Two weeks ago I have decided to go to the photography meetup. For the first time in 2022, so the season has been open. The last one I have gone to was in September, quite a while back... oops.
The theme for the meetup was "Celebrate Chinese New Year/Street Photography around the Birmingham City Centre!". Sounds exciting! Just imagine all the bright costumes and performers dragging along a dragon.
So we met in Costa at the ODEON cinema on New Street. Not sure why they chose this particular spot.
After the cafe, we moved towards the New Street Station where the group found out that the celebration was moved online. We were gutted but hoped to find something going on in Chinese Quarter.
Chinese Quarter
Someone suggested walking through a passage with graffiti. Full walls of drawings with colourful colours. Seems like it was recent too.
Carrying on we paused at the Ladywell Walk which leads to the Hippodrome. No one knew what to do next but everyone has gone for the same thing ---> taking shots. Ladywell Walk has character and some shops with ducks hanging ready to be eaten. I say gross, some say yum.
Strangely enough Chinese Quarter was lacking decorations as if the day was just as normal as ever. We proceeded to the Hippodrome. Someone went to check if they expect performance or a show. The rest continued to take pictures.
Sometime later, figuring we are missing out on the celebration this year, the majority agreed to move towards the Chinese Pagoda. On the corner of Hill St, we found good graffiti. I was lucky with the car, shot something a bit different.
Chinese Pagoda
Chinese Pagoda is situated at the roundabout on a busy A38 ring. Using underground passage, we were at the heart of it and ready to snap. Being a photography meetup, you want to capture things a bit differently from everyone else. After all, having 19 people shooting the same stuff surely requires some level of artistic thinking.
The dog was a major hit! In the end, everyone had an almost identical portrait of the stone-cold statue. But I doubt anyone thought of avoiding the obvious subject and capturing the mosaic wall. Well, at least no one posted anything similar afterwards.
And yes, we share what we produce on the Meetup website, commenting and praising each other.
A little about the pagoda. It is 12m high and has been carved in China. Nighttime it gets colourful lighting creating some sort of interest to this mundane location. It truly is mundane and boring otherwise!
We continued to the Mailbox, hoping for a show or performance there. But yet again nothing. I swear the amount of time we wasted just standing and thinking that day was on par with time spent walking.
A couple of members were interested in the Cube which had the usual statues with hearts. I love those statues. If you like to find out more about Cube, I wrote about it some years ago here.
The Cube
This was the last location. I could not bear it anymore. The disappointment was through the roof. I wanted to enjoy the show!!! So I left everyone at the Library and went home.