Despite having gone with a large group to whitby I found myself unable to round up anyone else to attend with me, which left me with two choices. Go by myself or not go. But as faint heart never got any good porfolio worthy shots , it was all go.Now arriving in Lincoln I was faced with my first problem as you can see on the left. To get up to the cathedral quarter where I knew most of the events to be happening I needed to tackle Steep Hill. As you can see from the picture that really is the name of the street. Steep Hill.
And never have a street been more aptly named. Now Whitby although it had the steps going to the churc, at least had steps. This thing have nothing, asides from very smooth pavement and seemingly never ending slope. By the time I got up to the top, the back of my legs were screaming as badly as they felt at the end of the day in Whitby and I hadn't even taken the camera out of the bag , yet alone taken any pictures! I decided I didn't care if anything was happening at the bottom of the hill as I wasn't going to come down again until it was time to go home!I decided that my best place to spend the time would be inside Lincoln castle, as well that's where everybody seemed to be going, so after getting a entry ticket and politely but firmly turning down the helpful shop assistant who tried to sell me a additional guided tour around the castle walls. ( I was here for people not buildings) I was inside.
To be a photographer you need to have confidence and people skills. To be a photographer and then do street photography takes a whole lot of confidence on top of that as essentially you are walking up to people you have never met before and sticking a camera in their face.Whitby was my first real taste of street photography, but there I was with others. At Lincoln I was on my own, which was a little bit of a scary prospect at first and it took a little time to find my grove and press the shutter button for the 1st time.
However I quickly found my memory card filling up quickly helped by the incredibly cheerful, kind and patience attendees to the festival. In fact not one person I approached to ask for a portrait turned me down which considering the sheer number of photographers buzzing around, it would have been more then understandable for people to start to get very fed up.Now at whitby the street are very narrow and with so many people in costumes and photographers around it tend to get very busy and cramped very quickly. One of the photographers from our group got cracked on the head by somebody else lens and to add insult to injury he seemed more concerned about his gear then her!
However at Lincoln things were very spread out and although there were a few occasions of "swarming" you felt like you had chance to breathe and think.
Also Unlike Whitby most photographers were very well behaved and I think that in turn helped contribute to the wonderful atmosphere. Plus it wasn't like there was a shortage of photographic opportunities and the amount of costumes on display were breathtaking in their originality and style.Another surprise was the unexpected opportunity to start chatting and getting to know some of the other photographers there, a unexpected and very nice change from the photographic scrums that seemed to be the norm at the goth weekend.
There were two moments however that stood out from the rest. The first was the wacky races as you can see in this photograph. Emphasis on wacky, I don't think I've laughed so hard at a bike race before.
Now the 2nd moment I caught totally by accident, by being in the right place, at the right time and realising in time what was happening right in front of me. Yes as you may have guessed I managed to catch someone proposing to his girlfriend and yes as you may have guessed from the look on her face she said yes!
As you can imagine both of them were delighted I had managed to capture it, and even more happy that I took the time to give them a card so they could contact me afterwards to get the photos.
Which has lead me to a realisation that I really need to use my cards more :-)
Despite the day moving on people were still more then happy to pose, which meant my memory card continued to fill up with shots that more then compensated for the drive, horrendous car parking charges and that darn hill.I even couldn't resist visiting one of the stalls and buying myself a mechanical pocket watch which is really rather cool and now graces my desk.
With one final shot of steampunk Batman, yes I have typed that correctly :-) Steampunk Batman, who I had seen earlier in the day and then spent a long time looking for, it had even prompted me to say the line I never expected to say " Has anyone seen batman?" It was time to head home.
Well almost as I couldn't resist a little stop by the cathedral to make use of my wide angle lens, but due to some repairs I had to plan my shots very carefully as one of the towers was covered in scaffolding.
So was the day worth it? Yes undoubtedly, it was a fantastic day and the attendee's were just great. It's provided several more shots for the portfolio and some valuable experience in street photography.
It also proved that old adage that the best way to improve your photography is to go out and do some!
Lets hope the next weekend in Whitby is equally as good.
Roll on November :-)
