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Street Photography

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What is Street Photography?

Street Photography is a sub genre of photo-journalism focusing on portraits taken in an urban environment, mainly telling the story of the subjects. The photos are of a candid nature, meaning the subject is unprepared for the photo,and in some cases, unknowing, meaning they are pictured in their everyday form and arent influenced by the camera being pointed at them.

Mood Board

Shooting

For my shoot, I took to the local town and set about capturing various people in every day situations. I thought about potentially telling their story through a photo, as well as any context based upon the surroundings and the subjects apperaance. Here is a contact  sheet of my selected images.,

Final Images

Here are my final images chosen from the whole shoot

Head and shoulders of a labourer with the background desaturated and the only colour being his HI-Viz

Same subject and technique as before, but holding a cone A different worker with lowered exposure and same method as first two

Two politicians or office workers

Coffee Break

 Market places + faces

Cowboy hat in the rain

Dylan, taken with flash when greeting me

 

My Favourite Image

Here is my favourite image from the whole shoot. It is of a worker in his HI-Viz jacket and I decided to completely satire his surroundings apart from his jacket due to the luminous nature of it and the contrast when compared to black and white. I took the photo as the day I chose to carry the shoot out on was quite a dark and muggy day, so his Hi-Viz really stood out in the dismal surroundings.

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What Is Street Photography ?

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Street Photography (also referred to as Candid photography) is photography conducted for art or inquiry that features unmediated chance and random encounters.  Street photography does not necessitate the presence of a street or even the urban environment. Though people usually feature directly, street photography might be absent of people and can be of an object or environment where the image projects a decidedly human character in facsimile or aesthetic.

Many famous street photographers include:

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) He was a french photographer who mainly focused on using street photography on capturing a decisive moment using a 35mm film.

Helen Levitt (1913-2009) she was an American photographer who was particularly noted on using Street photography round New York, and was called  “The most celebrated and least known photographer of her time” 

Vivian Maier ((1926-2009) She was again an American photographer who worked for about 40 years as a nanny who pursued doing photography within her spare time, eventually become a well known street photographer.

 

How to undertake street photography.

In order to successfully complete a street photography photo shoot, you will need to sit in a busy area but where you can still have a clear view on some people to photograph. It is better to have no relationship with the people that you are photographing so you can get their natural emotions as they would act without the use of a camera to capture the moment. You can either walk around and take photos or find a place to sit down and take photos from the same position.

Personally I would recommend sitting down and taking photos in an area with quite a few people that circulate around the area. This is because you can have time to set up the camera and focus on the model you are photographing, whereas if you are walking around it is hard to focus on a person/people and you may not have the perfect aperture or ISO set on the camera, as I found out during this shoot. I also realised that if you aren’t positioned in an area, and are walking around then people may realise that you’re taking a photo of them, therefore act differently to fit into the social desirability bias.

AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Street photography

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The images below show my experience of trying to do street photography. My photography class went to town to capture a variety of images of people in their natural environment. The publics reaction were all very different as some appeared to be annoyed that their pictures were taken without consent, others were smiling, but the majority didn’t seem to mind as they carried on walking. At the start I asked for consent to take people’s pictures. However, I then realised that if I did that for every person I walked by all my images would be staged and not candid as most street photographs are. It would also take a long time to ask for consent from each person and I only had 30 minutes to take as many street photographs as I can. So I began taking loads of images of people in different parts of town, hoping that some of the results were good. Although I had my camera on sports mode to capture subjects in motion, some of the images turned out blurry.  Even though it was a struggle to take street photographs, I did manage to capture some focused moments of people walking. The zoom on the camera lens also helped as I could take close up images of people without having to get myself close to the subject. The contact sheet reflects my own experience of doing street photography for the first time.

AO1 Develop Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Environmental portraits — mood board

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Environmental Portrait is a kind of portrait that shows a person in the place that they are most comfortable or spend the most time. the subject isn’t normally interacting with the camera in any other way than looking at it. This is often called a “stages photograph” this is when the subject is aware and sets up the photograph and they can be sometimes made to look like candid photos and they sometimes can be and a candid photo is one where the subject had little to no knowledge of the photograph and didn’t prepare for it.

Unit 2 Portrait

Henri Cartier-Bresson and “The Decisive Moment”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson and “The Decisive Moment”

“To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It’s a way of life”

– Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French Photographer. Born in Cantaloupe-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne in 1904. From the beginning Cartier-Bresson had a fascination with painting, particularly with Surrealism. In 1932, after spending a year in the Ivory Coast, he discovered the Leica and began a life-long passion for photography. 

In 1933, he had his first exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. Cartier-Bresson was taken as a prisoner of war in 1940, he escaped on his third attempt in 1943 and therefore joined an underground organization to help prisoners and escapees. In 1945, he photographed the liberation of Paris with a group of professional journalists, and then filmed the documentary Le Retour (The Return).

Key Images from Henri Cartier-Bresson:

 Henri Cartier-Bresson. Gestapo informer recognized by a woman she had denounced, Transit Camp, Dessau, Germany. 1945. Self Portrait of Henri Cartier-Bresson

WEST GERMANY. 1962. West Berlin. The Berlin wall.

Key Image Analysis:

Seville, Andalusia, Spain 1933.

This image was taken in Seville at the beginning of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s career as a photographer. It has a strong form with a large amount of perspective. A small group play in a very un-childlike environment; some address the camera, others continue their activities unconsciously. The audience sees a large gang of boys through a large hole in a wall which frames the scene. Without knowing the date, one might guess that it was taken during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9) or afterwards. The fact that it was taken in 1933 gives it a strange sense of foreshadowing. The boys seem to be playing at war in the ruins of a war that has not yet happened. It almost seems as if the boys who are closest to the camera have broken or ventured out of the world that the rest are in, due to the fact that the borders of the wall resemble paper and they have torn out of the print.

‘The Decisive Moment’

‘The Decisive Moment’ is a term devised by the pioneer of street photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cartier-Bresson believed that The Decisive Moment’was that split second of genius and inspiration that a photographer had to capture a certain moment. For example, that half of a second that you have when a man is jumping over a puddle or when a couple embraces for a kiss .This moment is fleeting, meaning that once you miss that half of a second to capture that moment, it is gone forever. You can never recreate the same circumstances in terms of location and people.

The Decisive Moment—originally called Images à la Sauvette—is one of the most famous books in the history of photography.

“The Decisive Moment” teaches that the best photo opportunities often flash before our eyes and we must always be ready to capture these moments. That means bringing around your camera everywhere you go. Street photography is built on the average and ordinary moments, so any moment is a potential for a great photograph.

MAGNUM PHOTO AGENCY

Magnum Photos is an international photographic ‘cooperative’ owned by its photographer-members, with offices in New York City, Paris, London and Tokyo. According to co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson, “Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually.

In 1947, with Robert Capa, George Rodger, David ‘Chim’ Seymour and William Vandivert, he founded Magnum Photos. The Magnum cooperative has included photojournalists from across the world, who have covered many historical events of the 20th century. The cooperative’s archive includes photographs depicting family life, drugs, religion, war, poverty, famine, crime, goverment and celebrities.

AO1 Develop Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Street photography

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Definitions 

Street photography, also sometimes called candid photography, is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random events within public places. Street photography can focus on people and their behavior in public.

A candid photograph is a photograph captured without creating a posed appearance. This can be achieved in many ways, for example when the subject is in motion, by surprising the subject, by not distracting the subject during the process of taking photos etc.

Articles about street photography

http://erickimphotography.com/blog/the-ultimate-beginners-guide-for-street-photography/

https://digital-photography-school.com/ultimate-guide-street-photography/
Quotes

"if your photos aren't good enough, then you're not close enough" - Robert Capa

"It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter" - Alfred Eisenstaedt
Threshold concept #7

The meanings of photographs are never fixed, are not contained solely within the photographs themselves and rely on a combination of the viewer's sensitivity, knowledge and understanding, and the specific context in which the image is seen.
AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Uncategorized, Unit 2 Portrait

Environmental Portraits

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Town Environmental Portraits

Action Plan:

When: Saturday
Where: Town, specifically the market
Who: The workers of the shops/stalls
How: Using a Cannon camera with a 25-55mm portrait lens
Why: To capture the variety of different cultures, ages and people in their working environment.

The Photoshoot:

I didn't have a lot of time to take the photos however I did manage to capture a few.
The Selected Images to Manipulate:
I chose these 4 images because I feel it captures the different characters of the different workers. My favourite is the first one featuring the jewellry shop worker. In real life he was quite a moody character and I believe I caught that on camera. I also like the depth of field within the image.
Unfortunately the lighting in quite a few of the photos weren't very good and were very harsh, however that was an environmental factor I couldn't control because I had the use the natural light of the workplace.
Also, the image of the women in the bakery had a white balance that was too warm.
The Manipulated Images:

In the second image of the bakery, I had to ammend the warm white balance by applying a cool coloured overlay effect on lightroom to even it out and neutralise it. For the jewellry worker I adjusted the clarity, contrast and exposure. For both the 3rd and 4th image I applied a black and white preset, then I adjusted theexposure, contrast, clarity and noise of the photo. I also slightly cropped the 3rd photo to remove the counter in the bottom left corner.

School Environmental Portraits

Action Plan:
When: During school timesWhere:  At Hautlieu School
Who: The teachers, workers and students of the school
How: Using a cannon camera with a 25-55mm portrait lens
Why: To capture the spirit and different personalities/identities of the different people in the workplace.
The Photoshoot:

I took a lot of pictures in this shoot, however the shutterspeed of the camera was acting up, so unfortunately as a result  many of the images are blurry.
The Selected Images for Manipulation:
I like how some of the images turned out, such as the maintainance man, the science student, and the two female teachers. However I don't like the image of the boy with the guitar because it is blurry. However I wanted to try to ammend during manipulation. Also, I am slightly bugged by the image of the mandarin teacher because the white balance is too warm.
The Manipulation:

For all of the images I applied a black and white preset on adobe lightroom because I feel it drew more focus onto the actual people in the images. I then cropped and adjusted the contrast, clarity, exposure, lights and shadows of the images until I got a result I wanted. My favourite image is of the maintainance man because I feel i captured both his personality and the aptmosphere of the photo which was very friendly.

Reflection on Both Photoshoots:

There are some images I like out of the shoots, however there is a lot to be learned. I need to figure out white balance a lot more, and the focus of the camera. I need to continue practicing until I nail getting the perfect focus on my images. I also need to take a lot more photos of a vast variety of people to be able to create a vast contrast on the amount of different people.
AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Street Photography – Post 3 (Henri Cartier-Bresson and Other Photographers)

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Henri Cartier-Bresson and Bruce Gilden:

Bruce Gilden (born 1946) is an American street photographer. He is best known for his candid close-up photographs of people on the streets of New York City, using a flashgun. He has had numerous books of his work published, has received the European Publishers Award for Photography and is a Guggenheim Fellow.

Some of Bruce Gilden’s work:

Gilden’s work is very different from the work of as it is more up close and intimate. Cartier-Bresson photographed subjects from further away and incorporated elements of the setting and other objects in his images to create a composition with a strong sense of communication between the subject and the rest of the image while Gilden’s work is largely composed of close up images of individuals or groups of people, focusing more on the obscurity of the subject themselves as opposed to the surrounding and how it intertwines with the scene.

Henri Cartier-Bresson and Vivian Maier:

Vivian Maier (born in February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American amateur street photographer, who was born in New York City, but grew up in France. … Fondly remembering Maier as a second mother, they pooled together to pay for an apartment and took the best of care for her.

Some of Vivian Maier’s work:

Vivian Maier’s work is similar to that of Cartier-Bresson as it is composed of a subject in a specific setting. However Maier’s work is based more on the subject, incorporating the setting to a lesser extant that the images produced by Cartier-Bresson. One thing that is strikingly different between the work of the two photographers is that Cartier-Bresson predominantly used unaware subjects in his work whereas Maier tends to have people looking at or atleast aware of the lens. This creates a different sort of intimacy between the photographer and the subject.

Henri Cartier-Bresson and Trent Parke:

Trent Parke (born in 1971) was raised in Newcastle, New South Wales. Using his mother’s Pentax Spotmatic and the family laundry as a darkroom, he began taking pictures when he was around 12 years old. Today, Parke, the only Australian photographer to be represented by Magnum, works primarily as a street photographer.

Some of Trent Parke’s work:

One difference between the work of Cartier-Bresson and Parke is that Parke’s photographs tend to be darker, both visually and conceptually with the images having a more stark contrast as well as a darker message behind them. Parke’s work reflects dream-like compositions with the photographer including edited or partially blurry background/blurry image through editing or changing shutter speed. While Cartier-Bresson’s work is largely joyful and full of eye catching scenarios involving every day people instead of a mysterious or enigmatic feel.