A couple of people answered my questionnaire with memories of Camden, so off I went with my camera, post-college one Monday.
I aimed for the market specifically, to try and capture busy moments with lots of people. I wanted to convey a sense of ‘overwhelm’ for one of the questionnaire responses, which described experiencing Camden Market for the first time, as someone new to London, amid all the people pushing past. I’ve seen Camden like this… although I didn’t feel this Monday I had selected was the best showcase for just how busy it can get. Nevertheless, I tucked myself in various corners and tried to capture as much ‘action’, and vibrance as I could. With hindsight – I’ll go back on a weekend, but I got enough shots to play around with for the time being.
The other memory I tried to capture was of someone who worked at Camden Market. Their recounting of the environment, though decades apart – you could understand as the same, overwhelming place previously mentioned, and yet the experience captured was entirely different. I got a sense that the two persons would hold entirely different viewpoints on Camden still. One being generally overstimulated by the loud, polluted, narrow, peopled streets; the other embracing it.
Anyway, as I said just before – it wasn’t the right day, or time, to perfectly capture the essence of either Camden memory.The shots I did get – I wasn’t particularly pleased with for the reasons listed above.
Though there were two exceptions, see below.
On these shots I had slowed the frame rate down and took a couple of shots as a bus went past, which created this effect. I particularly like the second shot, where the grill texture on the bus is visible, as well as the street behind the bus. Despite liking these shots, they weren’t necessarily right for my purpose of editing in a memory.
I looked through the shots I got of Camden High Street, they weren’t exactly bustling but I had a vague idea I felt I wanted to explore using Adobe Photoshop. I began selecting the people in frame individually, using the selection tools available (which are a lot easier to find surface planes using than when I first battled grips with the Adobe software in 2020). With a single person selected I used the Live Paint and Brush tools to colour turn them one, vibrant colour. My only ‘rule’ as I went around selecting and colouring people in, was that the same colours must be placed as far always from each other as possible – no matter the tone. This was easier/ I noticed further distances between colours the closer the subject was to camera. The further back, the more densely populated the image was with people.
I got pretty into finding bodies in the image too, occasionally I had to check I wasn’t just making up someone’s silhouette amongst shadows and bags. It was time consuming, but a good zoning-out project (with breaks for my eyes)! I’m pleased with the outcome to some degree, I feel happy with how anonymised everyone in the image has become (if they’ve already been selected & block coloured) – this too became a bit of a focus during the process. To ensure everyone was completely covered by the colour blocking, until I decided bags were fair game, then I really enjoyed leaving details of people through the things they were holding.
I think I’ll leave this one here for now – but will consider how easy it is to make someone unidentifiable using Photoshop at least; a worthwhile experiment.