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:

Using Lightroom, I experimented cropping my final photos that I had edited in different ways which showed different and unique views of the final photo. From this I could duplicate the photo and crop it down to various people which I thought could be an interesting concept to explore.

St Malo Street Photography –

Here are my final images from our day trip to St Malo, throughout this edited shoot, I have captured the sights, people and atmosphere in a series of images.

First edited Images –

Second edited Images –

Edit Settings:

For my edits, I have focused on mainly on altering on Saturation, Clarity and Texture. Through examples I will show their slight variations, depending on the subjects within the frame, such as movement, lighting and distance.

Due to numerous edits containing similar settings, I will break down some of the main types of edits I’ve made to the majority of my images.

Example 1 – Low light:

Since in the original image, limited light was within the foreground of the images contents, I aimed to highlight this through editing by creating more depth to it through editing.

Camera Settings:

Before:

Editing process:

Through cropping my image to centralise the composition of windows and subjects, I converted my image into greyscale through removing the saturation. By altering other features such as clarity and texture, and settings within its tone, I edited this image with the focus on making the light standout from its outside source, and highlighting the woman in pinks appearance due to her singular action of looking out the window.

Final image:

Example 2 – Motion:

Inspired by Cartier-Bresson’s image of a cyclist I decided to try and create something similar within St Malo using motion.

Camera Settings:

Before:

Editing process:

By adjusting the texture, clarity and haze, I tried to create a sharp but also an intentionally blurred image.

Final Image:

Example 3 – Distance:

Edit 1 –

With Cartier-Bresson’s images of large infrastructure, dwarfing their surrounding subjects, I took inspiration from this in my own work and tried to recreate it.

Camera Settings:

Before:

Editing Process:

After turning into black and white, to add more pop and character to the image I attempted to make a tonal shift between shades. With lots of distance into the image it can be seen that it contains lots of different tones that can pop out once edited.

Final Image:

Edit 2 –

In the next image I did something similar with a more busy street.

Camera Settings:

Before:

Editing process:

To edit this image, and incorporate those variants in tone from colour when converted to greyscale, I prioritised making the small details in the lower half of the image stand out more with dehazing and white and black balance.

Final image:

Example 4 – Cropping:

By shortening down the original image, Cropping can help create a more effectively deeper meaning to its contents.

Camera Settings:

Before:

Editing process:

adding additional shots, I wanted to further detail this image by overlying multiple images. By adding different angles, changing their colours and opacity, I think this adds more detail and exclusiveness to the image.

Final Image:

Example 5 – Reflections:

Edit 1 –

Capturing a few photos where Reflections where caught in them, I liked how they came out a lot and can be said to capture 2 moments in one image without the use of artificial alterations.

Camera Settings:

Before:

Editing process:

To make sure both reflection and subject within the image where able to be recognisable I mainly used highlights and contrast to make them both stand out.

Final image:

Edit 2 –

Camera Settings:

Before:

Editing process:

Due to the unedited version being slightly out of focus but a lot of the tonal settings being alright, I mainly used the dehazing and clarity to make the image look nicer in greyscale.

Final image:

Edit 3 –

Camera settings:

Before:

Editing process:

Editing this image, like before I focussed more so on clarity and dehaze, this was to differentiate the subjected reflections within the original image.

Final image:

1 x landscape crop

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After:

1 x portrait crop

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After:

1 x panoramic crop

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After:

1 x square crop

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After:

1 x circle crop:

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After:

1 x multi – circle/porthole crop

1 x polygon crop

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After:

1. Both could be described as landscape pictures. What kinds of landscapes do they describe? These two pictures describe a type of landscape that is called seascapes.
2. What similarities do you notice about these two pictures? In these two pictures, they both show the sea and types of rocks.
3. What differences do you notice? I noticed that the first picture is more sea based, it shows close ups and selections of sea, sand and rocks. The second picture shows a seashore with some type of peer and with large waves and rocks. The second picture also is in black and white whereas the first picture is in colour.
4. What words/phrases best describes each of these landscapes? The words that best describe the first picture is complex and unique and for the second picture I would describe it as textured and rustic
5. In which of these landscapes would you prefer to live? I think that I would prefer to live in the second landscape as I think that I have a clearer image what it actually is and It just looks better in general.

To make my photographs appear more appealing, I have decided to edit some in a way that makes a specific part of the image stand out. To make the colour splash photos, I first used the quick selection tool to cut out what I wanted to stay in colour, I then selected that area and layered via copy this copied the area I had cut out. I then changed the original image to black and white, making sure my copy of the umbrella I cut out , was the top layer.

This is the final image. I think it turned out really well, the cut out of the umbrella looks very smooth and I think that it was a good idea to use the umbrella as the colour popping out as it is really bright and stands out well against the black and white.

Other edits:

To “crop” an image is to remove or adjust the outside edges of an image (typically a photo) to improve framing or composition, draw a viewer’s eye to the subject, or change the size or aspect ratio. In other words, photo cropping is the act of improving an image by removing unnecessary parts. Here is me trying to crop my images to improve them in different ways.

Landscape and portrait crop:

I think the landscape format crop works better for this image as the walls around the people act as a border, forcing the eyes towards the subject more and cropping the image landscape will not waste this feature. However, the pebbles on the ground that can be seen on the portrait image, leads the eyes towards the subjects, as they get smaller and smaller. I edited this photo in black and white too keep with match the style of Bresson.

Panoramic crop:

Here I did wide crops of 2 images, on vertically and one horizontally. I think the first image works well for a wide, horizontal crop because there is a lot of empty or unimportant detail that does not add to the overall image so I cropped it out. It also makes the main subject take up more of the image. The second image works well with a vertical crop because it keeps only one subject in the photo, and creates an interesting photo with all the windows behind taking up the background of the image.

square crop:

With a rectangular crop, the eye has a tendency to move across the image until it finds its focal point; with a square crop the eye moves around the image. This shift in the dynamic, from fluid to static, presents you with a great setting for capturing the serene. Striking still lives with plain backgrounds and posed portraits work a treat in a square frame.

Centred subjects have a tendency to look flat and dull in a rectangular frame, but that circular eye motion that we make with square-cropped images means that they don’t lose their impact. This is clearly being show in this image of the car, as its headlights take the centre stage and stand out. All the people before now being cropped out further adds to the impact this car has. (I have edited this image in black and white to further stand out the little Renault).

circle crop:

Here I cropped this image in a mostly circular format in photoshop. I did this more for the contrast as most circle cropped images are happy and exciting but this one is the complete opposite, with this young kids parents having a fag.

Our school travelled to St Malo for street photography. St Malo is a walled city on the English channel coast and is a popular tourist centre and has a lot of historical value. We where trying to capture the ‘decisive moment’, coined by Henri Cartier-Bresson. This is where there was little planning involved (the furthest I planned was waiting at specific areas where I think an interesting moment could happen). I was looking for photos that looks classically ‘French’ as we where in France after all. I also did a few photos of just the French architecture, with their colourful French shutters and bright doors. Here are a few of my favourite photos with a small amount of colour editing:

Biuldings:

These photos would go very well together in a topology so I have edited them with similar settings so I can do this later on. I tried to capture the unique buildings in St.malo, that maybe had so moss growing, old paint, graffiti, and more to give the images more life.

People:

Here I mostly cropped to keep to the rule of thirds, making the subject more prominent, However with some cases I thought it looked better to forget about the rule of thirds, like when the subject is moving quickly off the scene. I have a few strong images that I will edit further and try a ‘Bresson style’ B&W photo.