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| SNAP HAPPY: Kingshurst Parade after dark |
WHEN you think of photos of council estates then the same five or six things spring to mind.
There are those pictures of foreboding tower blocks, shot from below and preferably against an iron grey sky. Walls splashed with graffiti or bits of crisp packet blowing around the sort of waste ground that you usually see in Crimewatch reconstructions.
These images of inner city living are everywhere. They appear in the pages of national newspapers every time that journalists in well-heeled parts of London want to demonstrate just how desperately depressing it is for people growing up in places like North Solihull.
It’s no surprise that the recent TV documentary, People Like Us, had lots of lingering shots of high rise blocks – even though the majority of people in Chelmsley Wood actually live at ground level.
The trouble with these pictures is that they’re a rather selective view of council estates. Those who live there know that there’s a lot more to their lives than lonely looking washing lines or gloomy underpasses. And fortunately some photographers have found rather more creative ways to capture the communities of North Solihull.
One such man is Tony Cornish, who has ventured out at all hours of the day and night to photograph his local area.
Last autumn, the self-taught snapper started to take classes at the Arts Space, on Kingshurst Parade, offering up tips to others on how to take images that really stand out.
One thing is for sure, you have to be patient and get plenty of practice if you want to get the shots that you’d be proud to hang on your kitchen wall.
Over the course of the past few months, Tony has shown us just some of the pictures that he
has taken – many of them just a few miles from the street where the photography classes are held.
There are photos of a red sun sinking over Babbs Mill Lake, a moon hung in the sky over Chelmsley Wood and the M6 motorway at night, cars passing by in trails of white light.
What is quite clear is that getting yourself in the right place at the right time (even if that time is 5am) is part of the secret.
Leaving the house before dawn or wading out into freezing streams is all part of the process. Not to mention braving the stares of surly looking teenagers who wonder what business you have walking around with a long lens and tripod.
“I have been out by myself on canal towpaths at 11 o’clock at night and wish I hadn’t been,” Tony
confesses on one occasion. “But the shots I’ve managed to get have been incredible.”
Another week he explains how several elements have to come together to get the perfect picture.
“You can go out at Babbs Mill and take a photo of the lake. But then you start to think ‘what time is the sun going to be between those two trees’. And then you might go and take that picture a hundred times and one day, just as you get there, a swan is swimming past at just the right time…”
For those who take fright at the thought of getting up before sunrise, there are lots of other ways you can make a photo stand out. Getting down on the floor or scrambling up on a bench can change the perspective of a picture.
There are lots of tricks in a photographer’s arsenal. Slow exposure photos can make a street heaving with shoppers look empty or turn a stream of traffic into something slightly psychedelic. You can create some amazing effects without even touching Photoshop.
One night last year the class went out into Kingshurst to attempt to take “light trail” shots. While the rush of red and white headlights was rather less dramatic than the ones Tony had taken from the motorway bridge, our amateur efforts showed that it didn’t take much to turn an ordinary looking street into something rather different.
And there wasn’t a scrap of graffiti in sight…
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