My trips to the football to watch my team Bolton Wanderers are proving very fruitful in my 100 strangers project.
For the past three seasons , I've street parked on a new housing estate that is being built about 10 minutes walk away from the ground. However the streets now have signs reading "private road, residents only, clamping in operation". I'm not convinced about the legality of the sign, as in the UK you are allowed to street park on a public road where road markings indicate so.
Anyway, rather than risk being clamped, I parked on an 'unofficial car park' on the site of a former British Aerospace / Hawker Siddley factory .
My stranger number 12, John , manages the car park. Well he collects your £3-00 fee with a smile.
John was a willing participant in the project and without much prompting started telling me about his adventurers as 'John the Tracker'. He told me used to be well known in the hunting / shooting world and used to be a guide to shooting parties. I suspect he might have been a poacher rather than a guide (a Claude Greengrass character, for those of you who used to watch the ITV series ' Heartbeat').
John recently returned from a holiday in Spain and told me a story about how a group of ladies in the hotel asked him if he would take a group picture of them. He took the picture and said "Do you know who I am? David Bailey" (a throwback line to the 1970's advert for the Olympus Trip Camera). He then said he was inundated by people asking him to take pictures and had to explain he wasn't really David !!!
I said I would print some copies of the shots I took and give them to him at the next home match.
I went for a landscape format shot for this as I thought the approach road and old factory buildings, together with the bland grey Lancashire sky helped create lead in lines to John's face.
Talking of poachers, Bolton Wanderers could do with a decent "goal poacher" as we continue to struggle to convert chances into goals and sit firmly on the bottom of the Championship table !!!
Edited in Rawtherapee using natural skintones and a tad bit of contrast and tone mapping .
This picture is number 12 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the
100 Strangers Flickr Group page
My own strangers can be seen here:
www.flickr.com/photos/57144254@N08/albums/72157657822400168
@judithg thanks judith , Bolton's fortunes and form started to dip soon after I joined 365 !!! Not that the two are linked
@busylady thanks for the kind words judith
@nickspicsnz thanks for the fave nick
@quietpurplehaze thanks haze, for the fave and encouraging commen
@sdutoit thanks sylvia, thank you for your words and comments
@eyesmile glad you like it gena :)
@allie912 he does indeed look like an interesting