Leake Street runs under Waterloo Station. The entrance makes it fairly clear what is in store…
Graffers welcome!
Photographing graffiti is just a bit too easy since a straightforward representation of the graf usually becomes derivative art for which the photographer inevitably takes some credit. Just look at all the Banksy ‘art’ rips online. It is too easy and for some reason, grafs are often really enhanced when viewed photographically, especially on a monitor. They have a luminance sometimes lacking in the original. And just for the sake of a counter argument it can work the other way too… see street artist Shepard Fairey filing a lawsuit against AP
Actually I wanted some quick gratification using the Nokton in low light at f/1.2 and as I happened to be in Waterloo I shot a couple of rolls of Delta 400 in the tunnel.
Suicide jesus
Interesting 3D effect, JHC!
The place looks like a set from a first person shooter game and man, is it bright with colour! The place has been graffed and over-graffed so often there is very little of the original walls, floor or ceiling. So first points to me, I’m not shooting colour, so I have to find other interest. Shape & form, content, some difference.
The toolkit
There is some really good stuff down there. Shame Thomas Jefferson can’t give us his opinion now.
The so called war on terror spells the end of privacy. What a fucking irony, hey government?
Presumably Thos J and Mark Twain are turning in their graves at the travesties of justice currently being taken with our civil liberties. Just to help the search bots find this quote a little easier lets have it in plain text, not just an image:
“On the altar of God, I pledge undying hostility to any government restrictions on the free minds of the people.”
Thomas Jefferson – the favored quote at the highest point in the Rotunda at the Jefferson Memorial.
Anyway, moving on but keeping with the surveillance/civil liberties meme, the all seeing eye. If CCTV were like this I’d stop taking drugs.
Surveillance masonic graf style
Leake Street is surprisingly long, this is just one of the side roads off it
And this looks like the exit to a new level in the game
Level completed
So I’m hoping I haven’t just ripped-off some teeny graffer’s art by photographing Leake Street. The wonderful thing is that if I go back next week it will have changed dramatically again as more crews come along and spray over what is there.
Almost unbelievably a group of people were walking along tut-tutting at the ‘mess’. Get a life people. Or walk the long way round the station if it offends you.
I used Ilford Delta Pro 400 and Ilford DD-X because I wanted a fairly ‘crisp’ modern look to these photographs. No need for a retro Rodinal treatment, the subject matter is hardly appropriate. Most of the photos were taken at f/1.2 on the Nokton due to the (lack of) light, and lets face it, because I could hehe.� I’m fairly happy with the results for a first run.� Focusing seems spot on with the Bessa-T too which is a relief with that narrow a depth of field.
So, to put it another way, my Nokton lust been gratified for a day or so.
Finally, here is one I liked, and I think it works well in B&W.
So thanks to all you unknown (to me) graf people…
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by skinnyvoice
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Really like the last one, and also the Jesus one – you’re right that the background is more flattering to the images than it is in real life. The camera flattens out the grime.
Colour would be interesting, though, although I like the shapes you’ve chosen. Also think the staircase going up to the next level of the game is eloquent