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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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