Photograph of John Thompson

There is a very eye catching photograph; it gives the impression that it is a painting. The photographer was fortunate to have captured this picture as everything was literally in the right place. The foreground has some lovely reflections which resulted from rainfall, this is evident from the featured open umbrella.

The pavement has square shapes which is easily distinguished from the road because of the different surface texture. The pedestrians, buildings and the vehicles would add to makeup the mid-ground, which forms a crescent type line to the furthest edge of the image. This clearly differentiates between the fore and background. This photographer must have known about the golden hours back then, as the shadows and reflections are just perfect for the appearance. The background is slightly overexposed in today’s language, one could look and think that he might have used a very high “iso” to capture this scene. Back then they wouldn’t have had those options on their cameras, all they had was the bare camera. Looking at the background you can see the image gets lighter the further you look into it, there is a point at the furthest end which to me looks like a tower or column. This could be the vanishing point as the buildings on the right of the picture seem to disappear into the column/tower. Overall the picture itself describes street life in the Victorian era on a particular rainy morning.