Reconnaissance!

I have been busy looking around Greenwich Borough for potentially interesting places to photograph, as well as determining whether the ideas I already had for the assignment were feasible or as I had imagined. I also brought my camera with me on these occasions and have been rewarded with a few unexpected photographic opportunities while out.

   I have found most of my original ideas to be perfectly reasonable. Also I have been generating many more ideas so I should be able to produce a strong selection of images.

   I have also been researching what is on at Greenwich and looking at other photographers including Thomas Struth. I was hoping to emulate or show my inspiration from the kind of photographs he took for 'Audience' in particular. I thought this was true for a couple of shots I had planned for in particular: the flow of people at Greenwich Market and more intrinsically the people looking around the Painted Hall. The latter place I imagined would have very good potential to show the impressions I had gained from looking at Struth's work such as obviously the sense of awe (on people's faces) at looking at such fascinating art within a building, which the Painted Hall would be in common with. The other sets of photographs by Thomas Struth that I found relevant and useful for this assignment were 'Making time' where the composition always captivated me for each shot and 'Pergamon I-VI' where the scale of the place and the comparitively small people within it made for a striking combination.

   Also the way Thomas Struth managed to convey the crowd as one, even while retaining expression in each photograph, made an impression on me. The reason he managed to achieve this I found was because of his meticulous preparation for each photo as described here: "I am rather considerate and precise in choosing my subjects, very analytical in preparing the photo shoots and extremely sensitive during the shootings."- T. Struth, (2011). I felt the last part of this sentence was something I could also learn from.

   I had already visited the Painted Hall at Greenwich in one of my reconnaissance missions, if you will, and so knew this was a good place to carry out creating a photograph like this; there was a constant flux of people visiting. The second thing that struck me was the scale in some of the shots and again, I felt the Painted Hall would be good for this as the space and paintings were of massive proportions.

Preparation for assignment 4: A sense of place

Well, I have been busy preparing for the fourth assignment: A sense of place. I had decided (quite early on) whereabouts I would be photographing for the assignment. It was quite an easy choice for me and a choice I had made quite long ago and also, incidentally, a place I was quite excited to be photographing.

   The place was Greenwich Borough and the reason I was excited to be photographing it was because as well as the massive scope and variety of the borough; it was a place I had grown up living close by to. I thought it would be very interesting to look at it in a way I hadn't looked at it before: namely through the viewfinder of a camera.

   I was aware that the aim of the assignment was to show the place as attractive for a thoughtful travel publication; not a tourism promotion. However, I knew the borough was very popular with tourists so I would try to incorporate a bit of a sense of that into the publication.

   Obviously I knew with Greenwich Borough there were a few famous features/landmarks like the Cutty Sark and the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park. So part of the challenge would be to photograph them in a way that showed off Greenwich but maybe in a different light.

A dramatic change

1. Original

First of all, I was very pleasantly surprised with how useful this exercise was as I wasn't expecting the changes between the following photograph and its fellow versions to be so dramatic and, in my opinion, convincing.


   Here was the original photograph:

  










The 'emphasis on person' version was striking and in some ways it looked like a natural spotlight was shining down on the man. I tried however, to make the dodging and burning I had applied to this photo to be subtle enough as to not look too fake or contrived.

3. Emphasis on place

2. Emphasis on person

   Similarly with the 'emphasis on place' version I tried to make the same, subtle changes but essentially in reverse. Here, the man was made darker so that he effectively became another feature of the place in contrast to the other version where he was the main attraction of the place.

   Overall, the dodging and burning was very effective, I thought, and was a technique I decided would be useful in the future as I would be able to (to some extent) change the mood of the photo.