If you are fortunate enough to ever visit Belfast, Northern Ireland, you can get around the city easily and quickly on a ‘Belfast Bike.’ Download an app, pay a small fee, and borrow a bike! Take it from one side of the city to the other, and park it at the nearest bike-park! Easy!
A rack of public-access bicycles at Botanic Gardens, Belfast.
This is part of life in any city.
I captured this scene in a reasonably affluent part of Belfast, an area full of life and vibrancy where students from across the world mix with young professionals in coffee shops and bars. Where the streets are teeming with people enjoying friendship and a casual happy lifestyle. Where the side streets are student flats, posh detached homes and family terraces. And where a man lives on a pavement in a grubby sleeping bag.
If any picture can speak a thousand words, surely this one does. What does it tell you about the man on the ground? Why has he positioned himself there? What conversation is taking place between the man and the woman at the bank machine? She doesn’t look threatened – in fact they seem to be having a pleasant enough conversation. He’s sitting beside a ‘meal deal’ sign – would anyone go into the shop and spend some money on a ‘meal deal’ for him? Is that why he’s there?
I love photographs like this, not only documenting real life on the streets as it happens, but exciting the mind – raising questions; seemingly incongruous juxtapositions of objects and subjects, apparent conflicts of themes and interpretations.
Fujifilm X-T30, F=55mm, f/5 @ 1/125th sec on ISO400, shot in ACROS film simulation mode.
‘The Smoker’s Rest.’
A grubby chair at the back door of a Belfast restaurant, in a make-shift shelter and beside the ashtray. Fujufilm X-T30 F=18mm f/4.5 @ 1/60th sec on ISO400
I found these two memorials in Ballintoy.
A very traditional way to mark a life…
And a more humorous take on memory and commemoration…
Which would YOU prefer?
An interesting aspect of documentary photography is that human influence and interaction can be implied, rather than overt.
Even if people are not actually in the photo, the human element is still present and the human story is still told.
This gable wall in Belfast points us to events on the other side of the world, and indicates the desire of locals here to show solidarity with their fellow students there. There is a significant Chinese community in South Belfast, many of whom are students at the university, and many of them would have Hong Kong origins.
Fujifilm X-T30 shot in Acros film simulation.
F=22mm, f/11 at 1/60th sec on ISO400.
Spending a windy afternoon in Coleraine, and trying to find something to occupy the time, I decided to do some simple street shots, around The Diamond – the main shopping area of the town. Despite the cold weather, the car-parks were full, and I left the car in a side street, returning to find an enthusiastic traffic warden had ticketed my car! So, I’m posting a photo of him (or one of his mates) below…
I took the Fujifilm X-T30 and a 100-200mm lens up the street, with the ‘film simulation mode’ on the camera set to ACROS. Film simulation mode is unique to Fujifilm (I think) – for the Fujifilm people have been renowned for their range of films, each with distinctive characteristics. Acros film is a black and white film with unique grain and mid-range contrasts. Continue reading Coleraine Street-Monochrome
With a slack afternoon in the studio I decided to do some experimentation – and I even volunteered to be my own guinea pig! I did a selfie!
Watch the vid…
The best way to burn off one or two of those Christmas Day calories is by taking a good walk on Boxing Day, and on this Boxing Day, 2018, the sun was shining in Belfast, and I was visiting a family in Sydenham, and where better for a walk after my visit than Victoria Park, one of Belfast’s legendary green spaces in the industrial landscape.
Last week we visited Portballintrae, a village right on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, and close to the world-famous Giant’s Causeway, and the even more famous Bushmills Distillery.
This image was added on 1 November 2018:
Portballintrae is very much a ‘dormitory’ village, now built up with modern apartments used a holiday home by people from elsewhere, which gives the visitor the impression that it is a soulless, sad place. There is a small harbour, and a boat-club with a small clubhouse, and a decent beach, topped by an archeological treasure, the Lissnahall Prehistoric Earthworks. A short drive leads to Bushmills, and I was intrigued by the bunting in the town square. Continue reading Portballintrae
This happy chappie is young Sebastian, who came with his mummy and daddy to visit the studio at Dundonald to begin his ‘Baby’s First Year’ sessions. He smiled all the way through!
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