If you’ve followed my blog for a while, or my photostream on flickr, chances are you know I used to visit Speakers Corner in Hyde Park quite a lot. I find the place really fascinating, and I love listening to the different speakers, even if most of them are a bit mad! Well last year I would go on a regular basis and I would photograph all the speakers, but it sort of fizzled out.
Because the same speakers tend to turn up week after week, with just the occassional new speaker, I got a bit bored photographing the same people all the time. So as winter came I sort of gave up on the corner, feeling I’d exhausted all photographic possibilty (that sounds a bit pompus!). Anyway with my new camera and its ability to take video I decided that I should give the Corner another chance.
So this Sunday just gone I headed to Hyde Park to see what I could get with video. And I was pretty impressed with what I got. The video above is just a short three minutes or so, but I filmed much more. I finally started to feel like I was getting the hang of video and was very happy with the results. Certainly having a monopod helped things immensley, I could focus on what I was filming rather than on keeping my hands still. I think with Speakers Corner video has the advantage over photographs, because you can really see what it’s about, you can convey a lot of the passion and expression in a photograph, but by itself I think it’s hard to get across the Speakers message.
I can see a lot of possibility for video at Speakers Corner, so don’t be surprised if you see some more later on.
