It was as though the events of my Photography Fest have been carefully constructed as a path to me becoming enthralled by street photography. Far from it is the truth of the matter. The six events coming together in a seven day period was purely random and coincidental.
Therefore, on reaching the sixth event a photographic day in Southsea it would appear that this was the final piece in the jigsaw as it were. A reasonably early start, although we didn’t decide to do a dawn shoot, saw us parked up and ready to go just before 8.00am. The light was flat and grey but we set out on our task of recording our view of the place.
In the car park along side the Premier Inn on the sea front we came across an interesting gentleman patiently picking litter from the previous night’s car park activities. He was happy to chat and for us to photograph him. I managed to fail miserably to do him justice. As we wandered around the car park area finding other subjects to photograph a white van arrived and the driver got out and started spreading small pieces of bread on the car park surface along side his van. Engaging him in conversation it transpired he was a local café owner and brings his left over bread and customer’s bread waste to feed the birds. This he has been doing for the past two years. Another miserable failure on my part. This time due to the 100mm lens on my camera, so not the best of starts.
Wandering back towards the hovercraft terminal my luck, if that was the problem earlier, changed. A half empty can of lager and a child’s Noddy ride caught my eye.
The weather turned for the worst but this didn’t deter us as the opportunities for shots improved. Taking respite from the rain in the Blue Reef café we were able to shoot through the windows. I wanted to portray the public coping with the weather.
Eventually we found ourselves on South Parade pier stripped of its summer camouflage. It is a grim place on a wet March day. However, there are all sorts of photo opportunities.
We finally called it a day after just over six hours. Despite the weather it was a good trip. On leaving it was clear that another visit was in order later in the year. There is still Gun Wharf Quay and the historic dockyard to explore. My guess it will be more than one trip in the future.
Photograhic Journey 