Norwich in the rain

I've been taking advantage of Monday's rain - the first since getting the Street Photography Now instruction 16 last Friday: 'Wait for the rain, it makes shooting on the street easier and more interesting' (Martin Parr). Now I've certainly been wondering whether only an Englishman could set a photography project such as this, and seriously doubted whether we would have rain this week, in daylight at least. But the showers initially forecast for Sunday night were then forecast for Monday, so a quick trip into Norwich city centre in my lunch break wasdefinitely in order. And it's amazing how many places you can find to take shelter and look for interesting street scenes when you really need to.

My initial scepticism subsided. In the rain, out come the umbrellas, people rush around and take less notice, the reflections can be great: in many ways it's a more interesting experience than taking pictures in the dry. A good choice, Martin Parr.

Street life

I've been enjoying the weekly assignments in the Street Photography Now Project, but it's something of a poisoned chalice. I'm well and truly hooked, here at the end of week 14 out of 52. My street photography week tends to go something like this:

Friday: check emails at work until the new week's instruction is posted. See whether I have time for a quick trip into the middle of Norwich in my lunch hour.

Saturday and Sunday: prime time for getting some shots suitable for the instruction. Luckily Norwich city centre is probably going to give me the scope for responding to pretty much any sort of project anyone is going to throw at us. There's one pedestrian street in particular that's usually home to all manner of buskers, mime artists and people of all sizes and descriptions. It's been the source of many of my submissions so far.

Monday: start to panic if I need to go out shooting again.

Tuesday: probably get a photograph uploaded into the pool by now and relax a little. Look at other entries and maybe post comments

Wednesday: wonder whether my picture is really good enough, am I shooting too many similar pictures each week, what are other people submitting...has my picture been approved..look at other people's work...

Thursday: check how many views I have had, read any comments and reply. Look forward to a new instruction the next day. Think about weekends away when I'll have the chance to submit something that wasn't taken in Norwich.

To crop or not to crop? I'm wondering whether I should crop more often. This week's entry of mine in response to the instruction 'Show us the aftermath' by Maciej Dakowicz' featured some vomit inside a bus shelter - see below. I would have loved to have been in the city centre after the New Year's Eve celebrations for some real late night in Cardiff style photography (see the photographer's Flickr stream or maciejdakowicz.com) but it wasn't practical. But some people felt the shot ought to have been cropped, so here is the original and my cropped version. Maybe they were right, I'm not sure.

Of course, it might also have worked better in black and white - I haven't tried that, either.