written by Dana Byatt
Our first club outing of 2019 was to Belfast City Centre with a view to capturing Street Photography. The majority of us hadn’t a clue what it was but youtube obliged with an introduction to the subject matter. From what I understand it is, in essence, candid or posed shots that tell a story, but that is by no means a definitive description.
Alighting the train we were greeted by typical Belfast weather; the clouds were rolling in and threatening rain. A few light showers weren’t about to deter us, in fact, they served to create wonderful watery reflections on the streets. Accompanied by the long shadows cast by low light we were able to capture a few creative shots on our way to Union Street, anticipating the colourful murals.
From here we continued onwards to the Cathedral Quarter with its invitation of narrow cobblestone streets, historical buildings and beautiful light displays. Victoria Square was next on the unfolding agenda and then onto City Hall which was particularly popular with the group for street portraiture.
Keith initiated approaching strangers and asking permission for their photograph to be taken at Great Victoria Street; an interesting character reading his newspaper under the canopy of a bus shelter was an opportunity he wasn’t going to miss. The gentleman willingly obliged and Keith was rewarded with some fantastic shots.
All of us, with some trepidation, began approaching people and we were wonderfully surprised to find most were obliging and even flattered at the prospect of modelling for us. This gave us the confidence to continue asking, and although we had a few rejections, the willingness of most far outweighed this.
St George’s market was our last port of call and unfortunately for me with only 3GB of memory I had to retire early, no doubt leaving the others to shoot the winning shots of this month’s challenge which is, you’ve guessed, Street Photography. So if I’m not in the running this month I can only blame my lack of memory, I mean, what else could it be!