I have decided for this sequence of shots to go to the market in Barcelona on the Ramblas. I originally wanted to do use the street performers for this but I got out of bed too early for spanish life and so the market is the busiest place.
The first thing I noticed and photographed was the colours and presentation of all the fruit and so i took a couple of shots straight away.
I then started focusing on people. I am always more self conscious than the people I am photographing and so this exercise is really difficult for me.
then this shot jumped out at me and I tought how in commercial photography I can no longer use peoples faces.
This then lead me to an idea. People can be so expressive with their hands you can almost read what they are saying from a distance, here are the results.
By now I no longer noticed if people were looking at me strangely taking photos of them. I found that if I stayed in the once place for a few minutes they lost interest in me and went on about their daily lives. I moved from stall to stall when something or someone new caught my attention.
And then this final shot
This ladies hands tell a story of their own. A story of who has worked her whole life at the fish stall. Filleting fish. To me it there is a woman who has seen so many faces come through this market. She does not even glance as I take her picture and now I feel I can go home having seen a little piece of Barcelona that perhaps not everyone notices. I have learned how just going out with the intention of taking photographs and taking shots can bring us to look at things differently than if I was not looking through the lens and the putting down my thought process makes me realise that I did have one I did not just shoot this ladies hands for no reason.
December 2014
Looking back now on this image. I can see that the hand is not focused properly the light was low and I should have used a higher ISO for this hand held shot. It would have been nicer to see the fish she was filleting and also to have adjusted the light which seems as if it came from a fluorescent light.
Reblogged this on nearfarphoto.