Mile Radius project

Our next project is to document things around the mile radius of a certain point, for practise shots we did a mile of things around the college. We have a few different mini assignments to do before we set out to do out final shoot that are getting us to explore the different types of street photography and documentary photography that can happen in the same location such as photographs of the buildings then photographs of the people. 

 Here's all the images I came up with so far, we had to go out and document the buildings in a mile radius of the college.

We had to try and get a message across through out photographs. With these first two images that I took I wanted to show the viewer how much of an over whelming place I find the city to be, I tried to show this through taking photos of the tall buildings towering over myself. I like how the windows on the building draw your eye up the photograph. 

With the next photograph I wanted to try and show the feeling of being locked in, or being trapped by all the buildings and everything surrounding you.

The first of the next two is probably my favourite photograph of the set that I took. I love the colours of the garage door, and the fact that I chose the framing of the photo to not include all of the other two garage doors at the edges of the photograph. With the photograph after I think this puts out a negative message about the place I was photographing, the bars show being trapped and the pile of rubbish makes the place look disrespected. 

With the next five photographs I tried to get lots of lines in the photograph that directed your eyes to different parts of the picture, like with the cars, you follow them down the road to see what's around and with the railings on the ones below they lead you around the photograph to explore the surroundings. 

With the next photograph I wanted to express loneliness, there's such a vast expanse of empty ness, but not lovely green fields or anything, just car park, then the buildings behind making you feel surrounded.  My last photograph that I took was probably my second favourite  your eyes are really drawn down the photograph and I like how its not centred and you've got some interesting graffiti to the side of the picture. Not necessarily how it's been disrespected, but how in someone's eyes they've created something beautiful in such a urban place filled with grey buildings. 

While looking at different photographers I found this photographer, although it isn't exactly what I was looking for, I found these absolutely fantastic. It's a photographer called Paul Batt who photographed abandoned sofas in a suburb. I liked this work because it wasn't just documenting a certain place, it was doing that but also picking a certain thing to always include in the photograph, I like the idea of such a focus. Here's some of his work! Here's a piece he wrote about his project, what really inspired me from this was he gave his photographs a real strong meaning to live up too. when I do my shoot what ever my chosen project in a mile radius is, I intend to give the photos a strong message. I couldn't really have any technical considerations for this project because I took the images on my iPhone, but I didn't use flash. I don't really need to post a contact sheet of the shoot because I uploaded all of my images, here are my favourite five. 

‘These images represent a series documenting and cataloguing the subtle variations of abandon sofas and couches in the suburban environment. My primary interest in the ‘Abandon Series’ is the apparent state of flux and contrast the subjects exist in. These once intimate, comfort giving, interior objects have become surreally out of place, in the exterior world. Although their utilization is over, clues remaining of human habitation in the cushions and armrests formed to unknown bodies, over countless hours. It is this play between the interior and the exterior environments and the traces of human presence to absence that has informed the series as a whole.’

I continued having a look at more photographers who were documenting a certain place, I found this photographer called Thierry Gentil who is a french architecture photographer. 

This picture of his definitely I think fits in with the idea of lines leading you around the photograph and the feeling of over powering buildings and being over whelmed by the city. 

For the next mini photography street project we had to go out in the street and photograph architecture that interested us, here's my contact sheet for these.

Here are my five final photographs

I really think the sun beaming on the buildings and the angle that I took the photograph at makes the buildings took magnificent and powerful. There wasn't really any technical considerations except standing in a place where the sun didn't obstruct the picture 

Another one of our mini projects was to be the paparazzi for a while,  we got told to go hide down one of the streets we knew our teacher was going down, here are the photos.

We were going to use cameras for this project, but actually camera phones worked out really well, they didn't take ages to focus, and we could run with them to try and get the photo easier, and see a live view on the screen instead of using the view finder on a camera.

I had a look into different paparazzi photographers, the most famous one that came up was someone called Darren Lyons

He runs a blog called Mr Paparazzi and fills it with pictures and celebrity gossip.

For example this picture of lindsey lohan with the caption 'Lindsey Lohan allegedly downs two litres of vodka a day'

Unlike us using our phones, paparazzi will have very fast cameras and memory cards that take many pictures a second to make sure they get a good one of the person. 

Another mini assignment, which I thought was my favourite  was to photograph a toy having a journey round the city, here are my photos!

Our next assignment in college was to do five portraits of people in a mile radius of the college, we took a white sheet of paper, stuck it to a phone box, and each managed to get 5 photos in the group of four we were in.

With the two photos below, I'm really happy with them, I liked how the first guy almost poses like a model and then the second guy gives an awkward smile. The guys have two different personalities, but the situation of where they're being photographed ties them into each other. The only editing I had to do to these photographs were turn them black and white, and edit out a tiny crease in the white paper background. 

With the two photographs below at first I worried about the first photograph. I checked the picture of the man after he'd walked away and didn't get chance to take another where he wasn't blinking, but in the end when these photos are all put together I think it really makes the photograph, he looks like he'd me such a laugh. With the next photograph I really liked because the girl just looks really beautiful but really shy with it and I think the wind in her hair adds to the fact that the photos were taken outside. 

This last photograph, I really love how the lady just looks genuinely happy! The wind in her hair again reminds us that the photograph is taken out side, which I like, it's not just a static studio shot. 

This white background photography was in the style of photographer Clay Enos.

This photographer set up a white background in the street against a wall, and used natural lighting to take portraits of people who walked past him in the street. He talked in one of his videos about how he wasn't scared to get up close and personal to take close shots of people who he found interesting and he used a 50mm lens meaning he had to move around to change what fitted into the frame of the photograph. He also discussed about making the person feel comfortable while doing the shots, taking to them and complimenting them and explaining why you're taking the photograph. We watched this video before we went out to take the photographs above and it definitely built up my confidence in talking to strangers. He also spoke about if someone refuses your invitation to be photographed don't take it to heart, just wish them a nice day and leave it at that. The idea of that definately made me feel a bit better about when people refused as I'd always worry when people said no. On the internet, when looking up Clay Enos there had been big debates on wether he should be classed as a street photographer in the sense that he's not just taking photos of people in the streets, but that he's deleting the reference to where the person is by having up a white background. I would still class him as a street photographer because of the fact that the people who he's picked he's just pulled to the side off the street, they're not people who've arranged to be photographed.  I loved his work, he had such a range of different people and they weren't all of the people in the centre of the photo, there were lots of different parts of the photograph he'd decided to put the person. What I really took from his video about his photography was how laid back he was, with that I tried to be as laid back, despite being terrified, as I could when doing this part of the project.

Here's an example of some of his work that really inspired me. 

I really liked the photos that he edited into black and white, I think they looked far more striking than the colourful ones, with that I decided that with my five people against a white background photos that I'd do then in black and white. I am really happy with how mine came out, I liked how they all weren't all normal just smiling photos, like I had a guy who blinked, but I wish I'd explored fitting the person into different places in the photograph and not just the middle, if when I've decided my mile radius project and I decide for it to be something like this I would definitely explore moving the person around the frame.  I don't really need to upload a contact sheet for this shoot because I've uploaded all of my images. Technical considerations for this photograph were to try and use natural light as well as possible, but the day was quite dark so I had to use some fill flash in a few photographs. This shoot is my favourite of the projects so far.

Today we had to go out shooting again but this time just take shots, and not as peoples permission.

These are my final fine photos. I probably found this more scary than asking people to take the photographs, at least then you had their permission and they couldn't disagree with you. Although I really enjoyed trying to photograph lots of different people on the street, even though it's fully legal to photograph someone in a public place, I still felt like I was doing something sneaky and against their wishes. The one below I think is the most powerful image that I got, even though I wish the woman in front was more in focus. 

I really did like this next photo, I really liked how despite such a bright and happy outfit that the person had on, that he looked like he was just carrying on with the day like it was boring and lacked colour. I did think about turning all of my photographs black and white but with this photograph I think that the colour is very important, it stands out a lot against the dull surroundings. 

I really thought the next picture was quite funny, I loved how the last in front was carrying such small boxes, then the lady behind was carrying such a huge over sized bag. This kind of reminded me of a photo like martin parrs because he likes to pick out the humour in things in some of his photos and the quirky things in life. 

This next photograph I took made me sad, the guy looked so lonely, and I think this really is shown though the picture. He's dressed in really dull tones and desaturated tones that I think go along with the mood of the picture well. 

This was my last of the five final photos that I took, I also am really happy with this one. I like how the two people at the front look really engaged in conversation and in the moment, but the lady in the middle just looks lost and so disconnected from the world. I like how the lines of the pavement and the wall draw your eyes into the photograph as well.

Technical considerations for this set of photographs were to use natural light, as I though flash would be too intrusive into the peoples lives. 

Martin Parrs style of street photography is to get close to what is happening but not to interrupt it, I tried to do this with my photos, but it was a very daunting thing to do, so I stayed quite well away from the people I was photographing, something I need to work on!

Earlier in this part of my project I mentioned that I referenced my work to Martin Parr who is probably one of the most famous street photographers, and when he finds the comical value of things he sees and photographs on the street, here's an example of that. I think this picture is fantastic because it's two completely different people and body shapes in the same situation and pose in the beach. The lady at the front looks like she's almost naturally posing for the situation, where as I think the guy behind almost looks like he's pretending to act the same as the lady to be silly, the picture wasn't posed, but that's the feeling that I get from the photograph. I was going to turn my photographs black and white, but after looking through Martin Parrs work of people in the street I decided to keep them colour as I think they resemble snap shots more and look more natural and not posed for this part of the project. 

Another photographers style who I had a look at was Bruce Gilden his style of street photography is alot more intrusive than Martin Parrs. Bruce just walks past the person, holding his flash and camera and takes the photograph right in the persons face.

His photographs come out fantastic, this is something I wish I had the confidence to do. After watching a few videos about his work, Bruce since he's very in your face sometimes gets a lot of stick for his style of photographing but he doesn't take it to heart at all, he just carries on and doesn't let it bother him, and comes out with some fantastic images. Here's one of my favourites. I love how much character is being put across about the person in just a quick shot. I think the black and white for his style works better than colour because the flash that he uses creates such fantastic contrast in the image, making it look very striking. I would love to have the confidence for this style of street photography. 

In our next lesson we explored the ethics of photographing since it does effect ideas around street photography. For example street photographer Philip Lorca Dicoria was sued because of one of the photographs he took. The picture he was sued for was part of a photography project called 'Heads' in which he set up a flashes in the street that were synced to his camera, he stood further away then when someone walked past the flashes he too a photograph. One of the people who he'd photographed,  Erno Nussenzweig, saw the photograph of him being up for sale in a gallery he sued Philip for selling a photograph of him and profiting on it without his permission. The case was dismissed though because you're allowed to photograph anyone in a public place, but many people see the case as quite significant because the trial went so far. 

Over the years there has been quite a few photographers who have been questioned about their ethics when they took certain photographs. For example the work of Sally Mann has been questioned quite alot because of the fact she photographed her quite young children often looking older than they should for example with this photograph with her kid pretending to be smoking. She was just capturing the children and what they were doing at the time, but sometimes her images were quite disturbing to view as an outsider of the family. Such as an image titled popsicle drips in which it shows her sons lower half of his naked body covered in drips from an ice lolly, at first glance it does look like it could be blood and it's quite and uncomfortable image. 

Another big controversial collection of images were ones used for the Benetton adverts. 

After looking through quite a few of them the only one I found okay was this one of a poper kissing a nun, as a non religious person myself, this one didn't effect me, but I can see how it would offend other people. 

Other photographs though were quite uncomfortable to look at, they weren't related to the clothing adverts at all and were only there to merely shock the viewer, which usually is fine to cause a bit of controversy but I think the benetton adverts took it too far. I think sometimes the shocking images they used would be okay as images on their own, because they're documenting or putting an message across, be it negative, but when used as a clothing advert really casually, I think that's when they become wrong, but then some of them are just plain wrong, like I think the racist ones. The one we studied in class was the angel and devil photograph. I find this image uncomfortable to view, it's stating that the white child is pure and innocent like, like and angel, but that the black child is the devil, when really we are all equal. 

For the next part of the lesson we were asked to have a think about what we would photograph our selves and what we'd say no to. 

Some people have problems with the idea of photographing death, I myself think as long as it's done in a respectful way, think that it is okay.  For example photographing forensic things benefits the police massively and documenting how someone died and how their body looks helps with medical research. In the lesson one of the benetton adverts was mentioned where a photograph of a man dying was published as an advert, as an advert I find this disgusting, but as a photograph I don't see it as a bad thing. From the moment we are born we have a photographer with us, we have baby photographs, school pictures, prom photos, wedding pictures and so on, our whole life is documented by a photographer so why should it be seen as massively wrong that the end of your life is being documented too. I suppose it depends on the way you see death, people are so quick to jump in and say death is always such a horrible thing, but to some people death can mean the end of suffering and the start to a new life in some religions they celebrate it. I think as long as it's  done in a respectful way I think it's alright. People even have funerals photographed, I personally think this is a lovely idea, after having a look on a few websites for it, it is done with so much respect and in such a lovely way. 

http://www.funeography.com/portfolio.html

The topic of war photography came up too, I think this is fine too because it's still documenting something, even though it may be a horrible thing for people to be going through, people still deserve to see and have document of what went on. I couldn't personally photograph war myself, I'd end up far too terrified but I don't think the act of photographing war is ethically wrong. One photograph that I think is wrong though is a photo by Paul Hansen of a girl who had just been shot down in the street for stealing some pictures and a chair, I feel this is wrong because the body of the girl had been moved to achieve a better 'ascetically pleasing' photograph, then it no longer becomes documentary photography it's manipulating a poor dead girl for a better photograph, which completely lacks respect. 

Back to the topic of Sally Mann's photographs I would feel comfortable photographing my own children naked, if I had some, but I would feel very uncomfortable photographing someone else's kids naked. Although I do feel photographs of babies when they're naked are fine, but as they turned to a toddler I would feel more uncomfortable taking the photograph. 

I wouldn't like to photograph anything that portrayed racism like set up, this is in reference to some of the Bennett adverts. Though if it was for documentary purposes, I then feel it is alright to photograph such things, even if they're subjects that I strongly disagreed with, it is the duty of the documentary photographer to document the situation whether they agree with it or not. 

In class the topic of pornographic images came up too, of people of age, I personally don't have a problem with it, if someone wants an image of themselves like that, I don't see the problem with it. There was a discussion about whether pornographic images were wrong because they portrayed the wrong idea of what sex and a woman or mans body was actually like, but whether you have those views or not, sexual images are always going to be produced and If I got asked, I probably wouldn't have an issue with photographing it. There are many different ideas about when an artistic nude becomes porn but whether the picture is classed as one to one person, and another to another person, I don't see the problem with personal tastes. 

Referencing the idea of photography ethics back to street photography, although it is completely legal to photograph anyone in the street without their consent, a part of you worries if the person is okay with the photograph being taken, I become quite a paranoid person and wouldn't want to upset the person with an unwanted photograph. But then the idea of documentation what ever is going on comes back in, which I agree with. There are some fantastic street photographers who haven't asked permission to photograph the person, and the results have been fantastic, I just would love to be more confident and be able to practise such out going street photography. 

Going back to coming to a conclusion of what I would photograph is that I agree with the idea of documenting anything that is going on with the world be it negative or a positive thing. That I am okay with the idea of taking photographs of the dying as long as it is done in a respectful way. That I am okay with taking images of babies naked when they have like blankets on them and so on, but I would worry and feel uncomfortable if I was taking images of toddlers and older kids in a sally mann way unless they were my own kids. 

I don't have a problem with pornographic images or artistic nudes, if it's what the person wants, I'm fine with that and that lastly I don't see a problem with street photography, it's just my own personal worries about the persons wishes that stop me being so out going with it!

Project Proposal!

After exploring lots of different types of ways of documenting a square mile around an area I have decided to photograph the area of Bramham. 

Bramham is a lovely little village, I went through a few ideas of documenting the people who live there, work there (not many though, there's only one shop, a hair dressers, and a small used car dealership and two small pubs) or documenting the streets of the place. I decided on the idea of documenting the streets, but I wanted to give it some story, I could have just shown what a nice place it was, but it needed something else. 

After searching the internet for some ideas, I found images such as this (picture to the right), I found the idea of honouring how the place used to be such a beautiful idea. But there was a few different ways I could do this! My first instinct was to do images like this, where the old image is next to the new one, but I wanted to keep going and find some more ideas. I next found pictures where the old image had been help up in front of the new image, I did like this idea! but I didn't like the idea of my hand being in the photograph.  (example below.) 

After more research into this idea I found this image, which I instantly loved the idea of!

Since I am going to be recreating old photographs I started to have a look at different photographers who'd done the same thing for inspiration and learn the best ways to go out doing the photographs. 

After having a bit of a look I found this set of photographs titled the ghosts of world war II

The idea of these photographs is fantastic, there's at least ten different ones by photographer Sergey Larenkov 

This was my absolute favorite from the set, it's probably the strongest image, as some of them I dont think work as well or fit together as well as the others, I love the contast of soldiers looking really smart infront of the Eiffel tower compared to the tourists in the place now.  

I had a look at an interview with the photographer, they were inspired to do this idea from their own collection of old postcards. They also described the magic of standing where an old photographer stood and almost described the feeling as being transported back in time. I love this set of images, I think they match up fantastically, and I really enjoy how they all contain people. I would love to do this with my project, but I fear there might not be that many images that contain that many people, but I'll try. The only thing I'm not keen on with this photoset is the way the old images just fade in, the only one I think it works fantastically on is the last one I posted, with the people walking away from the Eiffel tower, with the others I think it would have looked better with a cut out picture of what used to be there, it does represent a ghostly look, but for my own personal taste I think it would have looked better with the old photos as shapes. 

 There are lots of different interesting places in Bramham which would really work for this idea, such as where the old shops used to be, the square, the old pubs and an old children's home. Like the image above I will keep the new photograph in colour, then have a piece of the old photograph with a white border fit into the new photo. I like how the above photograph has people in, I definitely want some of my photos to have people in and old sign posts and vehicles. 

My next problem would be sourcing the images and getting permission to use them if I could. I managed to find a website based in Leeds that stocked some old images of Bramham, but there was only four, and they wanted some money for the images, so that didn't work out as an option. After more research I found a fantastic website based on historic Bramham, non of the contact buttons on the website worked at all, so I had no way of contacting the person who ran the website, so I plan to fully give credit to all of the images I used off that website, and continue to try find out who owns the website to talk to them about it. http://historicbramham.org.uk/  

I did plan to be able to put information next to the places and dates of when the photograph was taken, but unfortunately due to the website not working any more, I couldn't find the correct information to do with the photo any more. 

Off this fantastically useful website I found about 20 images that I plan to recreate, because of the images I know exactly what I am going to take, so there wasn't really any need for practise photographs, so instead I sketched out what I plan to do instead. 

I put all of the images I intended to recreate on our ipad so that I'd be able to hold up the image in front of me that I was trying to copy, then try and retake the photo in exactly the same place. I had about 24 images that I needed to take in different locations around bramham. On the shoot getting exactly the right angle was even harder than I thought it would be, the slight step backwards made a massive difference, but out of the 24 photographs that I took, I managed to get 15 of them correct, meaning I only have to go and retake 9, which I'm doing tomorrow. 

Editing the images was quite hard, I first organised everything into folders like this, then inside the folder had the image of the website (http://historicbramham.org.uk/) My retaken photograph, then the crop of the old photo, then saved my final of the photograph next to it. Then after all the editing I wrote next to the ones that I need to retake.

Here are my first 15  images from the project. (quality lowered for upload to the site :))

With these photos so far, I am so happy with them, although on some of them it looks like they don't match up, but its because the buildings have been changed, but I tried my best to match them up to something that still existed in the photograph, for this fact, some work better than others. My favourite so far is either the kids outside the children home or one of the images near the square and the war memorial. For my next shoot I am going to retake the nine photographs that I didn't get right the first time, I have more of an idea of where to stand this time, so I'm feeling more confident about it.

Mid project review.

Today I went out on my second shoot around Bramham 

Some of my photographs went fantastically, but some of them were impossible to recreate for example this picture 

I tried moving about taking lots of different angles to get this photo but in the end I realised that when this photo was taken the road actually carried on up the hill, it didn't just stop like it does now  and the picture was taken higher up than I could actually get. 

Here are my next photographs that did work! 

For the editing of all the photographs I first took the crop of the old photograph that I wanted to incorporate into my new photograph, turned it black and white if it was in sepia then added a white boarder to the image. I next opened my new image in Photoshop then my cropped old photograph on top of that image, then had to move and resize till the picture hopefully fitted exactly to my image. The order of the images will be with the two childrens home photos as the front and back, then I am going to arrange the other photos so that two locations and two photographs arent too similar next to eachother. 

My conclusion of my project is that I feel it went well, I think I managed to affectively prepare for the project through the mini projects we were given in class and through research into each topic.  These really helped me decide which part of one mile I wanted to document, in what style, and how. Some of my images didn't match exactly, but due to the height of the original photographer, and road changes and buildings being completely knocked down, some weren't possible to match up perfectly. I really enjoyed looking through the old photographs, it was quite sad at times to see how many shops used to be in Bramham, compared to how empty the place is now. I think my strongest image of the set is the one of the children's home, I think it's the strongest because it shows how once it was such a lovely place, that held so much life, compared to what it is now, a run down building that is falling apart. If I could do this project again the things I would change are, I'd collect more information about the place in the photograph and maybe would have had an extract by the side of the picture, but this wasn't possible at the time due to website difficulties. If I took on this project again I would definitely have more of an idea of how to recreate shots easier, like a better idea of how to move and place myself to get the exact same view as the old photographer had. Some images worked a lot better than others in my eyes, but as a set I am really happy with the photos, they took hours of photo shopping to match up the old photographs, but I feel in the end it paid off. My next move for this project I think is to go speak to people who live in the village and see if I can get my images published into a calender  because a few people who I showed around the village said they would be very interested as they'd lived their all their life, that'd be fantastic if I managed to get it all printed. Going into the images further and picking apart what I'd say I'd change was to be able to get all the old photograph boarders the same size, but at the time I wasn't exactly sure how to do this, and by the time I'd found out I couldn't go and redo them, but that's only a little thing I found. Looking at other photographers who have done projects such as this, I thought, was my biggest inspiration. I think they were such strong images because we all forget what everywhere used to be like, and I loved the idea of seeing it all right next to the current place.