People and Place – Overall Reflection

I have thoroughly enjoyed this unit of work and whilst it has challenged me at times, I feel that I have learned a lot about photography and about the way I approach it.  As a portrait photographer I assumed that I would find People and Place an exciting but fairly easy unit to work through as the subject would be already familiar to me but I was quite wrong about the latter!  When taking portraits for paying customers they have an idea what they would like from the shoot before I even switch on the camera, with a little guidance from me on how to achieve this we get some good results and are both happy.  This balance changes when I am the one who has an end result in mind though, I found it much harder to direct a subject to achieve the end result that I wanted and good results were much harder to come by.

The section I found the most difficult was definitely Assignment 3 – Buildings in Use.  I am so used to photographing people for work and either details, or landscapes for my daily photographs, that to find an angle (figuratively) to capture buildings did not come easily.  It became easier once I had done some research into what architectural photography is and I realised it did not have to be technical and could be very attractive.  The next issue I faced was the realisation that whilst the buildings I had chosen were each beautiful in their way, they became less so when broken down into small pieces to photograph.  Their flaws became more evident and things not noticed when looking at them (for example; pipework, ugly modern ducting, marks on walls) became obvious when photographed.

I feel I have grown a great deal in confidence throughout this unit, not only in how I direct a model but in how I approach photographing everyday life – street photography.  If, for instance, I had approached street photography as an assignment subject early on in the course I don’t believe I would have made the images I did.  Working through, learning about photographing people and gaining confidence by practicing has really helped me to be more confident about photographing a subject I love – people!

One of the main things I need to work on moving forward is the way that I analyse my work.  My tutor pointed out a couple of times that I was often more descriptive than analytical when writing up my assignments.  I am not entirely sure how to correct this although I think that having a clear idea of what I was hoping to achieve, explaining why a certain image is right for the brief and being able to explain if and how an image has worked as well as I planned are all things I should be doing.  At his suggestion I am currently reading Criticising Photographs A Guide to Understanding Images by Terry Barrett to help with this.

The Bench Project

The Young Foundation is a group which, in their words, “is working to create a more equal and just society, where each individual can be fulfilled in their own terms. We work with the public and private sectors and civil society to empower people to lead happier and more meaningful lives.”.  The group was founded originally when the Institute for Community Studies (set up by entrepreneur Michael Young in 1954) was merged with the Mutual Aid Centre in 2005.  It is the creator of over 60 organisations, most with their roots in academic research, social innovation and education, including The Open University.

The Bench Project looks, as its name suggests, at the benches in 3 areas in London focussing on the people who use them and what the benches mean to them.  The tagline for the report is Benches for everyone.  Solitude in public, sociability for free.  The point of the project is to prove that benches are an important part of society and they should not be removed from public areas or replaced with deliberately uncomfortable seating which discourages people from sitting for long periods of time.

At the beginning of the article is a ‘Manifesto for the Good Bench’ with 6 points which lists some of the benefits of benches before going into further detail about each as the report continues.

The first point is a simple one.  A bench is valued because it is public, egalitarian and free.  Anyone can use it, it doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, there is no dress code, you can stop for a moment or for hours, sit in solitude or in company.  The bench doesn’t care what walk of life you come from or for how long you sit, it is there for you.

The next point made is that bench space allows people to loosely belong within the flow of city life.  This is particularly important for people such as migrants, carers or the elderly, who may otherwise feel isolated, as they can sit and watch people pass by and feel a part of their community.  This is especially true of benches placed in busy areas such as parks which people can walk through.  An example given regularly throughout the report is a large group of Nepali women who do not speak English.  They meet daily on the benches in General Gordon Square.  This gathering not only provides them with a meeting place large enough to accommodate them in large numbers but it enables them to people watch and get to know the other people in their locality despite not sharing the same language.

Next the report points out that benches help to support healthy routines for people as they allow them to spend longer outside.  This is most true, I feel, for the elderly and the disabled who, without somewhere to sit and rest or sit and watch, may not be able to venture out far from their homes.  Spending time outside is not only good for physical health but mental health also and time spent on a bench watching the world go by can help alleviate loneliness and (bringing us back to the previous point) give a sense of belonging.

Point 4 tells us that benches are an important social resource as they are a flexible place to spend time at no cost to the user.  Often they are used in the daytime by people and groups who may find it difficult to gather elsewhere.  A home may be too crowded and a cafe too expensive, as well as having restrictions on how long people may sit.  A bench, on the other hand, is free and you are welcome to sit for as long as you wish.  The report mentions that a high number of those who spend long periods of time in 2 of the open spaces they were studying were those who were out of work.  They take along a beer and socialise with friends on the benches rather than in the pubs which may be expensive or, as mentioned in the report, closed down.

The next section mentions the design of benches stating that both the comfort and accessibility of them are basic requirements.  The benches in General Gordon Square are formed from granite and are often criticised for causing “cold bums’ in extended sitters, some of the Nepali ladies will use food packaging or newspapers to help reduce the chill.  In some locations benches are made to be less comfortable to discourage people from spending long stretches of time on them, mainly young people and drinkers whose behaviour could be viewed as antisocial.

Accessibility is important too for a good bench, if they are situated near, or on the way to, shops they will get a lot of traffic and the same is true if placed in a park or open space, particularly if there are other facilities such as play equipment and toilets nearby.  Carers are a group who will often use benches in a park area, it can be somewhere to connect with others or just clear the mind whilst their charges play on the equipment or run in the open space, an arrangement that works well for both parties.

The last point made in the report is that people need to feel safe whilst relaxing and highly visible and frequently used spaces can do this.  Although all 3 of the sites used to provide evidence for the report were identified as places for drinking alcohol or low level drug dealing, the participants of the study rarely mentioned any feeling of fear or annoyance at others.  It is clear that although these kinds of behaviour are seen as antisocial, they do not make others using the open spaces feel threatened.  The fact that these benches are situated in areas used by a large amount of people has much to do with this, that and the presence of park wardens and CCTV cameras!  But it is the movement of people which really makes these places feel safe, there will always be someone passing by or sitting and watching others from their seat on the bench.

In conclusion, benches are seen as a necessity for the health of the city, they provide space for people of all ages and from all social situations to relax, to be outside and to connect with other human beings even if it is just to share a smile or a quick “hello” as they pass.

References:

Click to access The-Bench-Project_single-pages.pdf

More Bench Photography – John Feist

Whilst browsing for potential clients I came across a Street Photography Essay entitled The Bench, My Very Close Friend, by John Feist, on a site called Edge of Humanity.  John is an American photographer based in New Jersey who, after spending years sharing his photographs with family and friends, decided to sell some of his images.  His gallery is mainly filled with albums of scenic images and animals alongside a whimsical album and one full of hot air balloons but the one which grabs my attention is the Urban album.  It is from this album which he compiled his photography essay.

The title of the essay is an interesting one, hinting at the relationship people have with benches.  He clearly feels that a bench is more than just a passing seat to some and this is something that myself (and Geoff Dyer!) both recognise to be true.  To some, I imagine, a bench certainly would be like a very good friend.  Somewhere to rest, somewhere welcoming and steadfast.  A bench will always be there, it doesn’t care what walk of life you are from, how long you sit for, if you are alone or in company… it is there for everyone.

The images in his essay are simple and some stand out to me whereas others look more ordinary.  For me though, the whole point of street photography is that it captures ordinary people doing ordinary things but that life itself is extraordinary. His images all have a relaxed feel and I love the closeness exuded by the people sharing the seats.

Whilst I like his photographs, I do find them to be a little over processed, perhaps he has over sharpened them or added too much contrast?  I am not certain but feel that this gives some of them, particularly the gentleman playing the guitar (bottom) a less natural feel.

Photography Credit – John Feist

These ladies sit upon the bench turned slightly towards each other in a way which upon first glance suggests they are there together or know each other.  As I look at the image further though I notice the space between them and the newspaper laid on the bench.  Are they perhaps strangers or acquaintances drawn to the same spot to look at the spectacular view?  Or friends who arranged to meet with one bringing a newspaper to read whilst she waited?  Whatever the answer, there is a real human warmth to this photograph.

Photography Credit – John Feist

I find this image to be odd and yet superbly shot and composed at the same time.  It raises many questions about the benchee with the main one being to question why they are lying and reading on a bench instead of somewhere more comfortable?  I would guess that they are perhaps on a lunch break and wanted to be outdoors?  Or perhaps are waiting for someone who is late?

Photography Credit – John Feist

What about this gentleman playing his guitar on this bench? Why is he there, practicing outside? He doesn’t appear to be busking, there is no hat or open instrument case by his feet! Could he be waiting for someone? Could he be posing deliberately for the photograph? Could he be sat in remembrance, playing a song to a departed loved one?

The beauty of this kind of photography for me is the questions it raises, we see a snapshot of someone’s life but they could be anyone.  We don’t know why they are there or what they are doing, but we can pick up clues from the images and make guesses.

References:

B&W Street Photography Essay – The Bench, My Very Close Friend #3

http://galleries.johnfeistphotography.com/index

The Client – Initial Thoughts

My only concern with this assignment idea has been how to choose a notional client who would want street photographs of benches so I ran my ideas past my tutor. He was supportive of the idea and suggested I use the ‘Journal of Street Furniture’ as my client. I had assumed this was an actual publication, though I had never heard of it, but managed to find no trace of this or any other magazine featuring benches and other street furniture.  The books and other publications I could find were focussing on the architectural design of interesting benches and installations rather than the people who would be using them and they weren’t right for this assignment.

One choice I have is to make up the client, I like the idea of a publication about street furniture though I suspect any such magazine may focus more on design than use, as I mentioned above.  The brief could, I suppose, be to produce images for a featured article on how the street furniture is used in a market town?  Or to provide images of benches in a small town to contrast with another photographer’s images showing how benches are utilised in a busy city?

Thinking along these lines made me wonder whether there were any magazines about street photography and a google search later I found an online publication called Street Photography Magazine.  Without subscribing to the magazine and purchasing past issues I can’t see all that they offer but there are articles I can view which give me an idea of the flavour of the publication.

The articles have names like ‘How I Found my Voice’ and ‘Train Runners’ and I get the impression they are a mixture of advice articles and features showcasing different artist’s work.  They have a section which features a different street photographer each week and I thought this could be a direction I choose for my brief.  The client could ask me to provide a selection of images showing some of the character of a Market town through the people using the benches?

With further thought, however, I am not certain this idea would fulfil the brief of the assignment, which is to take a specific kind of image as requested by a client.  The featured photographer section, and articles such as the other ones I could read, would be more about my creative vision than a request for specific images.

Other publications I found, British Journal of Photography, Inspired Eye Street Photography Magazine and iN-Public to name a few, also seem to showcase the artist and their vision.  The articles seem to be about the photographers and the images they make rather than about a subject which requires photographs to illustrate it.

So after all my musings I think I will probably use a fictional client, such as The Journal of Street Photography, to set the brief for the photographs I am taking.

 

Street Photography – Benches

Over the last few moths, since this subject first occurred to me, I have looked for photographers who have an interest in capturing people using benches.  The first I came across is a blog, Observing the Ordinary – Street Photography, belonging to an amateur photographer in Scotland who likes to take photographs of the people in and around the town where he lives.  On his blog there is a section entitled ‘Benches‘ which contains a selection of mainly monochrome photographs of people using different benches, some of these images are candid shots whereas in others there is clearly some interaction between the photographer and his subjects.  There is no explanation with the images, they are left to speak for themselves and for the viewer to draw their own conclusions about the people in them.

The images are taken from varying angles and distance and depict people doing the most ordinary of things, taking a rest to read, chat, smoke, eat or just stop.  And yet all of these people are extraordinary, all individual, and in these photographs a little snippet of their lives has been captured.  One image I particularly like shows two older men (the photographer states in his ‘about’ that he prefers to photograph older people) who are sat on either end of a bench with their walking sticks in front of them.  There is a large gap between then which suggests they do not know each other and the fact that one is large and one much smaller makes a great contrast.  However, their matching expressions, the way they hold their sticks and even the hats on their heads mirror each other as if they had been asked to pose that way, though I get the feeling they are merely united in their curiosity about the man in front of them with the camera.

Photo Credit https://davebobstreetphotography.wordpress.com/benches/

I read in his blog that he sometimes asks permission to capture people and he seems to have a different photographic style for these images compared to those he takes candidly. When his subjects are being photographed willingly, not only are they engaging with the camera by smiling but they appear to be looking up at the camera whereas in the candid shots there are more which are taken at a much lower angle.  I assume this is because the candid shots were likely taken from further away, and possibly also with the photographer crouching, and this distance gives a different focal angle.

I really like the work of this photographer, his images have a very organic feel to them, the people and situations in them seem real, even in photographs where people are clowning around for the camera, and they have not been heavily processed post-production.  The photographs retain the raw feeling of street photography but are of a high standard, he clearly has a keen eye for interesting situations!

Another blog I came across is by a retired person with an interest in street photography who took a series of photographs called ‘Who Was on The Bench’ in their local town.  It began by accident when they took a photograph of a woman in a red top who caught their eye and once the image was uploaded to Flickr they received lots of positive comments.  This then led them to take regular photographs of the bench as a kind of social documentary.  The images are all taken from similar angles and whilst they are not as striking as other bench photographs, they still document the little snatches of life which make street photography so interesting.

The bench which is being revisited is a long and slightly curved seat which, on a Wednesday, has a Market pitched around it.  Many of the people using it are elderly people who come into the main town by bus to visit the Market and the wonderful thing about these images is the way the sitters interact, or don’t, with each other.  Some are clearly sitting together whereas others seem to be sat in their own little groups of one.  One of these photographs (which I was unable to copy for my log) particularly stood out to me in which the bench is full of older people, a couple of men sit next to each other, though not interacting, and there is a group of 3 in the middle talking.  In juxtaposition to this, a young man sits on the far edge of the bench.  Clearly by himself, he looks into the far distance with his phone held up, ignored, in his hand.  The difference in the generations is interesting, the older one in groups, interacting with each other, and the young man lounging, though looking slightly uncomfortable, with only his phone for company as he seemingly pauses mid-text.  How much does this tell us about the youth of today?  What does it say about our progression as humans?  Rewind time so the elderly people are young again and I imagine they would still be sat in their groups chatting, reading their paper, having a smoke, not much has changed in the intervening years other than the wrinkles on their faces and the colour of the hair on their heads.

As I mentioned before, I don’t find these images as striking as other bench photographs I’ve seen and upon reflection I think its because so many of them have been taken in colour.  For me, street photography works best in monochrome.  Removing the colour from an image takes focus away from bright objects which could distract from the people in the frame and, after all, people are the reason street photographers do what they do!  In black and white the people become the centre of any photograph, the interest and story lays in their interactions with their surroundings, other people and even the photographer.  Black and white images have a gritty and real feel about them which just works for street photography and whilst in general I don’t agree with the old thought that colour film (or photography) is not as good as monochrome, when it comes to this genre, I do.

Along the same vein of this photographer is a set taken over the space of four years by Ukrainian photographer Eugene Kotenko entitled ‘Bench’.  Though the page I have linked to is written in Ukrainian (I presume), I originally found out about this artist on this site which explains a little about his work.  The Ukranian site, however, shows more of his images and they give a fascinating insight into the different types of people who use this one bench and the different ways in which they utilise it.

From the angle the images are all taken, looking down and across at the bench, I would say they have been taken from and upstairs window or some other elevated position which overlooks the bench.  The ground is scrubby and bare and the bench in a poor state of repair, it is repainted more than once in the photographs and has been repaired clumsily.  In the background is what appears to be some kind of sandpit which suggests it is a public play area perhaps although it seems to be more a hangout for local youth and ‘down-and-outs’ than a playground.  The set of pictures also suggest it is situated in an area with heavy pedestrian traffic, perhaps a thoroughfare from a local town to a housing estate?  There is an image where someone is sleeping on the bench (and then on the ground in front of it as though he has rolled off whilst drunk), there are smarter people who could have stopped for a rest on the way home, older folk, youngsters, lovers and a rather dubious looking image where a man is standing in front of, and straddling, a seated woman.

All of Kotenko’s images are in colour and in this case I am going to completely contradict my earlier comments as I feel they work very well in this medium!  I think that the general bleakness of the area and the deprived feel of the images gives them the grittiness which often comes with monochrome shots and the lack of scenery and dull colours in the background means you are not distracted from the people at all.

What I really love about these images though is that they bring me back to the feeling I got from reading Geoff Dyer’s comments about benches in The Ongoing Moment, that a bench is a constant in a changing world, it can be many things to many people though it is unchanging in itself.  It remains rooted in place whilst the world comes and goes around it, sometimes it is in use, sometimes not, it can be a seat, a bed, a table, a platform, a gathering place.  It is a stage on which people perform small pieces of their lives and when they move on, it remains unchanged waiting for the next players, it is a friend to everyone.

Photo credit -Eugene Kotenko – ‘Bench’

Photo credit -Eugene Kotenko – ‘Bench’

Photo credit -Eugene Kotenko – ‘Bench’

References and Links:

 

https://davebobstreetphotography.wordpress.com/benches/

https://davebobstreetphotography.wordpress.com

http://sasastro.co.uk/categories/albums/albums/who-was-on-the-bench/

Photographer Documents Four Years in the Life of One Park Bench

http://journal.foto.ua/gallery/fotoprekt-zheni-kotenko-lavochka.html

Photographing Railway Stations

Before taking my trip to Liverpool Street Station to capture some images for my assignment I decided to see if I could find some examples of images taken by others but did not expect they would be so difficult to find!  There were plenty of railway enthusiast websites but there were not really many images of stations and those that there were didn’t tend to be well shot or include many people.  There were also plenty of images which came up when I googled ‘railway photography’ but I really wanted to look at a set of photographs by the same photographer to see how they went about capturing the personality of the space.

I firstly came across a man, David Brewer from Lancashire, who has photographed every single railway station in the UK but I could not find many examples online of his work.  The ones I did see were featured images in news articles about him and whilst they were nice photographs, there was only one of each place and so they didn’t really capture the spirit of the stations or the people using them.

I returned to the work of Jill Tate and the fantastic images she took of London Bridge Station.  The first time I looked at these, whilst researching architectural photography, I loved the way she captured the stations and particularly her focus on the signs and the blurred moving trains and these are things I would like to include in my assignment photographs.  Looking at them again I still love them but even in the shots with trains, the station seems devoid of people.  In the images containing people they are rendered quite anonymous either through motion blur or the fact they are walking away from the camera.

Upon further research I found another architectural photographer, Jim Stephenson, who has taken some photographs of Reading Train Station.  This station was undergoing a large refurbishment and Jim had taken some images partway through this to show the progress which had been made so far.  Although a very different station to the one I intended photographing there is still plenty I can draw from his images.  The people in them are small and often silhouetted against bright windows or backgrounds.  They are captured waiting, leaning against walls, looking through windows and even standing on escalators waiting to reach the top.  He has also used motion blur in a couple of images which makes the station feel busy without overpowering the image or taking the focus away from the building itself.

One image I particularly liked was taken with a slow shutter speed and most of the people in the image are unrecognisable due to blur but there are a couple of people looking out the window who must have been stood fairly still.  This is a very effective shot because it shows both sides of the station, the busyness as people pass through and also the static nature of it as people wait.

References

David Brewer – BBC News

Jill Tate – London Bridge Station

Jim Stephenson – Reading Train Station

Susan Sontag – On Photography

One thing I noticed very quickly whilst reading this book is that much of it could have been written today and as I went through it I had to keep reminding myself that it was written in the 1970’s.  For example, within the first few pages of the book the phrase “Photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made… that fun was had.”  Sontag is discussing how the camera was becoming more accessible and how for the first time people were travelling more and able to take photographs of where they had been.  In today’s modern world of camera phones, Facebook and Instagram this is even more true.  We take snapshots of ourselves, our children, our homes, where we travel and the lives we live all of the time and then upload these images to social media to show our friends and peers just how much fun we are having.

Further down the same page Sontag comments that photographs have not only become a way of certifying an experience but also a way of refusing it.   We do this by limiting the things we do to a search for something photogenic, looking for a photographic souvenir rather than experiencing the places we go.  In this way, she says, “Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.”, we take a photograph and then move on to the next interesting thing without always fully absorbing what we went to see in the first place.  It is almost as if we experience our travels through the photographs we have taken rather than from the places themselves.

Much further in the book she mentions that “The destiny of photography has taken it far beyond the role to which it was originally though to be limited: to give more actuate reports on reality…. Photography is the reality;the real object is often experienced as a letdown.”.  This statement is another which is still very much true today, the media shows us images upon images, each touched up and perfect.  The Pyramids of Giza are photographed from an angle which suggests they are in the middle of the dessert rather than surrounded by civilisation.  Images of models and film stars are printed in magazines, perfectly styled with flawless skin and yet in the flesh they have the same imperfections as the rest of us.  In this way were are often disillusioned when we meet our heroes or visit places we’ve always dreamed of.

She speaks of photographs as being something which we can consume, an idea I had not thought of before but in today’s media fuelled world this is also far truer today!  Everywhere we look there are images, billboards, newspapers, magazines, advertising displays, even our own walls are plastered with photographs of our travels, our children, our pets and other things we enjoy looking at.  Sontag writes “that a society becomes “modern” when one of its chief activities is producing and consuming images,… are themselves coveted substitutes for firsthand experience become indispensable to the health of the economy, the stability of the polity and the pursuit of private happiness.”.  The demand for images in today’s 21st Century world is higher than ever before with the accessibility of the internet and people’s obsession with sharing every detail of their lives on social media, how would our society fare in a world without photography?  Essentially photographs are experience captured in an image, an image which we then share with others.  Look at me, look at the fun I’m having, look at how good my life is… how would we know we were happy without documenting it all?

Susan Sontag regularly discusses whether photography should be seen as an art form throughout this book and there are many who would say that it is not as it is merely capturing reality.  Sontag argues that “photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are.”.  Note my comments above regarding the Egyptian Pyramids, a photograph taken from one side shows them in the dessert but take an aerial shot or shoot from the other side and the view is very different.  The photographer is the artist and they have chosen which side of the landscape to capture and therefore it is not reality which is documented but the artists interpretation of it.  With the modern accessibility of photo editing software, simple apps for adding filters or adjusting levels for instance, I feel that photography is more art today than ever before.

Again and again as I read through the book the themes came back to the way in which photography was shaping lives rather than just documenting them.  Sontag writes that ‘essentially the camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.”.  This is very much true of our lives today and the way we share our images.  We visit a landmark, we take a selfie.  We go out for dinner?  A selfie, a photo of our dinner or our friends.  A simple walk?  Again, the camera is our companion.  And what do we do with these images?  We share them, we say “look at what I’m doing” and we look back at them to remember the fun we had.

A lot of time is also given over to questioning the camera as a way of preserving history, after all, the moment we release the shutter to capture our group of friends or a certain moment of our day is the only moment where that scene exists outside of our camera.  The group of friends disband, the moment passes and we are left with an image as a souvenir to remind us of that second in our history.  Sontag argues that these photographs are “only a fragment, and with the passage of time its moorings come unstuck”.  She is referring to photographs taken as a way to preserve history and how rehabilitating old photographs into books had become a major industry at the time she wrote.  Some were uncaptioned, as if the photographs themselves were the quotations, whereas others would be accompanied by long inscriptions telling us more about the images.  In some instances, for example Micael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip (1973), photographs were put together with quotations from old local newspapers, records and fiction from the Midwest to create a piece showing how people lived.  Sontag writes about how the quotes were separate from the images and yet they all wove together to tell a story, the book was adapted into a docudrama interspersing colour shots of modern life in 1999.

Another subject which she touches on is our habit of photographing the ugly as well as the beautiful.  Not that we would set out to photograph something that was ugly but that we would try to capture reality as we see it.  Photographs of beautiful objects and people are a pleasure to look at but when you capture the ordinary or the grotesque there is an element of fascination and we want to look and to find out more.  She states that “the camera’s ability to transform reality into something beautiful derives from its relative weakness as a means of conveying truth.”.  This ties in with what she states earlier in the book regarding photography as art and though the camera itself can only capture the reality placed in front of its lens, it is down to the photographer (or artist) what that reality will be.

Interestingly she comments that “the line between amateur and professional… harder to draw with photography than it is with painting”.  A painter needs skill to produce a piece of art whereas a photographer just needs equipment.  Is this really true though?  There will be amateurs who will capture an amazing photograph using a point-and-shoot method of photography, who will take so many images there will be one or two amazing ones!  But to  be able to compose and take a great image is a skill by itself, to do so deliberately rather than using a “machine gun” method is where, for me, that distinction lies.  With the advent of digital photography though, taking a great photograph has become more accessible to the everyday person-on-the-street.  You can take as many exposures as your memory card and battery will allow in order to get that perfect shot!  No longer do you need to worry about wasting film, or money on developing images – they are right there in front of you instantly.

All in all I found this a very interesting book to read and, as mentioned at the beginning, so much of what Sontag was saying 40 years ago is even more true today than it was then.   The book possibly raises more questions than it answers though, or at the very least it answers them ambiguously.  Is photography art?  Well yes, I think it can be though not all photography is.  Perhaps though, all photographs can be if they are displayed in the right way.  Why do we capture so much of our daily lives?  Is it to remember? For art?  Or just because we have the technology at our fingertips and we can..?

 

What is Architectural Photography?

When I think of architectural photography I imagine lifeless grey images of tall steel and glass structures, of bridges, of houses, of museums and banks and every kind of building and structure you can think of.  In my mind these photographs are accurate and functional, a visual aid to whoever took or commissioned them.

With these expectations in mind I was greatly pleased to see an array of beautiful images appear when I googled Architectural Photography!  Gorgeous lighting, interesting angles, lots of post-shooting processing and not a technical looking photograph in sight.  The results of my search then led me on to wonder what the purpose of this kind of photography actually is, certainly not that which I thought of in my mundane imaginings.

According to a blog I found, Architectural Photographer Arizona, it is stated that “To truly understand what is architectural photography, it is important to know how it is defined.” and the definition seems to be that it is the photographing of structures and buildings in both an accurate and aesthetically pleasing way.  This is not just the point and shoot method of capturing interesting architecture employed by tourists though, these photographs try and show the life pulse of the building making use of light, surroundings and interesting angles to do so.

With a little further research I found out that the first permanent photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras by Nicéphore Niépce, was a photograph of buildings so technically it was also the first architectural photograph and by the 1860’s, architectural photography was beginning to be accepted as an established branch of photography.

The appeal of photographing buildings must surely stem from both a desire to capture beautiful and historical structures and the fact they are always there to return to.  It is far easier and more fruitful to wait for the right light or the right weather when photographing a building than when trying to capture people and if using a slow shutter speed to capture a building at night or in dull weather, it does not move or create a blur.  I imagine it to be a very well planned and considered type of photography with little room for the spontaneity of photographing people who, regardless of any amount of planning beforehand, are changeable.

As the years have passed and buildings evolved, so has the type of photography used to capture them.  My google search showed me an array of photographs with bold diagonal lines making use of shadows as much as light.  Many of the images seem to be taken from ground level rather than eye level giving the images fantastic perspective with the buildings narrowing to a point in the top of the frame.

An architectural photographer my tutor suggested I look at is Jill Tate.  When I first clicked onto her site I was expecting to see interesting photographs of buildings but her photographs are more of the spaces created and occupied by buildings.  It was this that prompted me to look a little deeper into what architectural photography is.  My particular favourites are an image of what looks like a shed roof with a modern looking metal arch behind it, a photograph of a butterfly settled in front of some steps and the photographs she took of London Bridge Station.

The images of the train station show it from a passenger’s viewpoint and are similar to what I was hoping to capture on Liverpool Street Station for an earlier exercise and many of the shots she has taken were very similar to ones I took (though far better!).  I particularly like the image of the station sign with a blurred train just passing out of the photograph and the images of the waiting seats where the rest of the image is out of focus.  I feel in these images she has treated photographing the Station in the same way I would approach photographing an event.  She has captured the details, the bits and pieces that everyone sees but doesn’t necessarily notice.  The seats and the signs are the table centrepieces and decorations, the trains are the dancers and the people are the partygoers.

Looking through this work and the images I found on google has helped me to see that photographing buildings does not have to result in dully shot, straight frame photographs.  That a photograph can give an impression of the space or building it is of, such as the butterfly in front of the out-of-focus steps or the railway waiting seats, without capturing the details of the architecture itself.  It has shown me that some of the photographs I have taken for the upcoming assignment are perfect to use whereas before I was wary because of the people in them or the lack of focus on the rooms themselves.

To me it seems that architectural photography is more about giving life to these inanimate structures and spaces than it is about documenting walls, roofs and supports.  With this in mind I feel much happier about what I want to achieve moving forward into the assignment.

References

http://www.jilltate.com

http://architecturalphotographeraz.com/general-photography-info/what-is-architectural-photography/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_photography

Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer whose images of global industrial landscapes are included in the collections of over 60 major museums around the world.  He was originally inspired by the General Motors plant in his hometown and his photographs aim to show the impact we humans have on the world around us.

On his website he states that “these images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence…”.  I think by this he means the contradiction between our concern for the planet we live on and our desire for things, the production and manufacture of which is destroying large swathes of land.

The series of photographs I have been looking at are called China.  These images are concentrating on the industry in China, coal and steel, shipbuilding, large scale residential buildings for workers relocate for employment in the manufacturing industries, the building of the Three Gorges Dam and even the recycling of e-waste.

What struck me immediately was the sheer scale of these images, particularly in the photographs of the Three Gorges Dam project.  Huge areas of land are reduced to rubble as far as the eye can see and the humans in the photographs give scale to this grey and broken landscape.  They are similar to the images I see on the news of war torn Syria only with far more devastation, in the first few photographs not a thing is left standing other than a scrubby looking tree.

As we move through the photographs we begin to see the half demolished buildings, one in particular caught my eye as there is the large wall of a building leaning precariously as if the photographer has caught it mid-fall.  In the background there are bridges and buildings sitting intact on a hill in severe juxtaposition to the foreground of the image.  The last images of this section show a far more organised and mechanical landscape with concrete, heavy metal structures and huge cranes but to me they show a different kind of devastation as not a scrap of anything green or natural can be seen.

Then we begin to look through some pictures of old factories, huge empty and rusting carcasses which have been abandoned in favour of newer and more modern manufacturing plants.  One of these photographs in particular catches my attention, photograph number 9.  If you were to look at the top half of the image in isolation you would see the ceiling of a large and bright warehouse, the structures and what look like power cables are all intact and the double windows are all opened at almost matching angles all the way down the building.  When you look to the floor however, it is impossible to tell just what this building had been used for, there are large square holes in the ground and what look like metal square structures running down the centre.  There is a little rubble along the edges of the floor and what looks like a lot of dust – it is clearly unused.  The caption tells us this was an aluminium smelter but it is very difficult to get an idea from the photograph of what work was carried out here.

The next photographs of e-recylcing, depicting old circuit boards and disused technological items, are far more disturbing in their way, however, not just for how the landscape has been changed but how it affects the people making a living from it.  In one image, Portrait of a Woman in Blue, we see an elderly lady in an apron perched on a chair or box in the porch of a ramshackle looking house.  I assume it is a home as there is an umbrella hung outside the rotten looking wooden door next to a bright red banner with golden writing on it which is at odds with the crumbling concrete and bad brickwork of the building.  Behind her is a pile of old circuit boards and a couple of drums and wire baskets, there is also a hammer and crowbar lying on the floor which suggest she is working on or with the dead electronic parts.  Burtynsky tells us that “e-waste is hazardous and its processing is a high-risk endeavour even in state-of-the-art facilities.”.  He goes on to explain that in China it is not yet a refined industry, in the main, and that workers use basic tools and their bare hands to pick apart the old computers and salvage the components from them.  This exposes both them and the environment around them to toxic elements like lead, mercury and cadmium.  Having never really considered what happens to defunct electronics I found it shocking to see the stacks of circuit boards and sea of plastic toy parts spoiling the landscape and more so seeing the elderly lady who I assume spends her days picking through this debris to keep herself living in these awful looking conditions.

Next we move onto some photographs taken inside the factories and in Manufacturing Number 17, taken in a Chicken Processing Plant, the workers standing in their rows in pink coveralls with hoods and blue aprons remind me of birds in a warehouse themselves, though more organised and less crowded than a chicken or turkey farm would be.  Even with the clean looking workspace and the organisation of it all it does not look like a pleasant place to work and the parallels between the people working and the farming of the birds they are chopping up is striking.  The next few photographs also show how organised the Chinese are with their manufacturing processes, the yellow buildings with the people dressed in yellow standing outside, the people working in their cubicles which look like little cages or sitting in organised rows eating their meals.  To me the people in these images are reminiscent of prisoners and give the impression that the industry is not a happy one to work in.

Next come the photographs of the shipyards, more similar to the scenes of devastation and abandonment in the earlier photographs than the cleanliness and organisation of the manufacturing plants but with more hope as in these images we can see that creation is under progress in the shape of the large ship carcasses amongst the greys and oranges of the metal and concrete.  Despite the size of the structures, I don’t get the impression that the shipyards are quite the blight on the landscape as the abandoned warehouses or even the steelworks depicted in the next images, tubes of rusty metal crisscrossing each other as far as the eye can see or the piles of coal which follow.

Lastly there are some images entitled Urban Renewal.  The first of these images shows streets and streets of domestic dwellings moving into the distance towards their shiny new-looking skyscraper neighbours in the background.  One photograph, Urban Renewal 11, shows a wall which looks like it is the last remaining piece of a house.  It sits in a sea of rubble, the ground littered with rubbish bags and debris and behind it a shiny new skyscraper takes up the entire background and rises up out of sight.  It is unclear why this wall has been left standing but signs of habitation, in the form of a clean, well maintained bicycle and washing hanging on a pole to dry make me wonder if there is someone refusing to leave, clinging on to the last vestiges of their former home.

We finish with one photograph showing a shining sea of skyscrapers and another looking down to the base of a few towering apartment blocks with tiny ant-like people scurrying about.  The scale of the first one, with just a handful of small houses in the centre, illustrates exactly how much the landscape has changed with this renewal, beautiful in its own way but a kind of devastation nonetheless.

 

Taking Great Photographs of People

I’ve just read a book called Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs of People by Henry Carroll, it was recommended to me by the ringside photographer I met at the wrestling at the weekend.  It is a simple looking book on the cover and boasts itself as being a ‘straight-talking introduction to photographing people’.

It is not a book filled with jargon or a glut of information but I did find it both interesting and useful and whilst it didn’t teach me anything new, it confirmed that some of my own instincts about photographing people were good.  The layout is simple, a photograph on one page and some information about it and why it is good/follows rules/doesn’t follow rules/etc on the other.  Every few pages, at the end of what could loosely be described as a chapter, there will be what the author calls a Technical Tangent where he explains things such as aperture, ISO, shutter speeds and basic lighting set ups.

Something I have realised whilst taking portraits for this section of the course is that I don’t always show the subject’s face, sometimes they will have their back to me and sometimes they will be out of focus.  This clearly goes against the ‘rules’ of portrait photography but Henry Carroll says in this book “Don’t let your preconceptions about portraiture interfere with what your instincts are telling you.”  He goes on to say that composition does not need to prioritise your subject’s face, he says to examine the other things about them, little details that make them who they are.

In his section about context he used a photograph by Donovan Wylie entitled My Uncle’s Home.  In the photograph you can see a table in the foreground set with cutlery, salt, pepper and a jar of Coleman’s mustard.  In the background, almost as an afterthought, you can see a blurred man, presumably Donovan’s Uncle, pottering around in another room, he looks to have a plate in his hand.  Although the man himself is not in focus this image tells us more about him, his routines and his lifestyle than a traditional portrait would.  This kind of composition made me think of the photograph of the boy working on the market I took where he was not in focus but the stall around him was.

Further along in the book the author talks more about getting to know the subject through what they surround themselves with although this time the subject has left the frame altogether. He uses a photograph by Will Steacy called Mike Vitez’s Desk 11:14pm to illustrate his point.  He says that many of Steacy’s more intimate portraits do not feature their human subjects at all and that leaves us, the viewer, to think more about them and the space they usually occupy.

In a photograph called The Divers, Paris by George Hoyningen-Huene both subjects are looking away from the camera, Carroll feels that this gives the photograph an atmosphere and draws the viewer further into the image as if they are trying to see what the subjects are gazing at.  I have taken several photographs of people’s backs recently and when taking candid shots and I feel it is something that works well.  With the boy on his skateboard we see the pathway curving away in front of him and vanishing to a point in the far distance and there is space around him in the frame which highlights the space he has in which to skate with little fear of knocking into people.  With the old man on the market it is his body language which tells his story and we don’t need to see his face to understand what tasks he is about or even how he might feel about them, his slightly slumped shoulders and grip on his bag tell us instead.

Carroll talks about there being rules in portraiture about how your subject should stand and what they should do with their hands, etc and these are the things that I would say makes a ‘standard’ portrait.  Your school photos or, as Carroll says, corporate headshots. He says these rules are fine for that kind of photography but no so good for capturing people as they tend to remove personality from the subject.  Something I like to do when I am photographing families, or even dancers, is to take some of them in more candid poses.  This is obviously harder to do in a studio environment than it is on the street, so to speak, but it is still possible.  I try and relax children, make them laugh a little, pull a silly face and generally be themselves.  With the dancers I will do their formal shots, the ones in their dance poses and the school-photoesque headshot and then when they have their group photographs done I ask them to relax and do something silly with their friends.  These are the photographs that I often sell the most of, particularly with the older girls.  This kind of photograph, like the one below of my children, will always be my favourites as they show who the children are, or who they were at that stage of their lives, in a way that a standard posed portrait never will.

Selfies are the next thing that comes under Carroll’s microscope, he says that “Really, the only subject you can have complete control over is yourself” and he is right.  Even with the most carefully constructed photoshoot there is always a chance you won’t capture the image you want, this may be uncooperative subjects (which often happens with small children, and teenagers!) or just simply them not quite understanding how to portray exactly what you wish to capture.  When you photograph yourself you can tell whatever story you want and portray yourself in any way you choose, Carroll likens it to being a puppet on a stage which you can control and make it say exactly what you want it to.  I personally find selfies quite an odd thing, though I do enjoy taking silly ones with my children – as I am almost always behind the camera these may well be the only photographs I have where I’m with them.  I don’t personally like photographs of myself, particularly ones I’ve taken, but I understand that people who take and post multiple self-portraits on social media are trying to show the world that they are happy/sad/excited/doing exciting things.  They are being their own puppets and putting on a show of how they want other people to perceive them.

Camera psychology is not something I’d really thought about before but in one of the technical tangents in this book, the author talks about how photographing people is a psychological game and how your choice of camera affects both your behaviour and that of your subjects.  He says that people don’t seem to care too much if you are using a camera phone, for instance, this is so common these days and people don’t tend to think you are a serious photographer if you are using one.  This is not always true, he gives the example of a photojournalist named Benjamin Lowry who photographed conflicts in the Middle East using a phone camera, this would have allowed him a freedom to move about and blend into the background that a bigger camera would not.  There is much less contrast between my DSLR with its zoom lens and with its prime lens but the difference is still there, with the smaller prime lens I found it much easier to blend in despite needing to be closer to my subjects, with a big zoom lens on people would notice me far more and wonder about what I was doing, I guess I looked more like a ‘serious’ photographer!

Another thing mentioned is how important it is to be ready and waiting, think about what you want to photograph and then set yourself up in a spot and wait for the action to come to you.  This is something that will work well if I go forward with photographing people on benches later in the course, I plan to set myself up across the road from my chosen bench and almost stalk it, waiting for just the right subjects to sit down, use it and interact with each other.  Being ready in advance gives you the advantage of being less noticeable than if you arrive and suddenly start taking photographs and there are many interesting places you could lurk to capture good images.  Carroll gives the examples of stairways, billboards, street corners, etc but if you know your locality then there will be other places you know of, steps outside a town hall, the bus station, certain shops or landmarks.

One of the other things Carroll talks about in the book is whether to shoot in black and white or colour.  Most people tend to shoot in colour as this is the default their camera is set to, they will try to use colour rather than form to compose their shots and this may not always work.  If you think your image would look better in black and white then converting an image to monochrome in post production is an option but this doesn’t always give you the results you are looking for, something I have explored previously here.  If you go out shooting with the aim of producing black and white images then it is probably best to change your shooting mode to monochrome although Carroll suggests shooting in RAW and converting the image later.  Shooting in RAW would give you more control over how you convert to monochrome.

Black and white can give a more gritty or arty feel to a subject but colour photography also has its place.  When going through the photographs I’ve taken for this section of the course I have made the decision for each image whether to leave it in colour or convert it to monochrome.  Some images worked really well in black and white whereas in others, it was the pops of colour – the old man’s jacket, the stripes on the market stalls, the bright fruit and vegetables – that made the photograph good to look at.

All in all I think its a very useful book, if you are new to photographing people it will teach you a fair bit and if you are more experienced, well, there’s still plenty to learn and the way it is written, in little bitesized chunks, makes it a great book to dip into if you want to check something or are looking for inspiration.