Patience and luck: The art of capturing our city on camera

Published on: Brighton and Hove Independent 
Date Published : Friday 21st September 
Author: Axel Fifthen

Brighton and Hove was recently named one of the most photographed locations on social media site Instragram – but how can you make your snaps of the city really stand out? 
Professional photographer Marius Comanescu was on hand to give us some tips.

The 32-year-old has been taking photos in the city for a couple of years now, and as a contributor to stock-photo company Shutterstock, he’s learned what it takes to turn photography from passion into profit.
 “Going photographing is like fishing,” he tells me. 
He says capturing the unexpected is often down to luck: you just need to be patient and flexible. 
“It depends on what you want to get first of all,” says Marius. “If you have something in your mind, a particular picture in your mind, you can do the sit-and-wait game.

“But obviously sometimes it just happens that you might be in exactly the right place at the right time and you don’t have to make so much effort – it just happens naturally.” I put it to Marius that in a photogenic city like Brighton, it must be hard to take photos of landmarks from a fresh perspective.  
“In the summer, when Brighton is basically invaded by people, many head to the West Pier to take photographs,” he says. “It’s the significance of what the pier used to be for people and it’s definitely one of the most photographed places in Brighton, but let’s not forget that Brighton is more than just the seafront.”
Instead, Marius is constantly looking for new locations and tells budding photographers to look for unexpected or unusual angles: it’s no good doing what everyone else has already done.

“A small change can make a big difference,” he says. For Marius, the joy of photography is in approaching places in the city with a different view, a different idea, something that no one else has entertained; it’s what makes his work exciting. 

“It’s perfectly possible for the best picture of Brighton to not have been taken yet,” he says. Marius said although he owns a Nikon D750 camera, smartphones and cheaper cameras are now also capable of taking beautiful pictures. “I’ve seen absolutely awesome pictures taken with a smartphone,” he says. He also said a great photograph conforms to the rule of thirds and should have at least three elements so it’s not too empty. I ask him if he enjoys taking photos at a particular time of day.
“I would go for the golden hour because the light is so much smoother and less contrasted instead of during the day when the sun is really strong and the light is so harsh. “After the sun goes down, if you have a tripod it’s a good way to take long exposure photographs, which I also love to do, and it just gives a totally different feeling to the picture,” he says. 
As we walk towards the i360, Marius takes the occasional photo, showing me his technique. He likes to isolate bad-looking features by manoeuvring the camera and also tries to capture people in his pictures. 
He says: “People are bringing something else to a picture; their expressions alone can make a picture better.” 

See more of Marius’s work here

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Skills

Photography