Friday night: not the best night to photograph in the streets
A friend of mine asked me to help him create a poster for a film that he’s involved in. He suggested that we go out as soon as possible – on Friday night. I reminded him that this was the night where everyone goes out and gets drunk so we might have our work cut out for us.
He wasn’t too concerned. He thought that we should take our chances.
Our town isn’t the most crowded or populated so maybe he had a point, perhaps we could just about dodge the drunken bullet and get the shot and be back home before the drunks got really drunk.
Unfortunately that was but a dream. Almost as soon as we arrived at the first location we were accosted and swore at by lady of a certain age with a beer bottle barely hanging from her fingers. I know now that you shouldn’t try and reason with drunks but we tried. And we lost. We moved on.
Perhaps our needed location wasn’t a good one either – we needed a bus stop in the shot – so it was perhaps a 50-50 chance that they’d either be empty or full. But the full bus stops weren’t the problem. It was the second drunk. This time male and this time with a really loud voice asking us what we were doing.
It only occurred to me a few weeks later that I should have made it easier on myself and gone down the Joel Grimes route – photograph the background separately from the model.
Next time be sure that I’ll be leaving the Friday night streets to the drunkards. As it was this is what we got under duress.