Sunderland trip and digital shots.

Trip to Sunderland:

So today my group, myself and my lecturer Antony went for a trip to Sunderland to look at a gallery and a museum. Although half of the class didn't show or alternatively just couldn't find us we still had a productive and interesting day after meeting at half 10 at Sunderland train station we went of to the gallery we had a brief break for a pub lunch at 12 then we went on to the museum after this we had finished a little earlier than i thought we would so myself, Courtney, Elle and Lauren decided we would catch a later train home and do some shoots around Sunderland just so we weren't photographing the same scenery in hartlepool all of the time. I didn't bring my 35mm camera but i did bring my DSLR and i also brought my fish eye lense to see what effect i could achieve with that. The result of the shoot is bellow now i will talk about each shot briefly but as a whole i do really like what effect the fish eye has on the street photography it makes it look more unusual and different. I think if i was doing this project using a digital camera this would be the style i would definitely follow.

The pictures below are also in the order i took them and i have edited them all the same, by converting them into black and white and adjusting the contrast and brightness depending on how bright or dark the image was.

The thing i like most about this photo is how you can see my shadow on the man. Showing me in my work. This is one advantage to the fish eye lense.

I also like how the high contrast works on this image. 

This is another image where my shadow is cast into the shot because of my lense, It's also super contrasted.

This is just a shot of the street as we were walking up it. You can see elle in the side of the shot. Because i was using a fisheye lense 

This is a shot of a bus stop that i took as i was passing in the street, I noticed some older ladies climbing onto the bus 

This was one of many shots i took in Wilkinsons. We were stood near the pic 'n' mix section and i just took a random burst of photo's of the people that were near me.

The same applies for this image as the last one.

This was a shot i took whilst waiting in the que. The women in front of me was stood rather still so i instinctively took the womens picture. Lauren is in the shot because of the wide angle on the fisheye lense.

This is another shot of a bus stop i took whilst walking back up the street. Similar shot to the last bus stop shot but i prefer this one as i am closer to the subjects i.e. the pedestrians entering the bus and also sitting waiting for another bus. 

This is another far away shot, i was just taking a photo of the street.

A closer shot this time. I got closer to the people in the previous shot by speeding up whilst i was walking. Even though i was pretty close it still looks like i am far away because of the lense i used.

This shot and the remaining shots are from the outside of Cafe Nero. We all sat there as we were waiting for out train and we decided to get a coffee. We thoughts as we were drinking our coffee we may aswell use the opportunity to take more shots so we sat outside even though it was really cold. This shot is just a shot of the view i had and was the first shot i took at this location. 

As well as taking shots of people i took the opportunity to take a shot of Courtney and Elle, I managed to get Elle taking a photo at the same time and i just liked the look of this so i thought i would include it in these images. 

This was a different shot and is the start of the shots that aren't using the fish eye lense. I realised people were way too far away for me to capture them from the seating position.  For this shot i made sure my Cafe Nero cut was in focus and the people in the background weren't. 

This is one of a few shots were i zoomed into the person as much as i could and i really liked the cropped affect.

The same points apply for this shot as the last one.

I really like how the only person in focus is the women in the middle and people closer and further away than where she is stood aren't in focus.

This is another one of the zoomed in shots i like how the man fits perfectly into the empty space on the wall/shop front in this. also his walking stick fits perfectly with the lines on the wall and window displays. 

This was the last shot i took as i was going into the train station i saw the women to the right of the shot walking towards me so i knew i could get a good shot of her face from this angle i did get a bit of a word from her but i just pretended i didn't hear it and hoped for the best!

Second attempt at street photography

More successful

This time around things were way more successful. Although i did not do as much prints as i would have liked too. Overall from the time i spent in the dark room i got 3 successful pictures that i would say are pretty good.

This is a image that i took from my first shoot. It is a picture of Courtney from my course and some may argue that this does not make it street photography but i would argue that it is because for one she wasn't at all aware i was taking the shot. It is out on the streets, in a public place and it is still a picture of a human. This image was taken on a bench in the street and as far as i am aware there is no rule in street photography saying don't use someone you know even if the shot is candid. I really like the depth of field in this image, how Courtney is really in focus but the buildings are very much blurred. Another thing i like is the high contrast. The blacks are indeed very black and the whites are very white.

This is an image from what i believe is from the third shoot. I just really liked the shot because of the casual look and also how normal it looks too. I also like how there is lots and lots of lines in the shot, if you look past the two men talking you can see there are lines on the scaffolding  lines on the street lights, lines on the benches and lines on the fence/railing next to the road.  I also really like the contrast its much darker than i would ever want it but i like the effect that brings. 

This is my favorate image from all of my shoots. And i have also found a pattern that links with this image and i will be going in this direction as a theme. When i was coming out of Greggs after buying my lunch i saw an old lady sat by herself and i though this looked interesting and really cute so i took a photo not thinking anything of it. Only did i notice through looking at my negatives that i had captured her image at the perfect time 

when nobody was walking past. This made the image look even more lonely. Another connection i made was that the poster in the background although is an image of a modern younger man says 'wish you were here' which you can't see on this image but you can see on the original picture. I thought this was weirdly fitting. The saying 'wish you were here' just made me instantly think of the 1950's 1960's when people were big on postcard sending and the 'wish you were here' is something that was said a lot on post cards and this tied the whole image together for me. 

Soon i hope to develop another two shoots so i can get miles more enlarging done. 

First attempt at enlarging my street photography.

Fail

This first attempt was literally a complete fail. At first my contact prints came out really well but this was because it was only the light i needed. I didn't need to use the lense in the enlarger to project any image. So at this point as far as i knew the images i would produce would be fine. So then i went on to enlarge some images. The first few came out o looking like i had only focused on one thing in the image so the rest was blurry and disfigured and this wasn't what i wanted to achieve at all, so i chose a different film to enlarge from and then i did a few more these all came out exactly the same. After a while of thinking my shoots were all bad and i couldn't use them i decided to be safe i'd use someone elses enlarger with their lense and see if it came out any clearer. It did and by this point it was too late in the day to do anymore as i needed to catch a train so not only did i waste a hell of a lot of paper enlarging these failed attempts, i also wasted a full day's worth of enlarging. Fair to say i was pretty chewed about this. 

These are the results of that failed day that i have scanned into my iMac. 

 This image doesn't look that bad compared to some of the shots i have but it still is no where near as sharp as i would have liked it too be. 

This was one of the ones i was really unhappy with. As you can you see the edges of this print are really blurred and distorted. The exposure if exactly how i would have had it, the only issue was the fact the lense blurred it. 

 This image was not printed on that day this is a more recent print that i had done at the beginning of this week but as it was a 'failed' print i thought i'd include it. This picture is really clear and sharp the only issue was it was exposed for too long and it really dark. 

 Back to the first failed printing day. This isn't that bad of a photo really it just wasn't exposed for long enough i would have preferred it darker with more contrast. There is also a bit of a blur in the middle of the photo.

 This was one of the prints that i was also really unhappy with. I think this would have been a really good shot if it has come out okay. There is a really bad blur on the left hand side of the image. But one thing i did like in this photo was the contrast. 

Again another blurred image. This is a shot taken from my bedroom window so i wasn't sure whether these would even work that well or not being so far away from the subject of my images, However the shot did turn out okay, well better than the other images. I just looks like the traffic is moving in this shot really due to the blurred edges from the lense.

This surprisingly is a good shot from the failed day. There isn't really any blurring from the lense although it isn't as sharp as i wanted it to be. The only really thing wrong is that i don't like the exposuure i would say it could have done with 5 more seconds.

Although this first attempt at printing went wrong i have recently done a few more and they have gone far better than these ones and i will be posting those shots tomorrow and others days as i do them. 

Prints

Printing so far

I am familiar with using the development method and enlarging images as i have been shooting, printing and developing black and white film photography for the best part of four years now, but it is fair to say my skills do need brushing up as i have been out of the game for several months now. 

The first print i actually did for this project was a contact sheet . A contact sheet is when you place your negatives strips (your film strips) on top of the dark room photographic paper and then seal it in place with glass so it doesn't move (this was something i did not do and you will see later what affect this has on your contact sheet if you do not do this.)

This is the first contact sheet i enlarged. It turned out better than i expected. Being a person who loves high contrast in any black and white photography digital or 35 mm. The contrast in this is exactly what i would want the photo's to look like. This shoot was my first shoot so as you can clearly tell i was quite reserved. My first few shots were from a stationary position. I was sat on a bench with Courtney and just taking photo's of people as they passed and the rest of the shoot was taken from my 4th floor bedroom window. Although it is so obvious how scared i actually was to go out and shoot in peoples face, i do like the use of perspective. It gives a different feel so being on the ground at level hight with the subject. I think it gives the people an ant affect, it's like looking down at lots of ants.

This was the second shoot i took. This shoot is a little more adventurous. I got out of me room finally and went out into Hartlepool whilst on a brake from uni and also Middlesbrough where i lived. It was pretty simple really i didn't venture farther than across the street to the shopping mall they have there. I just observed people whilst working and although the shots aren't right in there faces i got closer to people and it just made me a lot more confident whilst around people. 

The few shots i took in Middlesbrough were just around the shops in the centre i mainly sat on a bench and took photo's of people and also i got quite close too.

Before i mentioned that i didn't use the glass whilst doing a contact sheet and this is one of three i didn't do that with. As you can see the negatives weren't pushed right down so the negatives didn't print as sharp.

This was the third shoot i took. For this one i actually ventured further into Hartlepool again whilst on a brake from uni. I went right through the shopping mall and out the other side and there was an entrance to the mall up a ramp so i sat at the bottom as there was quite a few people walking in and out. This meant i had way more opportunities to get closer shots of a lot more people. Again getting more and more confident all the time. 

This is also again a contact sheet where i did not place glass over it.

This was the fourth shoot i took. This was in pretty much the same location as the last shoot and i again did the same thing. I feel in this shoot i did get quite a lot of closer shots and more interesting shots. The only thing i'd say i'd change would be the fact a lot of the shots if not all are of the side or back of people.

This again was a contact sheet that i did not place glass over. 

Through looking at the shoots i have taken i feel that the direction i have gone in is taking photo's of older people, and i have noticed that my best shots are actually of older people who look lonely. That can sound quite depressing but it actually gives off a great affect with the mood of the photo. 

Now that i know what kind of things i usually pick out in a crowded place maybe it will make me be more observant and find more shots similar to the ones i have already taken. 

I have also done a few enlargements of the negatives which i will upload probably tomorrow evening. 

The direction i am heading in..

Through trial and error in my actual shoots and also through research i have started to discover some kind of a theme. Before i started the project i thought it would be entirely shots of random people, both old and young, in various different location that are not similar and that i would simply just focus on people as a general subject.

I started to notice early on during my first two shoots that i did tend to stand in one place and take numerous shots there and then. I saw instantly that i spotted the more interesting characters out from the vast majority of normal people as i'm sure most street photographers do. 

The kind of consisted of scruffier looking people what we would call 'chavs' in this day and age (for the most part i took these photo's on the sly because these kinds of people are very intimidating in my books. 

The other kinds of people i tend to be drawn towards are the older people.

I have said numerous times before that i believe a face that looks old, full of wrinkles, that looks like its seen a lot in its time tells a better story and gives a better affect in street photography than with people who are young who look pretty and youthful. 

Through looking at the enlargements i have already done i have noticed that the vast majority of my work are really focused in on one subject in the image and the rest of it is kind of blurred. I think this is a good affect and is quite unique but i also want to experiment a little more maybe in the last few shoots i do so i can try and get all in focus, still shots. 

Tony Ray Jones

Tony Ray Jones

Tony Ray Jones was a very famous street photographer. Born in 1886 in Somerset and later dying in London on march the 13th 1972 at the age of 86.

Tony's work to me is something that is very appealing to the eye. I am a fan of street photography as it is i think it captures real life quite literally on the streets but usually this is only captured on the streets and in public buildings not usually in the places in which the vast majority of Tony's work was captured. 

To the left is an example of Tony's work. As you can see it was taken on a beach. I am not exactly sure what beach in particular. 
I really like the idea of street photography taken on a beach. 


This is because instead of capturing everyday life you capture the holiday vibe from the subject. You see people maybe on vacation or on a day out with their family. This to me captures a different outlook on a person simply by changing the location you take photos. 

In the photo you can see 6 older citizens lined up sat in their deck chairs enjoying what looks like either cakes or ice cream there is 5 women and one man, you can see instantly the man in the middle grinning and smiling almost as though he is in the middle of laughing and that was the first thing that caught my  eye, i was instantly drawn to him more so than the women beside him. 

Sunny and warm condition usually make people flock to the beaches for days out or holidays, an example in the present day would be when the weather gets sunny usually around june-august people travel down south to Cornwall etc as the weather in the north is not usually guaranteed to be glorious sunshine in the summer. 
So based upon the assumption i made i can determine a few things about the image. Although the images is in black and white and was taken using a 35 mm camera i can already tell due to the large amount of people in the back ground with sun chairs who are lounging on the beach that the day was very sunny and the beach itself was a busy tourist attraction at the time and that the majority of people one the beach were elderly or family units opposed to single people.

I think using these busy beach areas is a very clever thing Tony did because there is nothing worse as a street photographer than going out to the streets and you find that no one is around and you find nothing to photograph. Noticing the sunny weather and having access to beaches would give you a prime opportunity to capture some great shot and a lot of them due to the vast amount of people being around. So in this case i think using the weather and knowledge of your surrounding areas could and did get good shots of street photography. 

This is another example of Tony's street photography taken on the beach. In this image you can see a family consisting of maybe a mother and 4-5 children. 
As well as the family you can see a bunch of people in the distance sat along the edge of the beach. 
What i like about this image is the way it perfectly captures a family at the beach. 



I can quite relate to this image in many ways and i am almost positive anyone with a family or who is part of a family can relate is they visited the beach often as a child or as a mother/ father with their children. I can remember travelling to Saltburn by the sea, Whitby and Redcar with my mum, dad, sister, auntie and two cousins and after running through the sea in our bathing costumes and playing in the sand we would always have to get cleaned down by our mum's before we were allowed back in the car similar to what is happening in this photo, just to avoid sand getting everywhere in the car. 
Because this image is so relatable to so many people i think this alone will make is far more popular and appealing to the public. 

As well as Tony's work being beach related and showing families enjoying their recreational time his work also had other sides to it this being one of them. 
This could be deemed a quite shocking image and i think it portrays something you don't see very often at all. 
The two kids who are seen in this photo don't look older than 10 or 11. The one holding the gun looks older than the other boy who is besides him but the thing that shocked me was their facial expressions and body language. The boy holding the gun looks to be lunging towards Tony waving the gun right in his face, the boy's face itself looks all screwed up and full of anger. 
The boy next to him does not look affected by whats going on, he's raised his hand to the boy holding the gun but his face looks calm. He doesn't look scared or concerned not even excited or happy he just has a neutral calm expression. 

As well as thinking this photo is shocking there is also a part of me that thinks it isn't real. That it was staged. I'm torn between thinking the gun is real and fake, the gun in the image is blurred so it could be either, also the boy standing next to the boy with the gun is way to clam for that to be real unless he was exposed to this kind of activity all of the time maybe he got mixed in with the wrong crowd.

I think images that can make people question, wonder and to think in-depth into the situation in the photograph are the best images and the photographers that capture images like this are the best photographers.

The three images i have shown are very high in contrast i'd say. The blacks are very black and the whites are very white but it also has a lot of grey tones. I really like high contrast photographs i feel it gives the images a sharper feel and this is something i always use in my digital photography because i almost always convert my digital photography into black and white by de saturating it and adding a high contrast.  

I have shown two very different worlds of Tony Ray Jones photography and both i feel are just as great as the other. He was a great photographer and although he has died he has and still does influence many up and coming photographers of today's photography world. 

Out and about

So today i went on a trip to town and i just thought i might do some street photography. But i realised i had left my 35mm camera at college in my locker so i decided i'd do some anyway using my digital SLR. I've edited four shots that i found interesting from the trip and i wanted to show you all. 
Image one:This image was taken when i was actually sat in the bus station in Middlesbrough escaping the rain whilst waiting for my phone to get repaired. I obviously had my camera on hand so i saw this guy standing against a pillar about 5 feet away from me so i decided to take a quick snap of him i do think he notice though and some other girls noticed but didn't realise that i was way zoomed in and they weren't in the frame that got a bit awkward but i still carried on. I just liked his stance and how he just looked like a guy who had a long day either visiting friends,  visiting relatives, shopping, running errands of whatever you can figure out by looking at him. I just edited this on Photoshop by converting it into black and white and then upping the contrast and brightness. 

Even though i wasn't using a black and white camera i do think street photography looks far better in black and white. I just think it makes you focus on the actual person more than the colours in the surroundings.

Image two:
 This one one of the first images i took. It was just along side my uni halls. Since the start of this project i have really been focusing on older people rather than younger and i think this is because in older people i see more character, I think wrinkles and creases say more about a person than a facial expression would and you more commonly find that in older people than younger people. I chose to photograph this because i think it perfectly represents the youth of today, with the fashion and this is something i haven't found too much of in street photography like my generation hasn't really been photographed that i could find. These two men were walking in front of me, about 2 feet away and it was one of those moments where you act upon it with your instinct and not over thinking the shot, however i am really fond of this shot. I can't really explain why i just like the look of it. I edited this again by just converting it into black and white and then upping the contrast and brightness. 

Image three:

This was another shot from when i was sat in the bus station waiting for my phone to be repaired. This lady had come out of the toilets that are behind her, pushing along her trolly and i don't know why but i just found it really weird that she had a trolly in the bus station let alone in the toilets with her. So again i just with instinct thought it was quirky so i took the shot, i actually took a few shots as you will see from a similar closer shot bellow. I just edited this the way i edited the others by converting it to black and white and then upping the contrast and brightness.

Image four:

Another shot of the old lady coming from the bathroom. I cropped this from a larger photo just so i could focus in more on the old lady. I really like the lighting in this image after the editing i think it had a lot of strong colours and tones. I also like her stance and if you take out the guy in the background i actually think this could look like quite a lonely picture of this lady. I'm not quite sure what she is doing but you can interpret that your own way like the first image i showed. She could be checking a receipt or counting money etc the list could go on, I edited this again in the same way just by converting it into black and white and upping the contrast and brightness.

Summery of the day:

Overall the small shoot i did today i really thought came out good. It shows i think that i am getting a little more confident in the fact i am getting closer and closer to people as i take there photo and i am starting to brush of people looking and commenting a lot more now. Laughing about it is a great help! Also as you may be able to tell i do tend to use the same simple editing technique for this project but i do tend to use this for most other things this is just because i prefer working with a digital camera but in the style of black and white.

Street photographer research

Lee Friedlander:

Lee was born on the 14th of July 1934 and is an American photographer and artist. Lee primarily worked in the 1960's and 1970's using a 35mm camera and producing images on black and white film. 

A lot of Lee's work was taken from the front seat of a car, he also took a lot of shots from the outside of store fronts/cafe windows looking into the window capturing the people on the other side of the glass, and to me these shots were interesting and an eye opener. Originally i thought that street photography had to be you out on the streets capturing life outside of buildings/ public transport and cars.But his shots made me think outside the box and to now look for not only things going on in the streets but what happens in shops and public buildings, it also made me think of using the reflections of people for some shots to see what kind of an affect this would get me.

Here are a few examples:

 This is one of the first images i came across after researching into Lee further. I really liked this image one because he has gone against the normal style of street photography to capture a women in a window but also because she appears to be posing as if she was a Manikin. I also like how you can see reflections of what is behind the photographer in the window. 

This is one of my favorite images out of the few he did from inside his car. I just feel like it is such an unusual photograph to see the car up on top of a pole, i also like after you notice the car and you realise how bizarre it is you then notice the tiny detail in the wing mirror, to me it almost looks like a barren waste land, similar to the deserts around Las Vagas.



The method Lee uses in his photo's which does set him apart from most of the other street photographers is how he incorporates himself in a lot of the shots. Be that by showing his shadow or having himself in the reflection of the mirror/window. I think this is a really effective method because it is almost like making yourself a part of the street photography.

I have a couple examples of this bellow:

This was my favorite self portrait shot Lee did. At first your eye is drawn to his face in the wing mirror and you can tell from the slight glimpse of the camera you get that it is the photographer. Then you pan your eye right and notice the church and the rest of the landscape.

I think compared to the previous self portrait shot this is more of a subtle way of showing his presence in a photograph. He has almost projected his shadow onto the women's back, but not only did he do that he has placed it really well, so that his head lines up with her head and so does his neck only his shadow is a notch lower than her actual body.  

Street photographer research

Bruce Gilden

Bruce Gilden was born in 1946 and is a extremely famous street photographer who is still alive today and is mainly known for his work in New York. The work Bruce creates is very unique. He goes out of his way to make the character of a person stand out in his work and he isn't afraid to be confronted in situations to achieve exactly what he wants from a shot.

The main way he does this is by getting right into the subjects face. As close as he could, catching them of guard. This technique is the main thing i would say that makes these photographs so unique. 
The act of catching someone of guard, shocking them makes them show weird expressions and unusual stances and i think that looks really good in a photo and sets you and your work apart from the normal street photographer. This is something i really want to work towards experimenting with. 
But first I'm going to have to build up my confidence in taking photographs of strangers and just not be scared of what they think or might say. 

Below are two examples of Bruce Gilden's work:
Both of the images were taken by getting really close to the subject/s.

 I really like this shot, i love how the main subject (the old lady) is lit up because of the bright flash being right in her face and the women in the background is slightly darker, so the contrast looks really extreme in both the background and the foreground. The brightness on the old women's face also makes the creases and wrinkles on her face more defined and i also really like that because not only does the expression of the subject portray the character but i believe the wrinkles and creases do that too. I also like how it looks kind of distorted as thought they were trying to move away from the camera when he was taking this shot. 

This is very different from the previous shot but i do like it all the same. The shots Bruce usually takes I'd say are mid shot or from the shoulder and above but i like this one because it's full length and you can see the lady from the top of her head to her shoes. In this photo i think the main way you can get a sense of this women's character is through what she is wearing because she has quite a neutral face and hasn't really got an expression other than the fact she appears to be frowning. I think her stance makes it appear that she was a bit taken back by the fact he took a photo of her as she looks like she has taken the top half of her body backwards.