STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

Street photography is also known as candid photography but they are very different. Street photography feature unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places. Street photography doesn’t have to have a street present within it or even an urban environment. It can focus on people and their behaviors in public, it is similar to social documentary as you are capturing people in their natural state. A street photographer can be seen as an extension of the flâneur. A  flâneur is a french noun that is an act of strolling with all of its accompanying associations. It is to “wander with no purpose”.

Examples of street photography;

CANDID PHOTOGRAPHY

Candid photography is a photo captured without creasing a posed appearance. Photos like these can be achieved in many ways such as, when the subject is moving, avoiding prior preparation with the subject, by surprising the subject or by not being a distraction to the subject during the process of taking the photos. The photographer has to work with the lighting they are presented with and the environment they are in.  When taking a candid photo camera are normally quite small and black as it avoids disturbing the subject.

Here are examples of candid photography;

BRUCE GILDEN 

Bruce Gilden is a well known American street photographer who captured close ups of people on the streets of New York. Gilden didn’t care if he annoyed people out on the street whilst taking his photos, he had the confidence to take a photo and carry on with his day even if he had to deal with conflict from the people in his photos. He used flash whilst taking these photos, to really help capture the detail and facial expression of his subject. His images are also in black and white which really draws attention to the subjects facial expressions and what they look like. Gilden photographed a variety of different people to show the type of people around New York. Here are a few of his photos that I enjoyed looking at;

IMAGES FROM MY EXPERIMENTATION WITH STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

I didn’t enjoy street photography as I found it awkward and uncomfortable of taking candid photos of strangers. Also when taking most of my photos I struggled to get the sharp focused images, so most of my images where blurry, along with either too dark or over exposed. This experiment gave me a feel of a different type of genre of photography and has taught me different techniques.

MY FINAL IMAGE

EVALUATION

Taking street photography was very nerve-raking as you had to take photos of strangers, and some of them may have not wanted you too. The struggles I had during this shoot as trying to get steady images that were in focus and sharp ,whilst maintaining the correct settings, this was hard as I was always on the go, quickly trying to snap something before the moment was too late. I found street photography pressurizing but it was lots of fun.

“If your photos aren’t good enough, then you’re not close enough” – Robert Capa

“I love the people I photograph. I mean, they’re my friends. I’ve never met most of them or I don’t know them at all, yet through my images I live with them.” – Bruce Gilden

“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!”
― Ted Grant

Here I will be editing the best outcomes from my previous photo shoot. Although these were my best images, I think that some are slightly over and under exposed so I plan to attempt to fix this by editing them on Photoshop.

Original image

Final outcome
To edit this photo I adjusted the curves so that it was slightly more saturated, as I thought this would make the overexposed white part at the bottom a little less noticeable, as the background colours would stand out a lot more. Doing that also brought down the brightness slightly, meaning that it also contributed to making sure the whiteness was less prominent. Lastly I also turned the hue and saturation right down so I was able to make the image black and white. I decided to make the image black and white instead of highly saturated for 2 reasons. Firstly, because I thought that if the image was in black and white, the overexposed part wouldn’t be as visible, and secondly, because I wanted to add an element into my image that shows I was slightly inspired by Sander as all his images were in black and white. I think this was a really good idea as it meant that I added a vintage touch into my modern day inspired environmental photography.

Original image

Final outcome

When looking at this photo, although it was far too underexposed I thought that it was an image with potential because of how the model was making intense eye contact with the camera. To edit it, I turned the brightness all the way up, so that the image wasn’t so dark. To make it fit in with my other image, and did the same technique that I mentioned previously and turned the hue and saturation all the way down to make the photo black and white.. I think that the intense stare that the model is giving, combined with a black and white filter makes the image far more successful as it makes it more dramatic and mysterious.

For my environmental portraits I took pictures of my mum who works in an archive. The lighting was overall quite hard to work with as the building doesn’t have much natural lighting  due to preserving old letters and artwork. As well as that it was hard at the start to get my mum to make eye contact without smiling or laughing, but the more photos I took the more comfortable she began to felt and it became less awkward in general. Due to the fact that a family member was the person I was taking photos of, I did find it easier to take control of the shoot and achieve the angle and positioning I wanted. I ensured that eye contact was made between my mum and the cameras in my final section of photos as they felt the most effective as an environmental portrait. I felt a natural expression rather than an a faked smile as it seems more fitted to the working environment. In most photos I took it from a level angle, in which the lens was at the same height as my mum’s eyes. On the other hand I took it from an upwards angle in the ones where my mum was on a ladder. I felt that me being lower showed a sense of authority from my mum which worked well as i am the visitor as she is the only one with a key to the store room and she is in them everyday. I wanted to take up an angle which showed a clear sign of territory because like ones work place is very similar to ones home because they are there nearly all day for 5 days, some people spend more time at work then at home. For instance if I was to enter someones home for the first time i would be respectful and sit where i was told, only come round when invited, which is what I wanted to gain from low angle a sense of obdeince and respect towards my mum and her working environment.In this shoot I wanted to break the gender stereotype of man at work and how there are supposed to be the ones who lift heavy objects, this ties in with the photos in the archive store rooms in which my mum has to move documents and art daily. As well as that I wanted to take picture of my mum as her line of work as its less common in a island which is dominated by the finance sector. I have several other family members who I considered for this task but they all work in offices and I wanted to capture a portrait within an environment of work which is scarce in Jersey. Even though Jersey Archive doesn’t have the best lighting for photography sue to its lack of windows it is a very modern building which goes very well in contrast with the extremely old documents, art work and film that my mum repairs.

Final Outcomes