Looking... Really Looking

For my photography project I needed to look at crowds, strangers and big cities. So off I went to Waterloo station where I wandered around and snapped away, hoping no one would ask me to turn the camera off! My goal was to experiment with capturing the journeys strangers were experiencing around me, I thought I’d share my outcome.

I love this long exposure effect you can create using a really slow shutter speed, it seems to capture the movement and flow of the train station so well. 

I decided to make everything black and white partly because of the photographer that inspired this shoot, but also because it appears to remove some of the clutter that colour can bring to a photo. It lets the eye focus on lines and angles that make a photo. 

Looking back at the photos it amazes me how little I'd paid attention to the station when visiting previously; the clash of old architecture next to shiny new flat screens. 
Even the shot above seems to have something interesting about it. The sign is nothing special and yet it's signs & directions like this that are a crucial part of the journey through Waterloo station and beyond. 
Since this photography project is all about 'the journey', these thoughts should all hopefully lead somewhere. But outside of course work I'm going to try and appreciate the smaller details around me when I'm out and about. It might make unexciting travel that little more exciting. 

 Georgina 

Consuming and Creating

Getting that balance between consuming creative things and then creating yourself is pretty tricky huh. 

It’s so easy to soak up all of those creative juices from other people - perhaps from the artwork you saw, or a video that got you thinking, or just something someone said that stuck with you. But it’s what to do with all those ideas that’s the problem. It's so easy to let them sort of wash over you.

I watched this video recently (link to her channel here), and in it she mentions that to really process anything she's seen, she needs to create something. I'd never thought of the creative process like this before, I think she's completely right. 
It's pretty similar to the idea that to stay inspired you just need to create, to experiment without any fear of doing something wrong. 

Even writing this post has started something off. It’s made me sit down and think about what I want to write. I may have re-writen sentences a fair bit, and it took me a bit of time to get going. Still, it’s forced me to put something down and out of my head. It should help me to gain more of a balance between consuming and creating. 

What do you think? I'd love to hear.

Georgina