001 010608 - Beyond Graffiti

I don't use my camera nearly enough. I spent loads on it last year, then just didn't use it, then I was alerted to a deviantart user named yellowpumpkin, who's taken a photo every day for the last year, and some of them are totally amazing. I haven't had chance to go through all of them, but he really inspired me to get out with my camera. This afternoon, not content with settling for bunny/girlfriend-related photos on the first day, I went for a wander up the Avenue in Southampton. Every day I drive down there, I see a little corner of amazing-looking graffiti that I always mean to check out, so today seemed like the perfect opportunity!<!--more-->

When I got down there, it was a graffiti-spotter's paradise. An underpass just covered from end to end in amazing colour, interspersed with tags and some really impressive illustration. I wandered from end to end looking for my favourite view from there and it came down to a portrait or landscape aspect of the same subject. The lighting was low and accentuated by the verging-on-pointless streetlights, it just worked so well.

At the other end, there is a small URL, beyondgraffiti.com sprayed near the top of one of the walls - it turns out that this whole thing was an urban pride project and an effort to clean up a popular illegal graffiti hotspot. Unfortunately, it seems that most of the original artwork has been covered, but in such an impressive way that it's not too detrimental.