Capturing what the cab driver captures…

….this guy had a phenominal memory, he told me great stories of amazing people who had riden in his taxi over the fourty years he’d been driving…..an old prisoner of war, the guy who invented the first mainframe computers, umpteen stars and politicians….he’s seen and heard alot. What if, for each of these people he had turned around and taken a picture of them in the back of his cab…. he is now in the process of writing a book on the stories he has heard, “Stories on the Run”, how great would it be if for each of these stories he had an accompanying photo.

Little people

EVA, 101

Eva is a wonderful lady of 101 years old whom I met whilst wondering the corridors of a local nursing home. She was all shy telling me time and time again “I take a terrible picture”. Bless her. As beautiful as she is, I found it really hard to take a good picture of her. As I was shooting I was looking at the back of the camera and was thinking that I couldn’t seem to capture what my eyes where really seeing. No amount of maneouvering or changing of the settings seemed to make a difference. I was capturing an image – clearly it was her, but it was more a shadow of her, an emptier version of her. Somehow I seemed to be missing the essense of what and who she was. It just seemed as if what it was that made her her was somehow lost in my camera. How does one capture warmth, wisdom and poignancy? How does one capture the essense of a person, that that make a person who they truly are? How does one translate the intangible into the real? Her physical body is one thing but is it really possible to capture a person’s soul? I left this lovely lady feeling deeply moved and humbled.

Some studio portraits

At least I found one guy willing to pose for me this weekend!

2 to be 3

Camden a week on

A week on and a fire later, Camden was a very different place this time round…. subdued, greyer somehow….

Third time not so lucky

What a nice man!! Shame I don’t have the sound bite and shame its blurred!

Street – venturing

Street – revisited