Chris Porsz on photography

In the early seventies my wife Lesley and I hitched hiked to Africa and all I had was a Kodak Instamatic which made camels look like dots in the desert. My hobby really took off with the birth of our first child Simon in 1978 followed by Adam and Emma. I progressed from Pratika to Canon and turned over my front room in Alma Road to a darkroom and burned the midnight oil. 

I cannot draw or paint so it is wonderful  to be able to express myself through a lens. I dropped out of university bored with writing long sociological essays and found it much more satisfying to point my camera at society. I guess my photos say something about me and how I see and perhaps would like society to be. I know from my mother's dreadful experience as a holocaust survivor where racism and hatred  ineviatably leads to. In the early eighties I walked the streets for days capturing unique snapshots of Peterborough and its characters. Busy with my career as a paramedic and raising a family I hardly picked up a camera for the next quarter of a century! Now with my long lost passion rekindled I am like a man on a mission, honing my craft and making up for lost time while I can.  

So take plenty of anything and everything as digital is cheap and crucially back them up several times! I do not always achieve it but be super critical and delete the majority and keep the best. A good camera helps but the trick is spotting something different and unusual just at the right moment. Follow your heart and instincts,  break the rules and develop your style. A lot of my subjects of social deprivation suits monochrome much better as colour can distract the eye from the person behind a face. Humour is very important to me too and I would wait ages by a big billboard for the appropriate person to go by. I do hope my pictures will make you smile in this all too often sad old world. 

I have changed my style now and mainly use a wide angle lens to get everything in so as to place people in their context.  A telephoto lens creates an artificial compression whereas a wide angle draws you in and makes you feel part of the photo.I do  regret not taking more images of buildings as backdrops as people love that nostalgia. I like candid but some of my favourite images are when people react spontaneously to me and my camera. It is often the eye contact, or some gesture that separates the mundane from a special photo. I try to capture everyday people but like my eightie's punks I am always looking for people who stand out from the crowd!

My heroes include Henri Cartier-Bresson the father of candid photography. His Decisive Moment, the fraction of a second when you press that button. “Oop! The Moment, once you miss, it is gone forever.” Robert Capa of course and his very relevant advice “if your pictures aren’t good enough you aren’t close enough”. So don’t be shy, ditch the telephoto sometimes and get in close and interact with your subject. 
  
Other heroes include Elliot Erwitt, Bert Hardy, Jane Bown, Chris Steele-Perkins and the brave photo journalist Don McCullin from Finsbury Park to Vietnam, to his seeking peace in Somerset landscapes. His powerful photographs enhanced by that grainy, gritty rich monochrome. They can all inspire us to take better photos.

Relaxing from work, I still love wandering the streets, chatting to complete strangers, listening to their potted life stories and recording everyday life. 
 I hope my photos will continue to fascinate and provoke mixed emotions to unique moments of  time captured in fleeting expressions on a face.

Photo by Don McCullin

Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Photo by Elliott-Erwitt

Photo by Jane Bown