Digbeth, Birmingham, June 11th
The Birmingham Flickrmeet Tour of Digbeth occurred today and I’m pretty sure it was a success, which is nice. Despite the laughable BBC 5-day weather forecast suggesting thunderstorms it was a bakingly hot and sunny day as eleven of us spent 2 hours walking from Moor Street to the Custard Factory taking photos and chatting.
While I had a good time I didn’t feel overly inspired, presumably because I’ve been shooting areas like this for over a year now and it’s getting a little old, but it was worth it given the results from the group so far which are very good indeed.
Here’s the pool for todays shots, best viewed as a slideshow as there will be hundreds. You can also check the post-meet thread where folk will be posting their best. So far I’ve been utterly blown away by Matt aka Brilliant Mistake’s set which took all my suspicions about how far I’ve got to go with my photos and confirmed them with a vengeance. Some serious studying of his compositions will now follow.
My photos will be dumped in this set over the week. Nothing’s jumped out as amazing yet but there’s still 100 or so to process. I also slapped a film in my dad’s Nikon FM2 which should be developed in a couple of weeks. I’m quite intrigued as to how I may have improved with a manual camera since last time.
Now, about those thunderstorms. When you’re ready, weather gods. In your own time.
I have to chime in here and say that Pete is at least as good a photographer as i am and i loved his photoset, i doubt whether serious study of my compositions would bring any insight, blind luck being by far the most important factor in my images, of course they wouldn’t exist at all without Pete’s organising the whole thing for which we’re all very grateful.
I think it’s that you’ve found an angle, for want of a better word, that I hadn’t really seen before. That’s the beauty of how Flickr works – rather than just ploughing my own furrow I’m constantly exposed to other ways of taking photos and while at times overwhelming it’s a good thing.
Wow, I posted a comment at 4:19AM and it actually makes sense…
You’re right about Flickr, my photography has come on astonishingly since browsing my way randomly through people’s streams and experiencing their different points of view. Plus i’ve begun seeing Birmingham like new, and this is after twenty-odd years of living here. I’m off to try that viewfinder stuff out…