Merry Christmas!

Merry christmas and a happy new year to all my readers. 

2017 has been a bumper year in my journey with photography, not least through this website and the many kind people who have supported and interacted with it. I’d like to say a big ‘thank you’ if you have been reading and hope you will continue to follow my photography adventures as they progress.

I have been especially busy with my teaching of late, so I’m aiming for a little injection of new content in the new year or shortly after. Prominent in this will be an expansion of my large format endeavours, as well as some work that will come out of a trip to a far away location.

Statistics don’t always tell the whole story, but I’d to like end this post by sharing some relating to this website. The second year of Richard Pickup Photography has been one of huge expansion, there’s no getting away from it, and this is borne out by the figures. There have been 6279 unique visitors, 8926 visits and 15400 page views. I suspect these numbers are small in internet terms (although everything is relative), but they strike me as impressive for a niche, personal website with a heavy leaning to black and white images and analogue media.
 

Frank's

Something of a rare foray into colour for me these days.

Some images you make because you simply see them, or moreover they have a way of finding you. Others, like this one here, you see time after time (the scene is on my daily journey home) and resolve to make.

I therefore had a very clear idea of the image I wanted, right down to standing position, focal length, and time of day. I knew I wanted the window of the Barber's to be illuminated, so a darker exterior was needed, but I also wanted enough light outside to show framing elements. I chose dusk as the obvious time of day to shoot, supported by some modest Lightroom adjustments. In the event, I was a little early and waited for about ten minutes until the light faded further.

I enjoy the idea of a modest document of a person and his business, and like the further clues of the man's life, such as his bicycle outside. Even with such a modest image, photography has an immense power to document, to provide tiny significant details.