Christmas Fair (Images)

I went to shoot the Islington Mill Christmas Fair today and met two people who were interested in being the main feature of my "Hidden Salford Artists" project I am working on!

I started by shooting some shots to capture the mood of the fair, and the Christmas spirit that was being shown throughout the interior! I shot the Christmas tree with my 50mm f/1.4 at the lowest aperture setting to capture the amazing bokeh and depth of field, this would make a good stock image but does not fit in well with my brief.

I then moved on to photographing the stalls that were present, I began by asking the person who owned the stall if they were around, just to make sure they didn't mind their work being shown online. This gave me the confidence skills I needed, as well as being a conversation starter to explain my project and speak to people about being my main feature.

This candid shot made me laugh! The lady was trying on a hat and her friend said she look silly, here they are laughing about it! I wish I had captured the woman a little more central to the frame, to get more of her face in and capture the moment more.

I captured the moment here of the lady dishing out food to customers, in a shot below I captured the menu and the mince pies she was selling but I thought this captured the atmosphere of the fair more than the closer cropped candid shots!

These two lovely ladies ran a stall selling scarves and prints they made themselves, I never got a chance to speak to them, but they were having a laugh with all the customers. I preferred capturing people smiling or laughing in the candid shots, as it meant it gave a positive vibe to the fair making it look like good fun and a good event to go to. In all the photographs, I tried to opt for a orange/yellow glow to make the place look more homely and warm, inviting them into Islington Mill as a place to work and a place to visit for events.

I used a smaller aperture for this shot to capture the menu but not the writing. I also wanted the mince pies to be the main focus of the shot but without placing them in the centre.

This was the space of Andrew Brooks who is a landscape photographer focussing on Urban Decay as his current project. I was fascinated by his work, and spoke to him in great detail about his work and how he constructs his photographs. I thought this shot captured his work and how he promotes it, as I am going to use Andrew as one of the artists for my project.

I took some photographs of the spaces that were available as shots to capture the scene of what was happening, this was some work by an artists I originally planned to use for the Hidden Artists, but they were not at Islington Mill as much as I had of hoped so we could not set a time in stone to get photographs/interviews.

This is the other artist I am using for my Hidden Salford Artists project - Paul Hallows. He is an ex physicist who now creates space inspired graphic colouring books, which are really awesome! I found myself asking artists to be part of my project whom I really connected with their work, such as this and the work of Andrew Brooks.

I captured this of Andrew talking to a customer for the final article.

I finally captured this shot to go with the Hidden Artists part of Andrew Brooks section of the article. I thought it would make a good shot to have someone looking at Andrew Brooks' work that he had printed out to sell.