Yeah, I was spelling it wrong for a long time. Florescent, flourescent. I stand corrected.
So I’m currently concentrating on about four projects and one of them is looking at fluorescent displays. It actually started in February last year at the Harvey Nichols store in Knightsbridge. I’d just started using flash and I saw some examples of work with a slow shutter speed that I liked. Especially Charalampos Kydonakis AKA Dirty Harry and Charlie Kirk AKA Two Cute Dogs . So I thought I’d try it and mix it up with shop windows.
This is the first picture that got me really interested. I liked the environment appearing to slice into reality.
Loved the vivid colours and fine detail revealed by the flash.
There were some fluorescent sculptures on show at the Saatchi Gallery, so I decided to hang around there for a while and see if I could get anything decent. It was a bit more difficult to catch people in front of the work because they assume you’re taking a picture of the sculpture and hang back. Or they realise they’re likely to be in the picture and duck out. But I did manage a couple of interesting ones.
I like the pale colours in this. In post processing it seemed to work best with a slightly green tint left in it – perhaps because of her red hair. And I like the floating necklace and trailing wiring on the floor.
I was hoping that fluorescents would feature in some shop window display somewhere in London this Christmas and I struck lucky: Selfridges. I consider their displays to be the best in London and it was good to be back where I started with this whole photography fever, a year before.
I went out for about nine sessions each lasting between two and four hours. I have to say I found it hard because of the sheer volumes. It’s the most crowded place in London and the crowds were sweeping around me, running over my feet. And very noisy. Almost to the point of culture shock. Rickshaw bells ringing, sirens, shouting, megaphones, Hare Krishna songs. You name it.
There was also this second level of street life going on that I quickly started to notice. Beggars (one woman with a baby in wooden swaddling clothes) and the classic street gamblers with little silver cups and a ball hidden underneath – they really drew a crowd.
The results of these sessions were quite exciting but also frustrating. This is one of my favourites. If only the guy had an expression as interesting as the girl.
And the shop window clawing in a new victim. Or crowning him. It’s a bit unbalanced. I faded out the object on his nose, but it still intrudes too much…
Here is a link to the whole fluorescents set as it stand so far. Hopefully there will be more to come.
Last week on Tuesday night I shared a viewing of these at the Shoreditch satellite of the London Independent Photography group and people were quite excited by them. So that was encouraging. And also a big thanks to Gerard Nicolas who expressed his enthusiasm on flickr (especially appreciated as I really admire his work) and the Grit and Grain group for their thoughtful comments at the start.
Note: I’m going to try and write more frequent posts – perhaps shorter. I often have conversations in my head for the blog but they seem to be really long and complicated. So I will try to jot down thoughts in a more fluid way.
