Shoot 1: Final Edits

First Shoot

I went to Bournemouth, a city I live nearby to take all of my photos. I thought Bournemouth was my best bet as I always see many interesting people there. One of these interesting people I met is Steve, a 34 year old man who, sadly, is homeless. After having a brief conversation with him and introducing myself, he allowed me to take a few photos with him as the subject. 
Pictured right are the original images that I have taken. I am taking a series of two images per person, the first one is of their face, and the second is of their environment. 

The close up of Steve's face was taken at an aperture opening of f/2.8 on my Nikon D5100 with the NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G. I had a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second. 
The second image was taken at an aperture opening of f/5.6, with a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second. 




The edited images:

Here are both my edited shots. All my shoots are going to be in black and white, because I feel images edited like this are much more interesting and emotive. The way I edited these images were as follows: In Picasa 3, I toggled and played around with the lighting and shadows of the images, making them stand out a little more. I then went onto GIMP where I desaturated the image and chose the Luminosity effect, because to me, that seemed like the effect that suited my images the most. 

Below is the contact sheet for my shoot. Out of all the shoots, I chose the images I most liked (which are named DSC_0058 and DSC_0066 in the sheet).

I used some of Aaron Joel Santos' techniques through Reportage photography. I photographed people I found in the streets to create a powerful image which told a story. Although I don't believe my images to be as powerful as they could have been, they are still nonetheless emotive images, such as those of Santos'.

First Artist: Aaron Joel Santos

Aaron Joel Santos is an editorial and documentary photographer living in Hanoi, Vietnam. He is an award winning travel photographer based in Southeast Asia. He is represented by Novus Select in the US and NOI Pictures in Vietnam and Asia. He is also part of the agency roster at Wonderful Machine, a production company with a network of over 700 photographers and video gamers worldwide.
I came across Santos' work when I was looking up images of people's hands for my original idea. Endlessly scrolling through his website looking at all his spectacular images, I came across one he had taken in downtown Yangon, Myanmar (pictured below.) 
When I saw his work I instantly fell in love with his technique and his photographs, and I knew that I wanted to use him as my first inspiration.

I decided that I was going to apply Santos' technique of capturing emotions, like he does so well, in my own pictures. I want my images to be powerful, and Santos' images are exactly that. They tell a story, one which is either created by the viewer or given within the context of the image. This is what I want my images to be: powerful, interesting, and emotive. 

Now, about the image. I emailed Santos and asked him a few questions, which he replied almost instantly. The image is untitled, it shows a mother carrying her child through downtown Yangon,  Myanmar, in the central market of a bustling Asia capital. The area isn't considered rich or poor, it's just downtown city. Western eyes may perceive it as a poor area, but it reflects upon the city as a whole. Santos says "but what better way to show the city than to show its inhabitants as well. They're the fabric that hold everything together." This candid shot shows exactly that, it shows how the inhabitants are what makes this city a city. Santos is representing the life of the subjects, and through this image is trying to emphasise the different lifestyles lived by the people of Myanmar to those we live here, in the West. 

Santos claims he has chosen this image because he likes the child's "wild-eyed amazement" at the world around her. 
 Here is the email Santos sent me, you may have to click to enlarge it. 

Editing Practice

Before going out to shoot some portraits, I wanted to get an idea of how I was going to edit the images in post-production. This was going to help me immensely when shooting, because I was going to have a better idea of how the final images were going to turn out, and thus making it easier for me to snap the perfect image - hopefully minimising my chances of needing a re-shoot!

Before

After

Although it doesn't look like much, I spent quite a while tweaking the small things such as the shadowing on my face, trying to bring out the eyes more (as that is what I am focusing on for this exam), and just generally trying to make the subject stand out and seem more interesting. Although this photo doesn't at all have my desired effect, it is a guideline which will help me edit the shoots I am going to be taking tomorrow. 
I edited this using Picasa 3 and GIMP. In Picasa I toggled the shadows and brightness, and then converted the image the greyscale in GIMP, and tweaked the curves ever so slightly as well.

Guessing One's Emotion

These are my initial shots for my new idea named Eyes and Emotion. The idea behind this is that my audience will have to guess the subject's emotion by looking at just the eyes, and is then revealed the whole picture after having placed a guess. 
Here are some initial shots I have taken to demonstrate my ideas:

My plan is to go to Bournemouth, a town live nearby, and photograph interesting strangers. As these will not be candid shots, I will have to be weary of them faking emotion for the purpose of a photograph. My subjects will be recruited purely through opportunity sampling, as I will only be using strangers I find there and then.

Where will I be going with this? Well, my plan is to produce a series of powerful images of different and interesting people. As I have previously mentioned, I will be photographing people I see whilst I am in the town, and so I am excited to see what interesting faces I will discover, and get an insight as to what my final pieces will look like.

Change of Idea...

Although I rather liked the idea of photographing people's hands and capturing the relationship between their hands and their profession/pastime, I felt the outcome was going to be a bit dull. 
I then thought of a new idea that I really liked, which was capturing the relationship between people's eyes and their emotions.
I am going to be taking portraits of people's faces, drawing out different emotions among my subjects. I will then focus mainly on the eyes, and see if people can guess the emotion behind the eye expression alone. 
I have decided to stick to this idea now as opposed to the one of the hands because I feel it will be a more interactive experience between my images and whoever wishes to see them, because my audience will have to think about what my images are trying to say, rather than what my images are giving away. 

Initial Shots

For my exam unit, I was given the theme of Relationships. I racked my brain for a few hours to come up with an idea I was happy with. I had originally thought of perhaps doing the relationship between dreams and reality, and although I quite liked that idea, I couldn't think of how I was going to represent it. I then thought of doing relationships between people, men and women, adults and children... but this time, I thought it was just going to look a little cheesy. So what did I go for? Well, after being picky with all my ideas, I came up with one I really liked, and I suddenly had loads of ideas as to how I was going to do it. I am doing the relationships between people's work and their hands. 
Let me elaborate - I was planning on photographing people's hands, mainly because hands can be really interesting as well as explain a story of their own. I was thinking of taking pictures of an artist's hands, for example, covered in paint, clay, chalk and what have you. 
I was thinking of doing a series of three images per hands. I have taken some initial shots to demonstrate how I was thinking of doing it, using my mum as a subject.
Here are the original images: