People and place - Assignment 2 - People and activity

The brief:

Plan and execute a set of images of people in some form of activity, sport, work, performance or social event.

 

 

The Event

 

A wedding is the perfect social gathering to execute this Assignment.  However I decided that my aim for this was to concentrate on the Bride and Groom.  I wanted my shots to be candid, relaxed and informal, almost unaware of my presence.  I set about this task using the natural daylight whilst at the Brides home and also the shaded light whilst outside.  I also used a little fill light.

 

Weather conditions

 

A fine sunny day, warm and no wind. 

 

Narrative can be hard to fulfil.  I wanted to capture the love that this couple have for each other and also the excitement of getting ready and leaving home.  A day of joy and happiness.  A very modern wedding in a Community Church, followed by a BBQ feast and fairground themed reception.

 

I found myself extremely relaxed during this exercise as I could stand back and observe and capture the style of image I was after.  I was lucky enough not to have harsh sunlight to contend with as most of the images were taken indoors with natural light (and perhaps a little fill in here and there)!  As I have concentrated mainly on the bride and groom, I do not have clutter (as I call it - unwanted things or people) in my images.

 

I decided on Black and white for this assignment, as the lighting inside at the reception was difficult to deal with. I have also arranged the images in chronological order of the day from the bride getting ready to the first dance with her new husband.

 

 

 

Getting ready - concentrating on having her make up done, the bride has the final touches of mascara applied before slipping into her gown, she wears very simplistic make-up and minimal jewellery.  I like the crop on this image with the focus on the bride as the bridesmaid finishes her makeup.

 

 

Concentration - mother of the bride, clipping the veil in place with lots of concentration on her face, the bride appears to be happy about the final preparations.

 

 

Leaving home - An ambiguous image of the bride, taken from behind and not seeing the facial expression, how does she feel? This is it as she leaves home for the last time a single woman...

 

 

The look of love - a serious look on the grooms face as he looks longingly at his beautiful bride whilst the vicar reads, contemplation on how beautiful she is and how lucky he is!  he probably isn't listening as his attention is purely on his wife to be.  Another triangle with the 3 people.

 

 

Signing the register - A lovely simple shot - almost a triangular pose with her arms as she signs

 

 

A fractured leg left the groom on a walking stick, determined not to be in plastic cast for his wedding, each left to their own devices as they walk down the stairs and join together again at the bottom.  He looks back to check she is managing.  I like the geometry of this with the structured lines and shapes.

 

 

An unusual place to have some photos taken, but the bus stop was literally outside the community Church doors, so it made a wonderful quirky location to take a few pictures. - Would have liked the background a little more blurred as the ovens are distracting!

 

 

A very relaxed and informal shot of the happy couple sharing a few giggles after the stresses and strains of their day.  I like the off centre pose and the expressions on their faces shows just how relaxed they are.  A Carefree attitude.

 

 

A tearful groom, trying hard not to shed tears to his new wife as he struggles through his speech, more emotions captured, as she looks on with added sympathy towards him.

 

 

This is the final image of my assignment.  It shows the love and commitment of the happy couple embraced during their first dance together completely at ease with each other with not a care in the world.  I love the ease of this image - not sure on the crop though, tried square but it didn't look quite right, maybe I should crop closer to the couple.

 

 

Conclusion

 

I am reasonably happy with the images that I have selected here from the wedding, I have managed to avoid clutter, I think I have framed nicely and done well on my viewpoints and timings.  I enjoyed this assignment and felt completely relaxed with the situation I was in.  Not so sure that I would be committed to doing it full time as I would imagine it a very stressful job!  I also believe that it tells a wonderful story from beginning to the end of the day.

 

 

The work of other photographers ...

Here starts my research from the long list of Photographers emailed from my Tutor.

First one on the list was Richard Avedon (1923-2004), an American Fashion Photographer.  Initially I googled the name and clicked on images for an overview of images by him.  I quickly caught sight of this image

which I thought looked very much like Henri Cartier Bresson  (who was a French Photojournalism Photographer 1908-2004) Gare Saint Lazare.  Although Avedon's fashion image does  not show a reflection it shows a lady holding an umbrella in a similar pose.  I think he may well have taken inspiration from Henri Cartier Bresson for this image.

   Harry Callahan (1912 - 1999) mainly photographed his wife and daughter on the streets of the cities where he lived.  He was also interested in showing a strong sense of line and form, and light and darkness, together with multiple exposures which were personal to his own life.  He also encouraged his students to turn their cameras on their own lives as he did, he was an experimentalist who tried almost everything including double and triple exposure, blurs, large and small format film.  His wife Eleanor was his subject and he photographed her everywhere and in every situation, from clothed to nude, inside and outside, black and white to colour, distant and close.
 

A selection of Harry Callahan’s work including Eleanor

 

I quiet like Callahan's style of double and triple exposures and also using one or two subjects throughout.

Robert Demachy (1859–1936) A French pictorial photographer of the late 19th century. He is best known for his intensely manipulated prints that display a distinct painterly quality.

Another experimentalist,  in 1894 Demachy began to use the gum bichromate printing process recently introduced by A. Rouillé-Ladevèze at the Paris Salon. He developed a style that relied upon heavy manipulation of the image both during the development of the negative and again while printing. As he experimented with the process he wrote about his findings and about the aesthetics of the gum print, helping to popularize it among French photographers.

 

 

A selection of Robert Demachy’s work – classic simple portraits which are heavily manipulated

 

Not so keen on the manipulation style of Demachy, although I do like the simplicity of his portraits.

 



 

Bill Brandt (1904 -1983) A German-British Photographer and photojournalist.  Brandt moved to England, where he became known for his high-contrast images of British society, his distorted nudes and landscapes, and is widely considered to be one of the most important British photographers of the 20th century.

 

 

I have chosen these images as I love the fact that they are close up images of the body, drawing the eye in and wondering which part and how where they posed - at least this is what I am thinking!  I also love the contrast and the light and dark areas - perhaps I will give this ago at some point.

 

William Eggleston (1939) An American Photographer who is widely credited for his recognition for of colour photography.  He was inspired by Swiss photographer Robert Frank and French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.  Eggleston’s work looks at Everyday life, Street Life, Landscape

 

 

Street photography images by William Eggleston, I love the grand piano in what looks like a car park, the guy steering the trollies back into the shop and the guy eating the burger are close shots, but also far enough away to maintain the unaware feel factor.

 

Lee Friedlander (1934) An American Photographer, with a passion for Social Landscape which often included: fragments of store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and street-signs.

 

He too was influenced by Robert Frank.  Some of his work appeared in Playboy in the late 80's and he also photographed a young Madonna in the late 70's, she was paid a small fee of only $25, but in recent years one of the images reached $37,500 in auction.

 

 

Friedlander's work was predominately black and white with a real urban feel

 

 

A selection of Friedlander's work which I liked.  I love the shop front reflections with the headless mannequins, I also love the self portrait image on the back of the coat.

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Avedon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Cartier-Bresson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Callahan_(photographer)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Demachy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Brandt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Eggleston
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Friedlander
 

 

 

 

 

 

Self Portraits

Having read a little from the Train your Gaze book on self portraits and also looking at Friedlander's self portrait work, I decided that I would have a little go myself.  I do believe that it has difficult to judge several things:-

 

you cannot make any myriad of small decisions – about framing

You have lost a degree of control

Because you are not behind the camera, you cannot pre-visualise the resulting image

That means that you may make a picture of yourself that you don’t like

it increases the chances that you will make a picture that you don’t understand

 

When Shirin Neshat looks at herself through a camera , there is a real distance between herself as artist and herself as subject.  This is of course true in the case of all self-portraits.  You are no  longer behind the camera.  You cannot see yourself through the viewfinder, you cannot make any myriad of small decisions – about framing, about choosing the right moment – that make you want to press the shutter-release button.  You have lost a degree of control.  Because you are not behind the camera, you cannot pre-visualise the resulting image.  That means that you may make a picture of yourself that you don’t like.  Along with increasing the chances of accidents, it increases the chances that you will make a picture that you don’t understand.

 

Angier R, 2007, Train your Gaze, Ava Books, Pg 26

 

For this image: I set the camera up for an 8 second exposure and then onto timer.  I then went and sat in the position that I thought best in front of the camera.  I sat for 4 seconds and then quickly moved out of the camera view.  This left behind a faded image (I was trying to have this image so that you couldn’t really see my face)

 

This was an opportunist image.  I was sitting looking at a book on the arm of the sofa, the light from the dinning room was on and shinning through casting my shadow on the lounge door.  I grabbed my camera and took this image.  The harsh shadow along the top is the top of the door where the light was coming from.

 

Again I noticed the natural light coming through the blinds onto the wall.  I quickly grabbed by camera stood in several different positions before I took the following two images.  It was actually the chimney breast wall that is in an 'L' shape, so I think this is the reason behind the blinds not being straight towards the right side of the image and also the way my head shapes round.

 

 

 

  

 

As you can see in the image below I have re-positioned myself to avoid the wall curve.

 

These were purely only trial shots to see what the outcome would be – I do quite like the idea of self portrait and may continue with this to see where it can go.

Photographers Rights

 

I could have done with this article from the start of the course!

Maybe I should keep a copy in my camera bag.

 

Digital Photographer issue 135 received 15/05/2013

Research - Street Photography

 

Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California

by Dorothea Lange

[Scanned image] Badger G, 2007, The Genius of Photography - How Photography has changed our lives, Quadrille Publishing Limited, Pg 77

John Thomson's book Street Life in London has been called the beginning of social-documentary genre, but some have considered Thomson's pictures to be somewhat dubious because they look staged and take on the popular journalistic approach.

 

This image was calculated to gain sympathy - and in my opinion has achieved the goal perfectly, making you wonder, what she is thinking, what the surroundings are like etc?

 

 

Lange took this image and several others whilst travelling home from a trip to San Francisco.  She saw the wet and hungry mother sitting under a make-shift  shelter.  She took several images steadily moving closer, until she was only focused on the mothers face and arms, the two children naturally turning away from the camera.



 

Other images from the series that she took

 

 

Moving to a different type of street photography in the modern day, I am going to take you to Belfast, Northern Ireland where there troubles are still lingering on (and always will - it seems).

 

Northern Ireland as been plagued by trouble for decades from the late 60's still through to today where they have started to fight for the Union flag!

 

 

 

The last image, is particularly frightening and I asked myself, just how close was the photographer when this image was indeed taken?

 

 

Belfast, Northern Ireland - The people of Belfast are buying picture postcards of their city's torment by the hundreds.  The most popular shows a boy throwing a stone at a British armoured car ... other show burned out homes, troops in battle positions on city streets and children at play amid smoking rubble.

 

 

No image shown in book, but researching I found this image which is more modern day than back in the 70's which shows that that violence is still part of todays life.

[Online image] available at https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=boy+and+stone&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=BYSTUaLZKIzDPLzMgPgF&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1440&bih=775#tbm=isch&sa=1&q=boy+throws+stone+at+british+armoured+car+belfast&oq=boy+throws+stone+at+british+armoured+car+belfast&gs_l=img.3...4197.5039.2.5367.8.8.0.0.0.0.82.434.8.8.0...0.0...1c.1.12.img.w17GEhcf7mQ&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.46471029,d.d2k&fp=6171b4f50508f532&biw=1440&bih=775&imgrc=olnIfOdx7u5iuM%3A%3Bf6by8qWmmnezhM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fstatic.belfasttelegraph.co.uk%252Fnews%252Flocal-national%252Fnorthern-ireland%252Farticle29167849.ece%252FALTERNATES%252Fw620%252FNWS_20130402_UNC_010_27081431_I5%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.belfasttelegraph.co.uk%252Fnews%252Flocal-national%252Fnorthern-ireland%252Fchildren-as-young-as-seven-attack-police-as-riot-flares-at-rally-29167850.html%3B620%3B314

accessed on 15/05/2013.

 

Since Belfast has few tourists, she said, most of the buyers are local people, mostly young men who want them as souvenirs.

 

A Belfast man bought two complete sets of the cards, explaining, "I think they are interesting mementoes of the times and I want my children to have them when they grow up.

 

- from The New York Times, October 29, 1974 ("Postcards of Belfast Strife Are Best Sellers There")

Sontag S, 1979 On Photography, Penguin, Pg 199,200