BACKGROUND:
Saint-Malo is a historic French port and town situated on the coast on Brittany, France. With its history of piracy and overseas adventures alongside being heavily bombed in 1944 during World War 2, the city is a popular tourist centre with its ferry terminal serving the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey alongside the South of England such as Portsmouth, Poole and Hampshire. The population in 2017 was 46,097, however during the summer tourist season this can increase enormously – up to 300,000.
CONTACT SHEET:
Overall, our shoot consisted of just over 800 images of the town of Saint-Malo to show the city culture and pace of life. I flagged the images which I thought had the best composition, angle and detail. This photoshoot was inspired by the work of Henri-Cartier Bresson, using his concept of the decisive moment in candid street photography. I wanted to focus on photographing relationships with others, such as couples or friendships, with a aesthetically pleasing composition in the background, maintaining shape and balance throughout. I looked for locations filled with French culture, had leading lines such as long alleyways or just fit cohesively with the actions of the people in the backgrounds.
BEST IMAGES:
In this image, I captured an elderly woman conversing with a homeless man, sat around all his belongings. I really liked this image because it represents community and selflessness, checking up on someone instead of following society and idly walking by. The way her head is tilted towards the side shows empathy in the image and I feel that this adds a sense of genuinity that can be pushed towards the viewer.
For this image, I used a slow shutter speed, standing as still as possible and waiting for pedestrians to walk past me. This created a motion blur on just the people instead of making the entire image out of focus, making it a very successful image. I feel that this represents the face pace of which city life acts in, people always moving and doing something.
This image would have to be one of my favourites as the actions of the woman are very unusual and spontaneous. I liked how she was singular, acting in a way that may be judged or frowned upon by those in the background with umbrellas whilst she walks barefoot with her skateboard. Alongside that, I really liked the way the umbrellas look in the background because they add geometry to the image consistently following up the right side of the image to the left.
BLACK AND WHITE IMAGES:
I made my selection of images in black and white also to bring across the nature of Henri-Cartier Bresson’s images as his were usually portrayed in this way. I played around with the different tonal scales of the images as well as pre-sets to make the black richer or more greyscale, depending on the composition, colours and exposure being used at the time:
STRUCTURES:
I also took some images of the architecture based around the city as I feel that this shows the culture of the city and how can appear to be similar to Jersey whereas in reality it is quite different. This included some ancient and abandoned buildings however some were more urbanised:
