On Friday 19th January, Reading Camera Club welcomed Peter Crane ARPS to share with Reading Camera Club his very entertaining and informative presentation “Street Photography”.
Peter started by introducing us to his approach to what is clearly his photographic passion: taking photographs in urban environments. He is a frequent visitor to Brick Lane and other parts of London with a vibrant street culture, but also to other cities such as Bristol and Bath. An idea of the range of his photographic work can be enjoyed on his website https://www.petercrane.co.uk/, where his interest in colour combinations and skilful compositional principles can be seen.
Peter makes great use of street art, not just to record the artwork itself, but to use it along with street life, particularly passers-by, to freeze a humorous or ironic moment in time. He also creates very effective (and sometimes confusing) scenes by using reflections, for example from shop windows.
His focus is on taking the picture, and getting the image right at the stage. And he keeps the processing of his photographs, using only Photoshop Elements, to a minimum.
Even if you don’t do street photography yet, Peter’s work is a great inspiration showing what experience and patience can produce from everyday scenes in our cities and towns.
Our next meeting, on Friday 26th January, will be a more practical session – “Process and Review”. In this meeting members are invited to process photographs submitted by other members, and to put their own individual stamp on the image. Members will then outline how they have processed the picture, and the meeting will be open for everybody else to comment. This is a good opportunity to come along and see how photographers can do post-processing to produce an image that fits their own unique vision.
