Monday, July 16, 2012

The Merchant of Victoria Street


My favorite photo - not because I took it :), but I love the chaos and disorder shown in one photo.
Something kept drawing me to this scene, and the original tilt of the chair makes 
this scene pretty charming to me.


The hero (and owner of the shop) - Mr. Subramaniam


A close-up look of some steel pipes.


Scrap metal, pots and pans, cables broken bicycles: you name it, this shop would most probably have it!


Mr. Subra at work as he tries to separate the copper for recycling.


I was crouching low, and waited for Mr. Subra to come into the frame.


The 'gloved one' at work. :O)


No, it's not an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S3 phone! 
Caught this reflection of Mr. Subra from a mirror that he uses quite a bit in his shop.


This was taken quite early into my photo assignment, and I believe at that time, I have not even seen his actual face yet! In fact, I thought Mr. Subra was one of the workers in the shop! 


Rods!


The 'moment' that I was looking out for: so glad I caught it!

My journey:

We completed our Advanced Visual Story Telling Workshop with Justin Mott last Saturday morning (14th July) with a simple presentation of our personal project. The past 3 days have been anything but simple actually - for me, getting to know a total stranger and persuading him to allow me to peep into his world for 3 days. Thank you, Mr. Subramaniam! And if you're keen to have a look at the FB posting, do click here.

And oh by the way, the photos are meant to be viewed this way; from the first to the last photo. Just like every photo has its meaning, the sequence in presenting our photos also play an important role. I learnt this from Mr. Justin Mott, our workshop teacher/tutor. Thanks again, Justin.. :)

p/s: Was searching for a suitable name for the project's title..for some funny reason, I had 'Constant Craving' (a song in the early 90s by singer K.D. Lang) and really contemplated to name my album that as I also intended to pay a mini-homage to that song. Anyway, I settled for 'The Merchant of Victoria Street' - a spin from the famous literary classic ('The Merchant of Venice') as I looked through Mr. Subra's biz card again and saw the word 'saudagar' (merchant in Bahasa Malaysia). Haha..I think I found my 'moment' then.. :P

Gears:
I shot this entirely with:
1) 50mm f/1.8
2) 17-50mm f/2.8

As we were told to 'look for the light', this meant no external flash was used, only ambient lighting.

So, I hope you'll like this as much as I enjoyed my adventure! :O) 

2 comments:

nishashburn said...

Loooooveeeee the first shot!! Who would have thought that those things would come out like a work of art, eh? =)

P/S- the title of the set seemed fitting, too =)

shutterspeed said...

Hey Nisha..thanks! Yea, I was pretty pleased with the first shot :O) As for the title, glad it worked for you too..hehe..