Chest out ..

Being a hoary old pro, with a 35 year career in the bag, I'm not one these days for 'setting myself a project' to gain experience/practice my skills/keep up to speed with my equipment. But I was! Once! Back in the dim dark seventies .. when I was still a wannabe photographer .. I used to come up with little feature ideas and force myself onto the streets to shoot 'em. I say 'force' because I was so shy back then, but a chap named Victor Blackman came to my rescue! Remember him? He was a Daily Express Press photographer who had a weekly column in Amateur Photographer magazine and, as that timid 16 and 17 year old, his words taught me all I needed to know about gaining the confidence to get out onto those mean streets of Eccles! The only reason I mention this is because one of the projects I set myself was to photograph the shop-keepers along a little section of Liverpool Road, in Eccles, and one of the photographs I took has popped up in the last installment of Twelve for '13. I can very vaguely remember setting this up, getting a chap to surreptitiously check out the topless shots in a magazine as the female shop assistants carried on a chat, unawares. The irony is that the magazine isn't some top-shelf porn offering .. it's Amateur Photographer .. but setting up shots like this soon had me walking with my chest out, too!