A lighter side of life – picture essay

I’d like to begin by misquoting the first line of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 – “It was love at first sight.”

The first time I saw a photograph by Elliott Erwitt I fell madly in love with him.

I wasn’t only drawn to Erwitt, I quickly discovered many other amazing reportage photographers too and I now realise that one of the things that I was drawn to was that their work didn’t condemn the world, it celebrated it.

To see the extraordinary within the ordinary is such a rich way to live life – what is there not to wonder at in this miracle of a world?

I felt this huge urge to join in so I spent almost a month’s salary on a pocket camera and told myself it must go with me everywhere. To this day it still does.

This photograph below, Kebab Feast Take Away, came from me standing in a queue one evening, waiting to buy some fish and chips.

Fortunately, rather than curse the fact that I was in a queue, I found myself staring with amusement at how the shiny metal frontispiece reflected the customers and at certain moments “completed” the bodies of the guys behind the counter. I had my camera with me (of course) but it was much too busy for a clear photo.

So I hurried back the next day and, to the owner’s bemusement, asked if I could stand in the corner with my camera. I had stood there for about an hour getting the occasional one-on-one reflection when that lovely thing, “the unknown”, happened – schools finished for the day.

Groups of school kids started coming in and, after a while, these two schoolgirls. I was shooting film and took about eight shots. After the girls had bought their food I told them that I had taken some photos and asked them if they were OK about it. They said yes and I bought them their chips to say thank you.

We quite often visit Hay-on-Wye as my sister lives there. It is a small village on the English-Welsh border and is deep in farming country.

It is very pretty and always interesting to walk around, and on one such stroll my wife said: “Those rugs seem to have legs,” and she was right; she had seen the extraordinary in the ordinary. And when I went up to a cafe balcony to get a better viewpoint, I realised that the name of the shop made the joke.

I watched as a variety of people came past; kids, adults, family groups, some stroking the sheepskin, some chatting about it, some just walking straight past – all of which I photographed, trying to create the “is it an animal” joke.

But the picture I liked best was this one, with no one in it and, like I said, the name of the shop doing the work.

Seeing sheep in a different way also happened when we went for a walk up at Hay Bluff. Or maybe Welsh sheep-farming has moved into genetic manipulation?

Not far down the road from Hay is Clifford, a tiny village in Herefordshire within a field or two of the Welsh border. Every summer they have a fete, which is not only marvellous eccentric fun but often a great source of visual delight.

The events at the fete include the Children’s Dog Show, Splat the Rat, the Highland Hoopla and the Welly Wanging Competition. Throwing a welly as far as you can is a weirdly skilful thing to do and I love it because it is a game created from an everyday object, fitting in perfectly with the idea of finding the extraordinary within the ordinary.

It was fun watching the wanging from within the fete grounds but it was when we left and there was now a hedge in the way that I saw how very surreal this game is.

A notable quote from Erwitt is: “To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place … I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

A thing that backs up Erwitt’s quote is finding photographs local to home.

It speaks for itself that the streets, paths and sights local to us are the ones we see most often and therefore tend to become just part of the background.

We stop noticing them. So I am always happy when I see a photograph within yards of my house.

One came about a few years ago when my children were playing in the street and the coal fire in our living room was reflected in the glass.

Another was when I was chatting on the pavement outside and glanced inside to notice that my daughter’s leg looked like a table lamp.

And a third happened as I was walking down our street and noticed that fluffy white clouds were reflected in all the car windscreens; and what did I see but the sun, peeping out from behind a cloud.

My photographic philosophy is that life happens everywhere and that life doesn’t switch off, even for a moment.

That is why it is essential that I take a camera everywhere, even somewhere as dull as a supermarket queue.

I say “dull” but I was so excited to see this scene in the aisle next to mine. In fact I remember thinking it was well worth losing my place in order to take this photograph.

Another thing with always having a camera with me is the temptation to use it when perhaps I shouldn’t.

Having said that, I do not specifically search for photos, I let life take me where it will and, with luck, photographs seem to happen – the car, airplanes, newsagents, I even find myself taking photographs off the TV.

I am so committed to my camera being with me everywhere that I also have it beside me in the car.

One summer’s evening, on the A3 towards Guildford, in among the traffic I saw four white vans ahead. I thought nothing of them.

But as I got closer, I realised that right there, as the vans followed the curve of the road ahead, was the extraordinary arising out of the ordinary. The name on the logo was a gift and the distance between the Echoes was perfect. Thank you Life!

Picking up my (film) camera (with its manual settings) I attended to the focus and the exposure, click, wind on, click, I took two shots. It’s on film so I don’t know that it is blurred. Doesn’t matter. Even Elliott Erwitt might like this one, I think to myself.

Back in 2007 Antony Gormley had an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London. Part of it was an installation called Blind Light, which consisted of a room-sized glass box filled with a dense cloud of mist.

People clung to the edge because they couldn’t see where they were going. I was outside the box and, on seeing this impending collision, I knew I just had to take a picture.

However, two things crossed my mind in that instant; the first was that on my left was a sign which said “no photography” and the second was that on my right was Gormley himself!

Fortunately my camera was around my neck and hanging over my midriff which meant I didn’t have to lift it to my eye, I could just aim and click. Shhhh, don’t tell, OK …

When I do my street photography workshops, I begin by talking about life moments versus photography moments. I say that unless we are having lots of life moments, how can we have any photography moments?

To explain what I mean by that I often refer to the words of Charles Wesley, the 18th-century English poet and clergyman, who wrote that he was “lost in wonder, love and praise”.

I like the use of the word “lost” because it means that he was not in control of what he saw, heard and felt.

So I encourage giving up trying to control over what you see, feel and hear because then every moment is new and astonishing. And the new and astonishing gives us life moments aplenty.

Then all we need is a camera – everywhere we go.