News, views and musings
As another month closes, presented here are a selection of monochrome shots during the transition from winter to spring across Venice. Whilst busy in the gallery for my recent Venice Street Geometry exhibition, I didn't get around to posting much from February, so here's a little catch up of things that caught my eye, and my lens over recent weeks. Lots of familiar themes looking at light, shadow and reflections, but also a new focus on street geometry as well as a project highlighting the vandalistic grafitti that is appearing across the city.
Despite shooting digital, more recent work has seen a return to using analogue, vintage lenses (Pentax-M) mounted on the Fujifilm XT5. This slowed down approach is seen as positive and allows for more considered composition, as well as providing a more film-like aesthetic. Moving forward I am tempted to experiment more with film and film scans, as a way to return to basics. I feel, for the sake of creativity, I need to step away from digital, and especially social media, so April will start as a film only month, so let's see what that entails. Hopefully I can post some results in a few weeks!
Some of these recent shots above will be made into fine art prints, so if you are interested in purchasing any, please let me know!
As a new addition to this blog, I also want to share recent inspiration. Earlier in the year this came from reading Matt Stuart's (@mattu1) very insightful 'Think Like a Street Photographer' which turned out to be a little gem. Although a different style to street photography from what I create, the book was extremely readable and I would consider useful for any photographer or any genre.
Another new discovery is a new photography podcast by Tim Bingham called Talking Frames which has opened my eyes to several new photographers. Most notably Betty Goh (@betty_goh_photography) and her street abstracts and Stephen Leslie (@step_hen_les_lie) and his use of humour. Stephen Leslie also has his own YouTube channel featuring his 'Show and Tell' documentaries about many famous and contemporary photographers which are well worth a look.
More recently, there have been some new documentary films appearing on the Darkroom Rumour website, which have been highly inspirational. Personal highlights include Elliott Erwitt: Silence Sounds Good, Sabine Weiss: One Century of Photography and also the incredible story of Gerda Taro in Searching for Gerda Taro. Another recent film, and one not to be missed for anyone interested in photography, is the amazing story of Lee Miller in the recent film 'Lee' starring Kate Winslet and based on the biography 'The Lives of Lee Miller' by Antony Penrose, Lee Miller's son. Highly recommended.
AP
To buy any fine art prints from the Monochrome Venice archive, please email andy@monochromevenice.com or check out the prints page: www.monochromevenice.com/prints
