In terms of my second image, I liked this one the most out of the others I took because of the people who walked into the shot. When I took the image I thought to myself "great, people just walked into my shot, that's going to ruin it!" It wasn't until I got home and looked at the images properly that I change my mind completely. I had a great idea as to how I was going to edit the people and make my image even better than it already is.
These images were both taken at an aperture of f/4 and a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second.
The edited images:
I am delighted with the outcome of my images. I think they are very strong and very emotive.
What I like most about this edit is the crop, because although we're instantly drawn to the subject's face, we can see a woman in the background who appears to be staring at him. This can be interpreted as if she was judging him, or pitying him. The crop also emphasised the duct tape that is holding his hat together, which reveals a little bit more about him. Despite not saying a single word to me, I can feel a connection and I feel more understanding towards him.
Here is a cropped version of the edited image. I dislike the face in the background of the first one (the one with the sunglasses) and so I tried to crop that woman out, yet keeping the other woman in - because I feel she gives context to the image. I do however dislike this crop as it removes part of his hat and his beard. Therefore, I'm going to keep the original edit.
Both these images were cropped in Picasa 3, and the brightness and shadows were altered using a toggle. I then used GIMP to convert the images to greyscale and add the Luminosity effect.
However, I further edited my second image by adding motion blur to the people who were walking in front of the camera. This means that not only are we not focusing on them and are drawn more to the man, but it also changes the atmosphere of the image completely. They say nowadays thanks to technology, the world seems a lot faster. The way I see it, the people who have walked into frame are busy people, have work to do, people to see... But then there's my subject, who, judging by the fact he was picking up rubbish and was wearing a hat held together by duct tape, isn't very fortunate in the professional department. It's as if he is static, whilst the world is busy speeding around him.
Here is the contact sheet for my shoot:
I believe I have used Benoit Courti's techniques rather well in these shoots. More so in the first shot than in the second one, I feel as though I got quite intimate with my subject - like Courti does so well. Like his images, my shots raise questions such as who this man is, and what is his story? I am going to use Courti's technique of intimacy in more of my images, because I rather like the outcome of it.
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