After being handed a digital camera by Paul, I thought the best thing to do was to immediately go and take some photos to get used to the camera and get my eye back in. When given a brief, I usually spend a lot of time researching – looking at artists and watching documentaries etc, however encouraged by the instantaneous nature of a digital camera I thought it would be get to just get out there. That being said, I already did have a few photographers to think about. For my first trip I decided to do a walking trip near where I live. I Loosely thought about the witness brief and did some research about communes in Kingston. I am attracted to how different people live, and people who live outside of societal norms. I found out that the “Crescent Road Community” commune had been evicted in the mid 2000s.
I wanted to witness if the people had an visual impact or legacy on the area and if I could photograph this is in any interesting ways. This was just an excuse to get out, it was about an hours walk to get there – so it gave me some good time to take a few pictures.
These are a few of my early photos. I’m still getting used to changing the aperture and shutter speed on my digital camera. There’s a lot of architectural pictures before I found my subject of people. Having a digital camera made me think about photos in a different way. Having once been limited to a roll of 24 or 36 I could now take 1000s of photos. I developed a method where I would set the aperture and shutter speed and depth accordingly for street portraits of people. I would then hold the camera at my belly. This meant I could always be looking and also I get get closer to people without being seen. I will continue to develop my method and idea from it.
These are some photos I took at the end of my trip, moment of realisation. I put the images into black and white – I felt having them in colour put too much emphasis on the colour of the people, especially their clothes.
I loved these interactions seen on the street. The last 4 pictures show both people talking to one another or being distanced. There is an importance of eye contact and what it represents.
Cameron Aitken Graphic Design 