Recently I was asked to judge the Woodford and Wanstead Photographic Society annual street photograph competition. The society was founded in 1893 and is one of Britain’s oldest photographic clubs, with members scattered across the globe.
Luciano Ocesca, their programme secretary, had attended my talk ‘Why shoot B/W film in an era of easy digital colour?’ and enjoyed it. So he invited me to take part. I’d never done this before, or even belonged to a photographic society, but I said yes, armed only with inexperience and preconceived ideas. It was a mildly terrifying prospect but I’ve told myself to accept more invitations.
Their process was slick. The rules were explained, I asked questions that were quickly answered, I was told politely but firmly that I was not allowed to bend the rules as I tried to avoid scoring every picture out of 20, and sent links to national judging criteria. The pictures, all sized and titled, were sent to me with metadata removed. I was also invited to their latest talk by photographer Lisa Rendall to get a feel for the club. Nice pictures if you like ICM (Intentional Camera Movement).
At the same time, I was completing the latest work in my project about the Lea Bridge Road, an in-depth look at K&H Timber Supplier, a business that has been trading from a row of Victorian terraced houses since the late 1970s. I knew I was going to hit that low ebb that comes from finishing a story, something I touched on in my previous post ‘…And now for my next trick’, so I thought this was a good way to get going again.
Judging the competition was humbling and inspirational. Humbling because people had spent a lot of time shooting, editing and submitting work just to be judged by me. Inspirational because there was so much energy going on and passion for photography at all levels of ability, technical know-how and gear used. Fifty-eight images to look through and I had to choose first, second and third. For each image I felt I needed to say why it wasn’t a winner while also explaining what I liked. This is also a good way of looking at your own work. Here are the winners:
First place ‘Nothing to See Here’ by Leigh Kogan, second ‘Appleby Horse Fair’ by Julian Smith and third ‘Good Mood’ by Adrian Gorst.
But the real inspiration for me was that the pictures were varied and strong, and, most importantly, everyone had bothered. Why go through all that effort for someone, a complete stranger, to look and go ‘meh’? I suppose it’s the notion of bothering and risking a ‘meh’ that continually vexes and drives me.
During the same week I showed my work on K&H Timber Supplier to a much-respected photographer, colleague and friend. He said it was a small stepping stone on a long story-telling journey. Was that a ‘meh’?
And he’s right. What I am doing is small, but for the people in my pictures, it’s one of the biggest stories I can shoot and that is why I bother. When I turned up at K&H Timber with copies of the book that includes their story the excitement of the people shown on those printed pages was, for me, like winning first prize in a competition.
The book itself was rather an afterthought despite trying to be structured in my approach to the story’s final digital presentation. I wanted to compare the visual impact of using back and white against colour for the same story. I also wanted to experiment by presenting the story in different ways: as a series of still images with captions, and using a combination of the same images as a video presentation. For the video, I was also aware of how long people engage and made the black and white video specifically for Instagram, i.e. less than 60 seconds long. Both videos were posted on YouTube. Interestingly, the colour video that is over five minutes long has eight times more engagement than the black and white video. The still images shared on Instagram have much greater engagement than the video. Lesson here is that content does better on the right platform. As a side note, I just can’t bring myself to engage in TikTok, so I don’t have an account – maybe a mistake.
Below are links to each presentation, so if you have time, have a look and think which works best for you. Click on each of the pictures to go the the different stories.
Colour stills with captions
In the end, I wanted it to be accessible no matter how people prefer to engage with stories. I also hope it’s a body of work that will form an archive of ordinary lives for the future - something I fear is being ignored.
Russell Boyce 2025
Edited by Giles Elgood
