Twelve hours
. . . . Six themes
. . . . . . . .Eighteen photos
. . . . . . . . . . . . Four checkpoints
-
The UPR rules
2017
A throwback project, but something I’m still very proud of, winning the Urban Photo Race, Berlin 2017.
It’s all well and good wandering the streets for months on end, waiting for something of interest to happen, or coming across an interesting motif, but that’s all chance, of being in the right place at the right time, and you have years to curate a final set of images.
And given enough time and a powerful enough suite of editing programmes anyone has the opportunity to radically improve their collection of rather uninspiring images, and transform them into something more palatable.
The challenge
But nothing is more challenging than a photo race, a set of of related themes to interpret visually within a given set time, with little or no opportunity for even the most basic of editing.
Such a race stresses all your creative abilities as a photographer: brain-storming, recognising the potential in any given situation, the rules of composition, storytelling . . everything compressed into minutes instead of weeks or months.
It’s not easy, which is probably why no celebrated street photographers ever enter, because it’s a lot harder than it looks.
1st Place – Andrew James Kirkwood
Here are the themes from the UPR 2017 and my solutions . . .
Theme 1 – Poor but sexy
Theme 2 – Hungry hearts
Theme 3 – Break the rules
Theme 4 – Time traveller – Winner of best in theme
Theme 5 – Tear down this wall – Ronald Reagan – Winner of best in theme
Theme 6 – Nowhere
- Fotomarathon, Berlin 2016
- Urban Photo Race, Berlin 2017
- Micro Location: Graffiti
- The Crack In The Pavement
- Satan’s Pile
- Heroes, some remembered, most forgotten
- Waldmeister ist Retro
- Altstadt Spandau U-Bahn station
- Concrete, where architecture meets climate change
- That industrial look
- City glass, a very public gallery
- The Hauptbahnhof, a monument to success
© Andrew James Kirkwood – 2024