The Invisible Shift
A street cleaner with a bin bag in one hand, framed between a STOP sign and a no-right-turn sign. You couldn’t stage it better. I shot this from Drawbridge Street, watching the lunchtime crowd flow past him like water around a rock. What struck me was the contrast: dozens of people mid-stride, shopping or wandering around, and this one figure doing the quiet work that keeps the city ticking over.
His orange hi-vis jacket is the loudest thing in the frame, but he’s mostly unnoticed by everyone. The young lad in the camo jacket is walking towards me, a woman in a black top is mid-step, and behind the railings there’s a whole parade of shoppers who have no idea they’re in a photograph. I like that the two road signs bookend him: STOP on one side, no-right-turn on the other as if the street itself is giving him contradictory instructions. It’s one of those shots where the composition just fell into place, and all I had to do was not fumble the shutter.
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | ILCE-7RM5 |
| Focal length | 50mm |
| ISO | 160 |
| Shutter speed | 1/500s |
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@donncha Nice one 🙂 Where was it?
@Geobomatic thanks. This is in Cork City in Ireland. I couldn't believe it when I saw him standing in the road!
You can make a lot of stories with this one. Such as “Looking at the supermarket, he was thinking back about the argument he had with his wife the night before, how terribly upset she was. Maybe he could try to make dinner for once, to patch things up. Finishing it with her favourite ice-cream and a good film.”
That’s the kind of stories that Willy Ronis made when taking photos.