caught my eye. I tried to take shots that would show the architecture of the building outside and still show the chairs in the window without drawing your attention away from one or the other. The first few tries caught my reflection and the flash in the window , but the last one was much better, with no reflection and just hinting at what is inside the shop. I Like the fact I zoomed out slightly to include more of the building instead of the first two shots that just focused on the window itself.
Next the Star pub had some lovely baskets of plants on the front of it, and the sun had started to come through making it a very pleasant walk. I wanted to try to capture the brightness of the morning as it shone on the white walls of the building and the light falling on the plants and windows
This last shot I thought looked really good. The sun was out in full force shining right down the street and over the top of one of Godalming’s most iconic buildings, The Pepper Pot. It summed up my morning walking through Godalming and its very small back streets, with people out enjoying the weather and the old buildings and streets. The sequence of photos get brighter as they went along, capturing the sun coming out and making the town look its best, with the final picture showing this with the sun rays shining to all sides of the frame.
By capturing all the pictures that were almost right, it helps tell a story and is a good way of seeing how much more effectively you can shoot something rather than just taking one picture and thinking that’s the best you can do. It is very helpful to be able to guide yourself through this process to see what else you can do that will work better for the subject you are shooting. Not everything will work, but you need to see these ‘almost’ shots to help you to improve your composition.
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