EVALUATION

I feel that I followed my own brief very well as my main aim was to have a street photography style, concentrating on the mystery of the image- What is happening and why? I chose a theme of mystery because I thought it would allow me to be creative with what I found on the streets and I feel I was successful at this as I have a good range of images. Each of them having different possibilities of stories/mystery behind them.

I didn’t specify in my brief the type of images I was looking for; I just left my planning to chance, because you can’t plan what people will naturally be doing on the streets, you just have to take the photo as it happens. For example, like my image of the fishing rod and fish - I didn’t plan for the man to catch a fish and I didn’t know he was going to, but luckily for me he had caught one whilst I was stood behind him, and not knowing what setting my shutter speed, aperture and ISO were on, I quickly aimed the camera at the fish and hoped for the best. I didn’t know the image was going to include the fishing rod in the centre of the image and have the fish blurred out in the background, I also didn’t know I was going to be zoomed in on 55mm, but in my opinion I think the image works well like that and it is one of my favourite images from the project. Planning my images would have been too restrictive and wouldn’t have allowed me to capture images of what really happens around us.

The strengths in my final images is that they all include a range of compositional techniques such as; rule of thirds, depth of field, reflections, shadows, leading lines and framing. I feel all these techniques made my images look more eye catching and interesting to look at. I edited all my final images on Photoshop and I feel this made them look even stronger. For 3 of my images, I made them black and white as this makes them look less distracting, but also makes them look more stimulating because they look simple. It also makes us focus more on what is happening in the image, rather than concentrating on the colours.

For one of my black and white images, I edited it slightly different so that the lady waiting at the bus stop would still be in colour as she was wearing a long red coat and shoes and by leaving her in colour I feel made the image look more striking and appealing to look at.

In my brief I said that I would edit all the images to be black and white, however not all of them are because when I was writing my brief I didn’t know what images I was going to take and depending what is happening in the image depends how you edit it. It was a nice sunny day when I was out taking my photographs so I wanted to enhance this in my final images by working with the levels and saturation to make them look warm and autumn looking therefore pleasing to look at.

For improvements, I need to try and take images in more than once concept of view. For example, my image of the rope leading us to the boat, the main focus is in the centre of the image and the foreground of the rope and leaves and the background of the boat are blurry. Here isn’t much to look at in the centre of the image, so if I was to take the image again, I would change my aperture so that the focus was in the foreground, focusing on the detail of the leaves and the texture of the rope, still leaving the boat out of focus for the mystery effect. I would also take it with the rope in the left third of the image rather than dead centre, so it would allow us to see more of the boat in the background.

I feel my project as a whole went very successful as in my brief I stated that I want people to have their own opinion of the mystery of the photos and what it happening and I feel this is achievable with the images I’ve produced. For example, my image of the Fisher man by the river with his hand by his face - some people might say he’s waving, however other people might think he’s blocking the sun out of his eyes. And for my image of two people on the bridge looking at the Ipad – some people might think they’ve just taken a picture with it and are now looking at it and some people might think that they’re looking at Google maps because they’re lost and don’t know where they are.

My edited images

Production

In this blog I am going to talk about how I will produce my images. In my brief I said that I will focus on the mystery of they image-what is happening and why?

Depending on the shooting conditions, I will most likely use shutter priority, so I can adjust the shutter speed to get varied photos. Some people might be walking quite fast, so I will need a high shutter speed to capture them without the image blurring. However because my theme is mystery, I could also use a slow shutter speed to make the person look blurry. Using shutter priority automatically sets the aperture and ISO. If I wanted to set them myself to make the image look how I want it to, then I will use manual mode-allowing me to use a range of different settings to get different effects. 

How I will present my pictures will depend on how many I choose for my final project. However, I think I will present them in a Gallery form in another Blog post so you can clearly see all the images and can compare them to each other.

My Brief

What is Photojournalism? - Brief

My aim is to take a series of images based around mystery and what the story behind the image could be. I chose to do mystery as it allows me to be creative with what I can find on the streets because everywhere you look someone will be doing something, but what exactly? The majority of street photography style images will include people in them and it’s not always clear who they are or what they’re doing, so this then leads to a mystery behind the image. The majority of photo-journalistic photos will show a story or meaning behind them, even if they weren't intended when the image was first taken. When different people see an image, they will all have their own ideas of what is happening and who that person is. This is one of my main outcomes for my brief - for people to have different ideas about the mystery behind image.

Mystery gives me a wide opportunity of photographs to take and I can express my opinions of everyday life. When taking the images I will try and use compositional and framing techniques such as leading lines, rule of thirds and reflection to make the images look more interesting and appealing to look at. I will then turn the images into monochrome (black and white) in later production to make them stand out better and give them a simple mood as the images will be described in different shades of one colour. Also the majority of photojournalists take their photos in monochrome.

An artist who has influenced me in this theme is American photographer Diane Arbus because when she was out taking photos, she focused mainly on what people were doing in their everyday life. Like most photojournalists she wouldn't ask people to pose, she just walked the streets and took images of people she thought looked interesting. Another artist who has influenced me is Australian photographer Trent Parke. His images tend to include just one person, whether they're just stood on the street corner or crossing the road, this shows mystery because we ask why they are alone, what they're doing or where they're going.  

Concept - ideas

My Ideas-Street Photography

1.  Mystery- Most photo journalistic photos will have a story or meaning behind them, even if they weren't intended when the photo was first taken. However, different people will have their own opinion on a photo and will have different ideas about the story behind the image. When you see a photo you immediately ask yourself, 'What is it? What's happening? Who are they?' etc. I've decided to choose mystery as one of my possible themes as it gives me a wide opportunity of photographs to be taken and I can express my opinions of a story. An artist that can influence me in this theme is Diane Arbus as she focused mainly o people and what they were doing, she didn't ask them to pose, she just took images of them doing their everyday thing.

2. Themes- Some photojournalists give themselves a theme when photographing so that they're not just taking pictures of anything random. For example themes could be; Nature, old people/young people, adventure or loneliness.  Once they have a theme, they can then expand upon it (think out of the box) and take images that they think show that theme. Also, when using a theme you can also think about compositions and framing techniques to make the image look more interesting. For example; rule of thirds, reflections and symmetry. An artist that can influence me in this idea is Sebastiao Salgado as he always gave himself a theme when taking pictures including; hard manual labour, other Americans and Genesis.

3. Places- I could give myself a certain place to take my photographs or take photo's related to a certain place. I could then expand upon this and take photos all around this place instead of just one area of it. For example, around a park or beach. Again, I would need to incorporate  different compositional and framing techniques to make the images look more interesting. To take it to the next step, I could also include a subject within that place, such as people or animals. An artist that can influence me in this idea would be Henri Cartier-Bresson as we focused of showing people in different places (such as the children playing at the Berlin Wall and Children spiraling up some staircases). He also used the geometry of the buildings to make the images look more interesting.         


I have decided to choose mystery as my final idea because it allows me to be creative with what I can find on the streets. Everywhere you look someone will be doing something, but what exactly?  And if I take a creative image that has a clear mystery story behind it, then people will start to give their opinions on what they think is happening in the image. Another Artist who has influenced me is Trent Parke because most of his images tend to include one person, whether they're just stood on the corner or crossing the road, this shows mystery because we ask why they are alone, what they're doing or where they're going.                                             

What is Photojournalism?

We've been set a task to create our own brief to take a selection of images which could be used in the College's prospectus to show people what photojournalism is. 

To help me create ideas, I made a montage of different photo-journalistic photos to give me a overview of what my images should look like. From this and the previous tasks we have done I could see hat he majority of the photos are taken on he streets and aren't planned - they're just taken and people aren't asked to pose.  
Here is my Montage:

Then I had to start thinking about what images I could take to show photojournalism. To do his, I created some mind maps to help me plan out my ideas where I could talk about the different themes within photojournalism. Here is my first mind map: 

As you can see there can be many different themes within photojournalism, but most of the time, they are unplanned photos on real life events. If there are people in the photo, they haven't been asked to pose, therefore, this can go under street photography because you are taking unexpected photos of people. I then did a mind map on street photography:

As you can see, when doing street photography you can give yourself a certain theme/subject to photograph so you're not just taking photos of something someone random on the street. 

Photojournalism is also about them mystery and story of the photo, what's happening and why? Who is in the image and why are they there? etc.

Robert Frank and Achievement

We looked at some of the images in Robert Frank's photo book called 'The Americans'. Robert Frank is a Swiss photographer who moved to America after the second world war because of the threat of Nazism affecting his understanding of oppression.

On the front cover we can see one of the most famous images which shows the segregation between white and black people on a bus, this was a big issue in 1950's America. Frank, like many Photographer didnt ask the people on the bus to pose, he simply took the picture as the bus drove past and this allowed us to see what life was really like in 50's America.

We were given the task to go around college and take images of what we thought showed achievement.This was quite a difficult task so I had to be very imaginative and creative. Here are some of my images:

My first image clearly shows achievement as we see a football trophy which the college had won during a womens tournament, you can also see a picture of the team behind it. I used a low aperture when taking this image because I wanted the background to be out of focus because the trophy is the main subject within the image, so therefore by making it the only thing in focus it would stand out more. 

 My next photo is more a 'out of the box' and humorous approach to show achievement. I saw this sign and all the bikes lined up next to it and I suddenly thought "achievement of dismounting their cycles". Again I used a low aperture to mainly focus on the sign leaving the bikes out of focus, however, we can still see that they're bikes.

 Now you might be thinking how does a ladybird show achievement? Well if you think about it in more depth, look at the amount of spots it has. The more spots a ladybird has, the older it is and this here lady bird has lots of spots, therefore showing us it's quite old. So technically you could class this as achievement, living a long life in ladybird years because I don't think anymore spots will fit on this ladybirds back!

For my final image again you have to be more imaginative as to how it shows achievement. Well, I think this berry shows achievement as its the last berry left hanging! All the other berries have fallen off and were left to rot or get eaten by some hungry bird, but this wee berry is still fighting strong! This image also shows my personal achievement as I managed to capture the water droplet hanging off the berry before it dripped off! :-) yaay go me!!