Learn | Street Photography Tricks

All you need to be a street photographer is a camera (or even just a camera phone) and some free time. Here are five tricks to try that will help improve your pictures instantly

1. Get down low. Putting your camera actually on the pavement captures a whole new perspective that none of us usually sees. Seeing the world from a pigeon’s perspective (see above) adds a completely different dimension to your photographs. 

2. Try a tilt. This works particularly well with straight lines, such as buildings. Frame your focal object centrally and upright and then tilt your camera 45 degrees before taking the picture for a slightly more interesting shot. 

3. Find a setting and then wait for the subject. If you spot a fabulous backdrop, find a good place to stand to capture the photo in the best light and with the best composition and then wait… for the right person to walk into shot. This often makes for a much better photo than when you focus on looking for a subject primarily and let the background take care of itself. 

4. Get a grid. Most camera phones let you turn on a ‘grid’ on your camera in your settings and it’s really helpful for composing a picture. The grid gives you nine equal squares and you want to place your subject on any of the corners of the central square, leaving space in the rest of the image - this is known as the ‘rule of thirds’, as you’re filling one third of the grid, on the left or right, and leaving the other two thirds emptier. Try it and you’ll see.

5. Look for leading lines or patterns. Leading lines are lines in an image that draw the eye somewhere, so that could be a path, a river, a staircase, a telegraph wire… They can go in any direction or even be curved, but they’ll add depth to your picture. Patterns, particularly repetitive patterns such as those in floor tiles or on a table cloth, also create visual impact. They look great when they seem to have appeared accidentally, or when the pattern is just slightly broken, for example: five brown eggs in a bow and one white one. Just look out for the patterns and lines and have fun! 

Inspired to give it a go? First read our feature on Street Photography, ‘These Streets’, in our November issue, which is taken from the wonderful book Think Like a Street Photographer by Matt Stuart (Laurence King).

More from our November issue…

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Build your own | Kitchen Sink Drama

Take a pinch of righteous anger, a sprinkling of political disappointment and a good dollop of marital misery and you can make your very own Kitchen Sink Drama in minutes!

Life has been a little more gritty than usual for most of us recently, and we’ve all spent more time at the kitchen sink than we would in normal times. We’re thinking that before the predicted artistic revolution of ‘roaring 2020s’ arrives, we must surely be due a kitchen sink revival. 

With that in mind, we’ve decided to pen a short kitchen sink drama of our own, and we’d love you to join in the fun. Phone a friend of family member with a talent for writing (or just a tendency to the dramatic), choose six items from the following list and build your own kitchen sink drama. Start with a gritty location somewhere in Great Britain, decide on a scenario and build your story around your six items. We’ll take any messages from The Royal Court theatre while you’re busy. Go!

1. A north of England accent, Salford for preference

2. An angry young man, preferably wearing a grubby white vest, reading a left-wing tract aggressively

3. A secret but unwanted pregnancy

4. A difficult conversation about communism over the dinner table

5. A youthful and hot-headed idealist with a ‘jolly good sort’ name, such as Helen or Jo

6. An amiable but awkward lodger

7. The Sunday papers, strewn messily across the floor

8. An endless basket of ironing and a utilitarian-looking ironing board that’s seen some action

9. A cameo featuring a future Labour party MP*

10. A Raleigh bicycle, leaned rakishly against the set somewhere

If you love a kitchen sink but could have enough of the angry young men, turn to page 112 of our March issue, where we’ve gathered together some of the most covetable kitchen sinks we’ve seen in our My Place feature. The one above belongs to Aisling Kirwan @mylimestonehome. 

*It’s true. Hazel Blears did in fact appear as a street urchin in the 1961 film of Shelagh Delany’s A Taste of Honey. 

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Build your own spooky story

Frighten friends and freak out family with your own spooky story

If you love a scary tale, especially at this time of year, why not try penning your own? How hard can it be, after all*? To show you just how easy it is, we asked author and creative writing tutor Susan Elliot Wright to help us put together this Spooky Story Kit. Simply choose one beginning, one ending and five scary elements from below, string them together with a few verbs and conjunctions and Bob’s your Uncle (and The Bride of Frankenstein’s your Aunt). Go!

Beginnings (choose one)

1. She had thought the house was empty as she pushed open the creaking door…

2. Four hundred years after her death, Esmerelda sat up in her coffin…

3. A mile or two into the forest road, Roger Peebles’ car choked to a halt. He had run out of petrol…

Endings (choose one)

1. And that would be the last the town saw of those vampires, for now at least.

2. He put the knife back where he had found it. No one would ever know he had been there at all.

3. But the rats continued to run.

Scary Elements to add to your story’s sandwich filling

1. An electric light that doesn’t work. Characters may pull on it frantically and pointlessly. 

2. A crow. Particularly one with beady eyes or a malformed foot or two.

3. A rocking chair that rocks of its own accord. Just a little bit too quickly and silently to have been set off by a human.

4. A clown. Not a funny one though. A malign-looking, silent one, preferably seen from a distance. 

5. Long corridors (they really should be <very> long, and also shadowy to allow plenty of opportunity for evil to skulk in their corners).

6. The distant sound of a weeping woman that can’t be located. The listener should ideally dash from room to room, with the noise of weeping becoming  louder and quieter again at random. 

7. A face at the window of a house. The protagonist should not be able to locate the room the face appeared in once inside the property. 

8. Some things that ‘go’ when no one has set them off: a television, a gramophone, a slightly manic-looking wind-up toy monkey bashing cymbals together.

9. Something seen from the corner of one’s eye, only fleetingly. It should move swiftly and be gone when the protagonist whirls round (one never simply turns in spooky stories).

10. A deserted institution. An asylum is ideal but hospitals, churches and prisons are all good. Any building that would once have been bustling and may hide dark secrets. 

11. Any child’s toy in the wrong context. A rag doll that appears in someone’s home and has never been seen before. A doll’s house in an abandoned home. Any mechanical toy that moves of its own accord. 

*It’s quite a bit harder than we have made this sound, actually.

Susan Elliot Wright loves a spooky story. Her latest novel, The Flight of Cornelia Blackwood (Simon and Schuster) features some rather spooky crows, of which she is a big fan. For more of her writing tips and advice on getting published visit susanelliotwright.co.uk.  For some more spooky inspiration, have a read of our feature Dare To Be Scared for ideas on paranormal outings you can do in a day (p80).

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If you enjoy a good mystery, don’t miss our November issue, in which we will be announcing the winner of our competition to write the ending for a murder mystery penned by Sophie Hannah. We'll be publishing Sophie’s own ending to the story (and the rest of it too, so you can enjoy it all in one go) here on the blog later in the month.

More from our October issue…

More spooky things for an autumn evening…

Journal sparks | Word Jar

This is one of the simplest yet most fruitful and rewarding journal prompts, because it’s uncomplicated and never fails to inspire, sitting on your shelf or desk, always available for spontaneous creativity.

Find a glass jar in the recycling bin or buy an inexpensive one. Fill it with random words. Leave trimmed paper and a pen next to it as a standing invitation to friends, family and visitors to contribute words.

Instant inspiration

Choose a word or a few words from the jar and write them on a journal page. Draw a sketch based on the word(s) or incorporate them into a small piece of writing – a poem, a blurb, the beginning of a story or a speech bubble. When you’re finished, add a new word to the jar.

Turn to page 77 of February's The Simple Things for another Journal Sparks idea: Picture your day in geological layers.

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Journal sparks

Longitudinal journal challenge

‘Longitudinal’ means you will make it a habit to look at the same thing every so often over a long time. The key is to find something that changes in some way – whether very gradually, daily, or weekly. You don’t have to track it every

day or even particularly regularly. Just be sure to continue to observe it, and try to remember to record your observations in the same journal or section of a journal. This way you can see how the thing is changing and how your observations evolve.

Things you could observe:

A tree
Your desk
Someone’s shoes
A lake or river
A chalkboard
A bookshelf
A storefront window
A garden
A street bench
The dinner table
The sky at night
An anthill

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Creativity | Meet the makers using waste as a material for art

The average household in the UK produces more than a tonne of waste every year – which adds up to a sobering 31 million tonnes annually.

While campaigners are trying to tackle this in a variety of ways, one creative approach is to see waste as a material for art. The four British makers featured on page 74 of September’s The Simple Things look to our rubbish for inspiration, encouraging the viewer to see waste denim, metal, plastic and paper in a whole new light.

Denim: Ian Berry

It’s hard to imagine an item of clothing more universal than a pair of jeans. Denim is a material that we all know and feel comfortable with. For Huddersfield artist Ian Berry, however, it forms his palette, from which he constructs intricate images. Beginning with his simple observation of the varied shades of blue in a pile of jeans, he has used old denim to create melancholy urban images, traditional pub scenes and instantly recognisable portraits from his layers of cut and constructed denim. Jeans are so familiar we’re used to taking the way they look for granted – Ian’s work encourages us to look again. ianberry.org

Turn to page 74 for three more artists.

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