The opening months of 2022 have seen me rekindling my passion for street photography.
It’s been helped by visiting new towns, which always helps to renew the spark. Whatever those places are like, there is greater sensitivity and heightened observation when you are somewhere unfamiliar, and if you only have a limited amount of time to explore. It’s curiously enlivening.
A series of PR assignments sending me to photograph business-owners across south Wales has given me the opportunity to get new streets into my lens. These have included Cwmbran in Torfaen, and Aberdare in Rhondda Cynon Taff.
A couple of days before visiting Cwmbran, I had a very short dash around the affluent Wiltshire town of Marlborough, on the way back from visiting family. It’s a charming, quintessentially English town, steeped in history. I’d often wanted a quick look around as we passed through. That day the weather was good and I hopped out for a ten-minute dash around the centre.
It gave an interesting contrast to Cwmbran and Aberdare – towns surrounded by an abundance of natural Welsh beauty, but less affluent and sort of down on themselves in certain areas.
Closer to home, I have felt encouraged to take a camera out with me on the occasional dog-walk, school run and a long amble to collect the car from its MOT.
Here I played with the camera timer and long, dramatic lines found beneath a road-bridge connecting Cardiff Bay to the motorway. Such shots can make you look incredibly foolish in the act of capturing them, pressing a button and dashing away from the ‘ticking’ camera, but they can offer satisfying rewards too.
I was drawn back again to my favourite sequence of bridges, again under the same road but a little further on. Sunlight arrows diagonally through here in endlessly pleasing ways, and I have been messing about with it since around 2017.
And these were taken around Ely Bridge, where I enjoyed toying with compositions and the stark contrasts offered by the dipping February sun.
There was also something enjoyably timeless and location-less about this one for me. It resonates with memories of school days, and feels like it could have been taken in almost any UK city or town, anytime since about the 1980s – dated only by the Nike swish.
As ever, I remain available for UK street photography commissions. Please get in touch for more information.