Covid Street

I’ve inadvertently deleted the backup files for 16000 photos! I’d been planning to have a good clear out of my 20,000 Lightroom photos but not quite that brutally. I have this vague recollection of dragging a folder titled “2016” into the trash whilst I was reorganising my picture folders. I still have JPEG’s of certain series of images. The plan had been to go through Lightroom, save some stuff as JPEG’s onto an external hard drive then have a brutal delete. I’m not perhaps as upset as I thought I would be. There’s some sentimental stuff that I can screen shot from the previews and well, I’ll just have to get out and take more photos.

In response, I’ve been out this morning to do a bit of Street photography. It was a strange experience. I’m usually quite good at blending into the background and being a bit sneaky but today, with social distancing I was quite exposed. I was approached a few times. A Security guard reminded me that the shopping square was privately owned. (Secretly I felt a bit pissed off as I always feel like these guys just like to throw their weight around). He was asking if I was working for a publication, I sweetly replied I was just a photography student and I was just getting in a bit of practice now that we were allowed out.

I didn’t linger too long. My feeling was that there was a sense of nervousness. Normally if I wanted a shot of someone in particular, I’m fairly comfortable asking them if I can take their photo. Today however with the shops re-opening, I felt I didn’t want to get too close to people. It wasn’t overly busy but much busier than the town centre has been for months.

So this is the result. Not my best. I randomly took my infrared camera (just to see the effect). I’ve been reading about liminality and heterotopia recently. I’ve tried to capture distance, separation and the strangeness of the situation.