An Uncertain Walk

an-uncertain-walk

In today’s lesson, we looked into something called ‘an uncertain walk’. We listed some groups and some people that we may come across on our photoshoot tomorrow in the market in town. We also thought of whereabouts we are going to take our photographs and at what angles or what techniques we are going to use to capture our images. Finally, we named our inspirations and what photographers are going to influence how and why we take pictures. The page I’ve displayed above is essentially a plan of action to help us get the best out of the afternoon.

An Uncertain Walk

Types of People:

  • Street Cleaners/ sweepers
  • Parking offices
  • Formal workers
  • Builders – scaffolding/Road works/construction
  • Dwellers/Homeless People
  • Old People/Pensioners/unemployed
  • Coffee Shops/cafes

Locations:

  • Town Market
  • Car Park
  • Glass
  • Zebra Crossing
  • Tunnel
  • High Street
  • Outside Offices
  • Park

Techniques

  • Worms eye view
  • Birds Eye
  • Face On
  • Varying Shutter Speeds
  • Reflections

 

An Uncertain Walk

. . . a simple invitation to walk within a marked boundary . . . without any definite plans other than walking and immersing ourselves in this encounter and experience. (page 47)

Please make sure you are familiar with this policy-for-recording-creative-material

During this week we are going to take you out for a walk (to town / the market). To help prepare for this we would like you to look at small parts of this document  http://d-e-futures.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Un_certainty_smllowres.pdf

Essentially, we would like you think about the walk to town before we go, so therefore we want you to make some planning posts before your trip. We also want you to make an evaluation post at the end of the week.

Planning

If you look at page 38 you can see how ‘groups nominate who, what and where they wanted to explore‘ and on page 39 the group came up with a number of themes for their exploration.

As such, we would like you to think about some themes that you could explore on your walk, think about the trip as a chance to capture people in the ‘wild’ in their natural habitat, therefore answer these questions:

  • what do people do in the ‘wild’?
  • what does this activity tell us about society, humanity and individuals?

As Sarah writes on page 51 “we’re starting to use the city and what people are doing in it as a probe to enable us to speculate”

Shoot

For the actual shoot we want you to take photos in the style of environmental portraiture or street photography. From your earlier research and analysis you should be able to identify some key characteristics, but we would definitely suggest that you

  • try to capture images and moments around your set theme (street photography)
  • try to talk to people before you take their image so that you can a good frame and a sense of intimacy (environmental portraiture)
  • you avoid ‘back of the head shot’, shots from too far away, shots that don’t have people in them, shots that don’t have permission or consent, shots that create a risk or are inappropriate (see policy above for guidance and advice)
Evaluation

When you have uploaded all of your images (in a contact sheets) please select 3-5 of your favourite images and provide some analysis that helps us to understand why you like them the best. We will be looking to print out and mount the best 2 (or 3) photos, so you will need to upload them to Mdrive>depts>photography>students>image transfer>PRINTING and we will arrange for them to be printed over 1/2 term.

We would also like you to provide a creative description of your walk, similar to Soile’s page43, Ann’s page 44 and David’s page 45, so have a look at them before you go.

Extension

As an extension you could look at the concept of :

Dérive

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rive and try to incorporate some of this thinking into your own work.

Week 6 // Street Photography

This week all students will be encouraged and expected to tackle and complete the following tasks…

  • A review of the school’s “responsible photographers policy”
  • An analysis of your current assessment material and introduction to the marking criteria and comparisons to exemplar material
  • Look at GRADE A AS PHOTOGRAPHY 2016 blogs…CRISTIANNA KNIGHT, LAYLA ARTHUR, NINA POWELL
  • An introduction to the concept of serendipity and chance encounters in photography (see next BLOG POST)
  • A visit to St Helier (Street Photography Photo-Shoot)
  • An deeper understanding of aperture and depth of field (see CAMERA SKILLS)
  • Completion of Street Photography Homework ( photoshoot)
  • Extended Learning // slow synch flash techniques