On a rainy afternoon last weekend I went into the city and walked around the main indoor shopping centre where I found good vantage points on the upper floor for photographing people below. This was my goal, with that very prompt in mind from the box of Street photography challenge cards by David Gibson.
While this was not exactly in the street, I’m calling it street photography since my city has very few outdoor shops. Most of them are in major shopping centres which are, nevertheless, public strolling places.
Over the past two weeks, thinking about this prompt, I’ve taken a number of photos from bridges, upper floor windows, tops of staircases and tops of escalators, but none was as good as this one of a man quietly writing with pen and paper, taken over the glass barrier of the floor above him. It immediately struck me as a great subject with its tile patterns and several unoccupied tables and chairs. I had my camera set to monochrome, so I could already see the blacks and whites on my little screen and knew it would be a good picture.
I’m often on the lookout for people reading a physical book in public, and though I’ve spotted the occasional pedestrian still reading a book while walking, I’ve never had my camera ready. So I was thrilled to catch sight of someone writing with pen and paper, an activity almost as rare now as publicly reading a book made of paper. I zoomed in to try and read his notes but my camera isn’t that good. Oh well.
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Soundslikewish 