Tuesday 29 May 2012

Another Inspiration or Two...

Another street photographer that had an impact on how I looked at street photography was Danny Santos II. I wasn't sure how much use this photographer's work would be to me because I'd already finished portraits but who knows: maybe I'd find a way to fit photographs inspired by his work into later projects within the course. The photograph that stood out for me amongst a myriad of other surreal and beautiful shots he had taken in a series called 'Portraits of Strangers' was the first one found at: http://www.dannyst.com/gallery/portraits-of-strangers/ accessed on 30 May 2012.

   Also looking at Thomas Leuthard's work once more showed him seemingly catching the essence of each persons' demenour through a photograph, which I admired. Examples of him capturing these expressions were: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasleuthard/5725478270/in/set-72157626159231741/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasleuthard/6068624481/in/set-72157626159231741/ accessed on 30 May 2012. At first I couldn't put my finger on how he had done this but then I realised how and was glad I had researched him again as well as Danny Santos II.

   The common feature that I found most profound between Santos II and Thomas Leuthard's work were, similar to Steve McCurry's portraits like 'Afghan Girl, Pakistan', found at http://stevemccurry.com/galleries/portraits and accessed on 30 May 2012, the eyes. They were very lucid and poignant, although more natural I felt in both these two artist's work compared with Steve McCurry's.

Sunday 20 May 2012

Researching an organised event

Yesterday I had the luxury of being able to plan how to photograph the organised event I would be shooting by actually going to the event. This was because it was a weekly market of food that occurred each Saturday near to where I lived.

   I was able to line up shots at certain angles and decide which focal lengths I would probably use for these shots.

   There were many people there, more than I had expected so I factored that into my shot selection for the next Saturday.

   I also noted the times for setting up and closing so I could maybe  use this to take certain shots when there weren't many people there for simplicity or the opposite for atmosphere.

Standard focal length


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While doing the standard focal length project I was relieved that I had been able to build some experience doing street photography with other focal lengths in the earlier projects. This was because I found this focal length (around 30mm on my camera) to be the most challenging and slightly daunting yet. This was because, while the other focal lengths had been more accommodating in terms of catching people unaware, this focal length for me was not.

   For example pointing the camera at the subject was more obvious than with the telephoto lens. On the other extreme there
was less room for compensation for framing a person compared to a wide angle lens, which again meant pointing the camera more towards the subject and therefore more chance of being 'caught'.
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   However the key advantage of using such a focal length was for me that when I did get a telling shot everything aesthetically looked natural and life-like. From a technical point of view this made sense as the background settings were a lot more prominent than with the telephoto lens but not as dramatic as with the wide angle lens. Instead they were slightly out-of-focus but still discernible; another way in which this 'standard' focal length was similar to what the human eye could see.

Close and Involved

While researching wide angle street photography, there seemed to be a trend that wide angle was 'better' in general for street photography than other focal lengths, simply because it was more involved. Examples of street photographers saying this were Anthony Stonehouse while being profiled by Peter Thomson on http://www.londonstreetphoto.org/anthony-stonehouse/#more-646 accessed on 20 May 2012, saying: "I prefer wide angle as I generally like to capture a scene, rather than just a crop of a particular subject."- Anthony Stonehouse (February 17 2012). Also Eric Kim says: "By using a wide-angle prime lens, it will force you to get intimate with your subjects." in his blog: http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2011/05/how-to-become-a-fearless-street-photographer/ accessed on 20 May 2012.

   I was surprised by this sway towards wider focal lengths rather than telephoto but I soon found as I started the project 'Close and involved' my experience with shooting for the day using the widest angle my lens would allow (18mm on an APS-C cropped sensor DSLR) correlated with what these street phtographers were saying.

   First of all I found this project to be very enjoyable and very productive. There were many techniques and strategies I found and employed in the exercise. I could imagine they would prove useful later on and I certainly felt I was learning as I went along in the exercise. Here are a couple of shots taken before I had gotten familiar with using such a wide focal length: 
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   The main problem with these two photos I felt was I hadn't realised just how much angle of view the wide angle focal length would provide and so the people in the frame didn't take up a large space within it. Also the portrait or landscape orientation mattered a lot more then with other focal
lengths. The portrait orientation offered the more dramatic view but was harder to capture face detail than the landscape orientation. Also the people within the frame were harder to frame with portrait orientation.Significantly, this meant you were suspect to getting 'caught'. This was because to fill up a large portion of the frame with the subject you had to get up very close. Here are a couple of photographs illustrating the dramatic view:
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 There were a couple more practical things I found. One was to lock the metering and the focus beforehand. This was because due to the wide coverage of the focal length, I thought the camerea often exposed and focused for the background rather than the person. Here is an example illustrating that:
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   Then I discovered the relationship between the person and the background was extremely pronounced in any orientation so the choice of background for me became critical. This was in stark contrast to the telephoto shots I had taken where the backgrounds were usually out-of-focus so were much more malleable in conceiving a sense of place as the setting was much less obvious. Rather than photgraphing a particularly interesting subject coupled with an ambiguous place I had to be more careful in finding attractive settings for whichever subject.

   Last but not least I experimented with using a low camera angle to add to the 'drama' and was pleasantly surprised with how well this worked.

  Armed with all this knowledge I went in search of an attractive setting with lots of people to 'choose' from. After consulting a street map I saw Tower Bridge wasn't to far away. Soon I had quite a dubious technique for getting the pictures I wanted nailed down. This consisted of me casually walking up to the subject, crouching down and snapping them without so much as looking at the camera. The effect this had was to achieve some dramatic shots as well as plenty of dirty looks!

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18. My favourite from the session because of his expression

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Standing Back

My aim for this project was, similar to the previous project, to capture an interesting moment, although this time with the idea in mind to get shots with the telephoto lens that I wouldn't have been able to get without it.

   I did realise there was potentially the problem of producing photographs that were overly similar to 'developing your confidence' and 'capturing the moment' as I was using the same lens. To combat this I mainly used longer focal lengths for my lens on my APS-C sensor-sized camera. This was in order to find out what could be gained from using such focal lengths.


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   In this regard I think I was successful. I found two main features of using this focal length occurred frequently. Firstly I could easily isolate the subject(s) against their background  because of the shallow depth-of-field. Secondly, surprisingly, as a result of the first feature, I could suggest a sense of place for the subject. This happened because the out-of-focus backgrounds were still vaguely recognisable because of tell-tale street signs or vehicles. The subject remained the main point in the photograph though. I therefore made a note here to remember that a sense of place could still be achieved with a long focal length effectively.

   I decided to research any photographers who favoured a longer focal length who used this long focal length with a similar effect. I discovered there was a photographer called Thomas Leuthard and thought that my photographs bared some resemblance in that there was a sense of place as well as person, as described in the previous paragraph. This boosted my confidence because I now knew the kind of results that could be achieved in this way. Some nice examples of where he utilizes a telephtoto lens to isolate his subject while still retaining a sense of place are: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasleuthard/4978992550/in/set-72157626159231741/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasleuthard/5598374408/in/set-72157626159231741/ accessed on 20 May 2012.
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   There were some difficulties I got through on the way to aquiring shots I felt were interesting however. These were all technical, the first being people getting in the way quite frequently when I was about to take the shot. Then I found the telephoto lens obviously gets less in the frame, which made framing harder and timing more important (and rewarding). Finally a strategy I found was to wait until the subject happens to look up or towards you because the expression can be seen this way (as shown in 11 and 12). This makes the chance of them seeing you a lot more likely so takes quite a lot of courage. I learnt that for me the situation where this occurred and where I had time to consider composition was when the subject was standing still: at traffic lights for instance.
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Friday 18 May 2012

An inspiration or two...

I was quite inspired the other day by one of 'Tuna Önder's' street photographs in particular: namely 'The Official'. Here he isolates (in what I think is an extremely effective manner) this one person in the frame. For me this creates an interesting photograph in that the 'official' looks lonely or separate from what is going on around him. I think Tuna Önder has managed this by a combination of colour, composition and a sense of surroundings. This last part of the photograph is achieved because the 'official' is looking outside the frame, which lets the viewer 'imagine' outside the frame too. 'The Official' can be found as image 21 of 22 on http://www.tunaonder.com/new.html accessed on Friday 19 May 2012.

   The second artist I was inspired by recently was Steve McCurry and more specifically the eyes of his subjects in some portraits. The one photograph that had the most impact on me was 'Afghan Girl, Pakistan', on http://stevemccurry.com/galleries/portraits accessed on Friday 19 May 2012. The thing that struck me first were the eyes of the subject. They were so vivid and involved that I found it hard to look away from them; they seemed to compel me. I later put it down to colour that made the photo so impactful. This was in particular the colour of her eyes in contrast to what she was wearing and the fact they were staring so intently at the camera.

   Although those might not be the most useful photographs to be inspired by for People Unaware I could imagine it would come in useful later on, maybe with Buildings and Spaces for 'The Official'and just in general later on in the course with 'Afghan Girl, Pakistan'.

Friday 11 May 2012

Capturing the Moment

Before starting this exercise I was a bit apprehensive about finding interesting 'moments' in everyday life on the streets of London. I thought mostly there would just be people walking around, minding their own business. However, I soon found I didn't need to worry and started capturing some 'lively' shots.
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   Most notably, and quite ironically my first and probably best opportunity came straight away in the form of the 'Handyman'. I realised quickly this was a prime photo opportunity as it was, in my eyes, very interesting. However, so did a multitude of similar DSLR users in the vicinity and I was hard pushed (literally!) to get into a decent position to take some shots. I eventually got a few shots and have posted a couple of my better ones before he drove off. The 'Handyman' consisted of a singing driver in a blue van that released a vast amount of bubbles with a waving teddybear accomplice.

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   Next up I found a more sedate scene of two men unloading goods off a lorry. I started off with a larger field of view and gradually closed in so the men and their colourful goods were singled out. I found the closer in I got to the men and their goods, the more effective the moment became. I suppose the wider shots offered a sense of place but because a lot of the goods the men were handling were London-orientated, this fact was largely negated.
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   Then I turned my attention to a caricature artist and one of his subjects. I liked the first shot a lot because it showed off some of his and his colleagues' work but I was not particularly happy about the tree in the background (in the middle of the frame). So I switched viewpoints to the opposite side and thought I captured the moment better as there were a few people who were looking on; adding interest to the scene.

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   At another busy area there was some work going on with people in their uniforms grouped together. Once again I decided to start off wide and get closer in to what was happening by zooming in more with the camera. I thought the last photo worked best as it had an element of action and the faces of the workers were more expressive.

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   Last but not least I ran into the 'Handyman' again! This was in my opinion one of the best shots of the day. The reason for this was because it was nicely framed, while still capturing a moment that was comical and lively. My only wish was that there could have been more bubbles!