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.

An opportunist moment

Luckily I had my camera on me last night at a show. This enabled me to get a shot or two that I had been struggling a bit to find and it occurred very unexpectedly.

   The show was actually comprised of several acts at a pub where they performed different kinds of acts from comedy to music. I really enjoyed myself but that's another story! What I got as a bonus was a couple of shots showing a shift in balance between the person and the place.

1. Emphasis on person

   I got many other shots of the performers in their acts but fortunately I had my camera ready for this first, comedic act. Importantly, one of the doors to the pub was still open at this time so I could get a photograph where the balance between place and person was with the place (as seen in photograph 2.)

   With photograph 1. I closed in on the person on the stage so that he was clearly the main subject with the rest of the stage providing the backdrop for him and taking a subsidiary role.

   I thought photograph 2. was clever and unconventional in that it used the place to 'frame' the person so he was still a feature of the photograph but was small enough in the frame that the place came to the fore.

Lastly I was pleased that I had 'thought on my feet' to take the second photograph through the door as described above but I was also a bit annoyed that I hadn't shot in the raw format as the lighting was very tricky.

2. Emphasis on place

  

Helen Levitt

Wow! I have recently purchased a book of photographs by Helen Levitt with her name as the title after discovering some of her work on the Internet. I came across a few of her photographs at http://www.lensculture.com/levitt.html accessed on 11 August 2012. As you might be able to tell (from the first word in this post) I was quite inspired by the work on the Interenet and later in the book. It encapsulated everything I had been working on in this part of the course, even though I kind of wish I had come across her work for 'People Unaware' where it would have been a bit more relavent perhaps. This was because her work was based around street photography with less emphasis on buildings.

   I found her work inspiring because of the vibrancy throughout - not only aesthetically (especially the colours) but also in  meaning; with wonderful humour prevalent and the essence of the streets of New York, where the photographs were taken, captured beautifully in my opinion.

   I would say Helen Levitt's work has come at a timely moment to inspire me as I start preparing for the fourth assignment. There will be lots of colour at the place I am planning to photograph at, which was a major feature and strength for me of her work. I thought also the composition, including the size the people took up in the frame, was something I could learn from as it sometimes helped to suggest a sense of place.

The virtues of having your camera accessible when you're out and about!

Today I learnt a valuable lesson in regards to capturing a moment you're not expecting. I knew this was mostly applied with street photography but today I found it comes in useful when you are looking for a certain photograph but you end up with a completely different but equally effective one compared to the one you intended to take.

   More specifically I was looking to make figures anonymous by the means of photographing people from above, which I thought was a different treatment to this kind of photograph. I eventually got the overhead photograph as well but only after finding a scenario where people were made anonymous by facing away from the camera. This unexpected scenario occurred at a busy train station that I happened to be getting off the train at. All the people had to take the same exit from the station. I thought this would be a typical situation of people facing away from the camera and so anonymous. The people photographed were also in multitude, which added to the effect of anonymity as none of them stood out as individual.

1. People exiting a train station

2. Inside the station but from above

   My one regret about this session was that I wasn't shooting in the raw format at the time, which I felt was a shame as the scene was high contrast where post-processing of the raw file would have helped. However, I thought this was a good lesson for me and a good advocate of the raw format on digital cameras (that have that feature).

    My main objective for this session I managed to achieve as well, which was to photograph a busy place, although from the fairly unconventional angle of above. This was to make the people less prominent and to show them in the light of just a part of a place, rather than the place being just a 'backdrop' for the people. The reason I chose a busy place was so I could use one of the techniques suggested in the course - small and many, where the people were less prominent.

Another use of the 'blurred person' photograph effect

Knowing I was using an effect in a photograph that had a lot of visual impact was one of the reasons I chose this treatment again. Also I thought the focal length and composition were significantly different in this photograph to the Wembley Stadium photograph to make it stand out on its own in comparison.

1. Bustle in the city

   The main feature that struck me about this photograph when looking at it again was that the people, just about distinguishable as blurred figures, added to the space rather than dominating it. I felt I had gotten the balance of how blurred people were nicely between being too blurred and so therefore indistinguishable and not blurred enough where they might have become the main subject of the photograph.