What is an establishing shot? An establishing shot usually requires more than one individual in the shot. The photographer positions the individual in order to tell a story making this the main element to an establishing shot. Most photographers interpret this topic by either presenting it through an individual or the environment they’re in.
DIFFERENT ESTABLASHING SHOTS
Sian Davey
A photographer that particularly stood out when researching about the establishing shot was Sian Davey.
Sian Davey’s work mainly focuses on her family, community and self and is informed by her backgrounds. She has a famous series called ‘Looking for Alice’ which is portraits of her daughter who has down syndrome. Davey’s older daughter participated in the making of “looking for Alice” which then lead to her other famous series is from her other daughter ‘Martha.” This series Davey explores her older daughter and her teenage life and friends. In 2017 Davey published a new series of images which this time was called “We Are Family” for this series she travelled all across Britain and photographed 31 families in 21 days.
The image above is the image I have chosen to focus on. It was one of my favourites from her “Martha” series.
Visually, within her shot she has captured a series of things making the image almost seem busy in a sense. It contains different focal points when first glancing at the image however her main focus in this being the 3 girls directly in the centre. The background of the image from I can see looks a Forrest or park of some sort where people go and hang out which also suggests why there’s a bench and table. She’s captured this image from a straight on As the focus is on the girls we can see that one of the girls is smoking whilst the others have an alcoholic drink in-front of them. Davey’s capturing the moments of her teenage transition which in this case is breaking laws as she was 16 when these images were taken, therefore she’s creating an establishing shot as her daughter is the subject and her narrative is rebelling against what she’s been told not to do. The image doesn’t looked staged as its captured in a realistic environment of people doing realistic actions which adds the narrative Daveys trying to convey.
Technically, the lighting used in the image above is natural daylight which is seen by the use of her outdoor environment that she’s placed her daughter in. The lighting has undertones of yellow indicating she’s placed it on a warmer setting in order to achieve the image above she’s corrected the white balance to suit her outdoor scene. Along with changing this she would correct the ISO to a low sensitivity as the image isn’t grainy. Her shutter speed for the image would’ve been quick as there is no blur in the image however she would have raised the aperture as slight depth of field is being shown focusing on the 3 girls with the other being slightly blurred.
Conceptually, the story she’s capturing through the image is her eldest daughter growing up around her teenage friends rebelling to rules she’s been told to comply with. Davey tries to convey this weirdness through her images, a quirky side to society that isn’t normally shown or is frowned upon. However she captures the reality and is spreading the idea that this does happen and all this is out there, its a part of growing up and will last forever.