These images are a blending of two photographic hobbies of mine: street and macros-of-urban-decay. Both these subjects come from the same streets so I had the idea of merging them together and these are the results.
It gives the subject a gritty feel that is perhaps a little unfair on the people who are just going about their daily business as it makes them look coarse. This is not meant as a comment on them or their lives. It's just an expression of what I find fascinating on the streets.
With street photography I prefer to get close to people with a farily wide angle lens and be able to see their faces. Doing this without them reacting to what I am doing and thereby losing their natural expression is tricky but a small camera and sneaky technique helps a lot. In this case I was either using my iphone without looking at the screen or a Gopro held beside my shoulder on a selfie stick and operated through the app on my phone. These street photos were all taken in the town of Petchaburi, Thailand.
The photography of the weathered urban surfaces is a different kind of skill requiring a different eye to the extent that I can't look for street and urban-decay photos at the same time! Most towns and cities have lots of great weathered patterns to discover but it is not always accessible, for example too high up, or difficult to photograph well, for example on a curved surface that won't all be in focus. But on the other hand it doesn't usually move so you can take your time and it doesn't change expression when you point your camera at it!
Blending the two styles was done in Photoshop with a lot of trial and error for every successful image.
There are a few things to get right to make it work. A key is the balance between the street photo and the grunge. Ideally, I'm aiming for both to stand out well whilst also complementing each other. Here the market scene is most prominent but the grunge adds a lot to the colours and making the whole image more interesting. When I took the photo this man looked so hungry he was almost drooling at all the food on offer!
This was the first one I did using this technique and I love some of the blending such as the how the grunge cracking pattern shows around the trim of her apron but elsewhere I didn't get the blending to work very well, for example around the arms and legs of the other people which look awkward.
This is a nice balance between the street and the grunge where the person and the weathering both stand out well with some lovely colours.
A very friendly, chatty butcher in the market. The grunge in this case was old graffiti on a wall and I love the way it fits so well into the space behind her as well over her and the butchering counter.
Different kinds of texture in the photograph I used here of a heavily weathered old sign-board. It fits very well over that wall at the back. That's a pile of watermelons on the table, which in real life looked much more appetising than they do here!
More weathered old graffiti used for this one. The woman on the left is touching the other woman's arm in what looks like an affectionate moment but she was actually just making room for me to get passed.
An example where the grunge is more prominent than the street photo with the main subject of the man being a bit hidden. I liked the way it works here because the rest of the street scene behind him was actually very dull and best filled up with grunge.
