For some time now, my site has been buggy, with photos being displayed at random. I’ve decided to start from scratch using a new theme and I’m having a hard time getting it right. The content is fine, but I’m having trouble organising it all … After diving headfirst into WordPress, I’ve finally come up with something that works. If you’re reading this, it’s because I’ve finally written my first blog since my website lifting! I’ve given my Portfolio a bit of a makeover, with a few changes to the selection of photos. It’s only cosmetic. My website is mainly my Blog. In fact, that’s what’s highlighted when you arrive on the site.

TWELVE. Don’t think I’m going to share my end-of-year photos with you just yet. Nothing like that! Even though I’ve found it hard to write anything over the last few months, I’ve continued to wander the streets and take photos. As I’m sorely lacking in ideas for writing an interesting Blog, I’ve decided to share a few photos with you. So 12 of them.

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#1

In this first photo, what obviously attracted me was the gesture of the young lady with her hand resting nicely on her hip. There’s an echo with the hand of the boy who walked past me. It happens very quickly and I didn’t think much about this one. It’s an instinctive shot. The situation dictates the shutter release. I think the photo would have been more successful with the boy on the girl’s right. But I’m not a fan of burst photography. Even if this photo is imperfect, I really like it.

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#2

There’s not much going on in the streets of Saint-Denis and when a situation like this arises, a certain excitement can be felt! These girls with their flower crowns didn’t go unnoticed and I tried to photograph them without attracting their attention. I don’t really like interfering with what’s going on in the street. The Ricoh GR3 is perfect for this.

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#3

In Geoff Dyer‘s book The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand, there’s a photo I really like. For those who have the book, it’s plate 30. G.Dyer starts like this: ‘Life is about decision and indecision’. The man is about to enter this grocery shop. The dynamics of his body contrast with his head, which is clearly turned towards something that seems to have caught his attention on the other side. We don’t know exactly what it is, and there’s a certain tension in the photo that stems from this hesitation. G. Dyer goes on to say that ‘it’s not the decisive moment but the moment of indecision’. That’s how I felt when I took this photo.

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#4

Not much to say about this one. When I first started doing street photography, I didn’t feel comfortable taking people’s pictures and very often I asked permission. I don’t do that any more. It’s also very rare for me to interact with the people I photograph. Here I chatted a bit with the man and then took a photo. Réunion is a fairly poor French department overall. This man was standing on the pavement selling some fruit and vegetables he’d picked from his garden, as well as the two birds that caught my eye.

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#5

I had started an article on the Dipavali festivities (Tamil festival of lights). I threw it all in the bin. I thought the article was rubbish… And yet I had quite a few photos to share taken during this event. You’ll just have to make do with this one! As you can imagine, I took a lot of risks to take this photo. I ended up all sticky and my Ricoh suffered the assaults of dust and splashes of water. It’s still functional but I picked up some dust on the sensor… Here it’s the girl’s body language that made me take the shot. Ok she was pretty as well …

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#6

Here too, the trigger is the synchronised gestures of the two women. It’s a fairly simple photo that relies solely on this. I sometimes take complicated photos with several levels of interpretation. None of that here. It’s as basic as it gets!

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#7

Layers, layers, layers… The thing we’re all trying to do. I always find it quite complicated to set up. Here, I was helped by the 3 people in the middle shot. They were sitting on a bench at the bus stop. In fact there’s a fourth person on the left who I excluded to take this photo. I’d done a small series of photos with these four people and I’d exhausted the potential. A bus arrived, there was movement and chaos began to set in. I love those moments when things are moving all over the place and you have to reorganise everything in the frame to take a photo. That’s when I get excited and adrenaline pumping. So these 3 static people offered me a layer. All I had to do was play with a background and a foreground. That’s what I managed to do with this photo. OK, there’s nothing exceptional going on in the image, but the street is like this.

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#8

As I said earlier, very often nothing happens in the street. It’s the way we see things that gives us a different perspective on the little scenes that take place in the street. There wasn’t much going on here either. I was just drawn to this girl who had her hand behind her back with her palm open. That’s quite unusual. She was also scratching her right foot with her left foot. That’s all I needed to take a photo. The framing makes this photo much more interesting than it really is.

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#9

This grocery shop is right next to the bus stop where I took quite a few photos. This is the corner where almost all the drunkards of Saint-Denis gather… Alcoholic beverages must account for more than 95% of this shop’s turnover. And right next door we have the busiest bus stop in town… I photograph everything in the street. I rarely censor myself. Some people have qualms about certain situations. Personally, if I find something interesting, I click. That’s what I did that day…

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#10

One of the marginalised people I’m used to seeing in the street. This man is not in his right mind. You only have to walk past him to hear him chanting all sorts of things. He’s not aggressive and he’s not bothering anyone. He just wanders around the city. He found himself in the middle of a huge crossroads with all the cars swirling around him, a bit lost. The people on the pavements were looking at him and so were the people on the bus. I love the reflection of the two people on the glass doors of the bus.

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#11

This photo is like a layer cake. A layer of white, followed by a layer of black and then a layer of blue! I wondered what these faceted balls were doing on this cookware stand at the market. I made sure that the silver elements were on the dark side so that they stood out. Sometimes people aren’t the most important elements in a composition.

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#12

I’ve saved this one for last. This photo is far from perfect. If I was Steve McCurry, I’d wave my magic wand and make the palm tree next to the woman’s face disappear… But I won’t. The street doesn’t have to be perfect. The attitude of the two protagonists shows a certain tension. The stern-looking man seems to be giving the woman an order. There is also a kind of latent domination due to the position of the two characters. As always, you can invent your own story from this image. A questioning photo is always a good photo.

And that’s it. I’ve finished with these twelve photos. As you can see, I haven’t been idle for many months. I’m having trouble finding interesting things to write about. In the end, talking about these few photos will have allowed me to share them with you.

All photos were taken with the Ricoh GR3 | Crop mode 35 mm