Imitating Stephen Shore

 I watched a video on YouTube about the photographer Stephen Shore last month. Some people say he makes interesting photos of everyday scenes and other people say he skilfully photographs the banal. I looked at a number of his pictures after watching the video and, like every wannabe artist, thought, "Well, how hard can that be?" Quite hard, as it turns out.

I took my Nikon D850 out one cloudy morning to have a go at it. I chose the D850 for the image quality and because it does 5:4 format and Shore did a lot of his work on large format cameras. Here are some of my banal photographs.

Stephen Shore photographed a lot of his meals, so I took a picture of my cereal before I left the house.

I photographed this window before and you can see it in my recent posts. But this time I included a sliver of brick sidewalk. Slightly more interesting?

A downtown clothing shop, possibly a used clothing shop. I'm not sure that jacket will ever sell, but it certainly draws attention. Looking at this picture now, I'm thinking I should trim the left side to get rid of the black line. It's a little distracting.

"Why did you take a picture of this?" asked my wife. I like the simplicity of composition and the quality of the diffused morning light. She wasn't convinced.

She did like this one. Me, too. I like the light, the simplicity, the mystery of what's on the other side of this wall, and, most of all, the fact that the middle bollard is close to but doesn't touch the photo of Sokcho Harbour.

This scene was just ten metres or so down the road from the last one.

I like the composition of this photo, but it needs something. More contrast, perhaps?

Cheongcho Lake, which is more of a harbour considering the lake is attached to the sea and it's possible for large fishing vessels to come and go. There are several sets of binoculars on this deck, but what you can see besides high-rise apartments and a fish plant I don't know.

I made this picture with the Hipstamatic application on my phone. I took the same picture on the D850, but this one had more interesting colours.

This last photo doesn't really match the others, but wood and colour are so rare in the city that I wanted to take a picture.

I'm no Stephen Shore, but it was a good exercise to go out for a morning and try photographing the city in a way I hadn't before.