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Driving Question
How does the element of people add or subtract from the emotional impact of an image?
Project Proposal
For most of this semester, in photography, I have focused shooting buildings and objects. When recently we were assigned portraits, I groaned. I had no interest in shooting people at all. But as I explored the assignment, and shot more and more images with people, I began to see something new in my photos. There was an energy, or life, to them. It’s not that my other photos didn’t feel “alive”. It’s just that these were something different and it surprised me. Because of this, for my inquiry project, I will be exploring environments both with and without the human element to see what it adds and, possibly at times, subtracts from the emotional impact of the images.
Inspiration photos
Andrew Warner Analysis
The photo series that I pulled from was his places without faces series, it was taken in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before the pandemic Warner was fashion photographer, but when the pandemic hit all of his booking canceled so he decided to start experimenting with urban photography.
The feeling of emptiness and abandonment are very prominent in this series especially because it was shot in NYC which is a place that is known to be very lively and full of people.
Lines - In the image there are lines that start from the foreground in the images and lead to the background.
Space - there is space right down the center of the image.
Color - although color doesn’t play a huge role in the images I feel like it is still important because without color you wouldn’t be able to see the gorgeous sun rise.
Composition - foreground, middleground, background.
Estimates: Lighting: early morning, aperture: 18-22, Shutter speed: 2 seconds, ISO: 100, white balance: warm tint.
The sharpest/ clearest parts of the image is the edge of the roof and corners of the building. The highlights of the images are on the top of the building by the roof and the shadows are towards the bottom of the building by the trees and street. The dominant leading lines in the images are the brickwork that helps show the division of floors on the outside of the building and the cross walks. In this images there is a lot of repetition most of the windows are mirrored on both sides same with the fire escapes and the architectural design. I would say that the windows help add organic geometric shapes that hey also reflect the light which helps to add blue accents to the building. If I were to reach out and touch the image I would imagine that it would feel somewhat rough. In this images there is contrast between the sky and the road but on the building the contrast is a bit lighter. When it comes to color in the images I feel like it plays a big roll because the orange bricks help to make the building the center of attention, the trees help to mix up the color pallet while also being complementary with the blue sky. The composition of this image is balanced.
Estimates: lighting is during the day, aperture: 11-7.1, shutter speed is probably at around a second because the aperture and ISO are low to achieve a sharp images, ISO: 200 or lower, the images has a slightly warm tint.
Final Product
Old Town Pasadena
Santa Monica Pier
Rose Bowl Stadium
Soccer Field
Warehouse
Project Summary
Implementation of Skills Learned Over The Semester and Skills Learned During The Project Process
During this project I had to experiment with shooting with different shutter speeds and apertures, as well as at different times of day and locations. While doing all this experimentation I had to work hard to try and get matching compositions, with and without people, as well as matching lighting. It was really challenging when I got a good shot without people and then a different day and time I got a good shot at the same location with people but it didn’t match the composition of the original people-less shot. So then, I needed to schedule to return to the location during the appropriate time of day (to get the correct lighting) and shoot a matching shot without people. Also, it was really hard to get strong shots with people that were just candids because many times people might turn their head away at the wrong moment or suddenly walk off in another direction. Also, sometimes I would go back to the location to shoot a matching shot and something had changed, like a restaurant had lowered its patio sides and it was too distracting to shoot.
While I was shooting I encountered several surprises. Sometimes the sun came up earlier than Apple weather said it was going to, other times the clouds were too dense so the light wasn’t good. Once when I was trying to match a shot, which I originally shot with people in the evening, by shooting the same location before sunrise, the Christmas lights which were featured in the first photo were not still on when I arrived at 5am for the matching shot. Another time I went to shoot a field at sunrise and the gate was locked. When I was shooting the warehouse dock in the produce district I showed up to shoot it with people on a Saturday and the dock workers were only working on the half of the dock that I didn’t shoot when I was there at sunrise the week before for the without people shots.
When I was editing I used photoshop to try and match and enhance the lighting so that the photos with people and the ones without were a more even comparison. And sometimes I cropped the images to make the people more of a focal point, but then I had to crop the matching image, without people, as well. The adjustments I made were all different based on location, different times of days, and the unique needs of the photo to make each image as strong as it could be.
Project Wrap Up
I feel like I worked my ass off and my project is definitely a success. I had 16 different shoots, in locations all over Los Angeles, from the extreme Westside, at the Santa Monica Pier, to the produce district in DTLA, to several locations in Pasadena (Old Town, Rose Bowl Stadium, and Blair Field) In order to get the lighting that I wanted, many times I had to get up at 4am and travel to my locations for sunrise and then return for a separate shoot at sunset.
Overall I shot almost 10,000 photos for this project, which is INSANE. But because of this, I learned a lot about, not just, ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, but also about photo journalism. With shooting people I had to be aware of my surroundings at all times. Whether it was because I was in the middle of a busy street while the lights were changing, or if I was on the look out for an interesting moment between friends or members of a family that I saw walking near me. I needed to be ready to capture these things.
I absolutely feel like I addressed my driving question…in spades!!… or at least in 10 unique pairs of photos which comprehensively let the viewer experience a location with and without the human element. While doing this I used the elements and principles that we learned in class. I used photoshop to bring emphasis to people's faces in order to create a strong focal point. When shooting street shots I used the spaces between buildings to enhance my composition and made sure to balance my values in my photos so the eye was pulled to the right parts of my composition before drifting around to take in the rest of the photo. When looking back through my images I noticed that I intrinsically followed all the compositional guidelines we learned in class including leading lines, which are especially prominent in my Old Town street photos.
There were SOOOO many challenges with this project. Sleep deprivation was huge! That was a giant issue because the times for sunrise and sunset were fluctuating throughout the two weeks we had to complete this project. Also, getting to all the locations more than once was a challenge. And not only getting there multiple times but also doing it when there was appropriate sun. Some days the sun was too filtered behind the clouds and so consequently it would not work to shoot on that day.
On top of this, sometimes I would shoot a beautiful shot without people and then another strong shot of the same location on a different day with people, but they would be from different angles and so I would need to go back and reshoot the location without people to match the people shot. This sucked. I really couldn’t control what angles I got with the people as the people really lead the composition, so ultimately without people shots had to be reshot to match the people variable.
Also it was hard to get good candid portraits of people because in LA people are more spaced out, then they might be in other metropolitan areas like NYC, and many times when I was shooting people would just walk away from me instead of toward me so all I would get were their backs. So, it might be a good photo but there was no human focal point which was a bummer.
As far as this project goes, I am very happy that I’m still alive (and haven’t passed away from extreme sleep deprivation) and that I ended up with a project that I’m proud of. I really really need some sleep, but I know that I put everything I possibly could into this project, even sacrificing projects for other classes. (Shhhh… don’t tell my other teachers.) I feel like I did as much as anyone could possibly do with the time we were given and all the other obligations that come with the end of the term (final exams, papers, talking leaves, other class projects, etc.)
In the future, I would like to explore something else entirely. I feel like because of the huge amount of time and effort that I put into this project, I have pretty much exhausted all my ideas and musings about this particular subject at this point. Maybe after I’ve gotten some sleep and had some time to hang out with my friends and family, I might be able to look at it with fresh eyes and come up with some new things to explore in this area. But for now, I think I need to set it aside.
At another time, maybe I would like to explore light a bit more. After shooting a lot of my project during sunrise and sunset, I have realized that there is a lot of nuance between images taken during this time of day. Originally I saw these times of day as a crutch to make an image, that would be mediocre at any other time of day, sing. But now I realize that there is a lot more to it and a lot of variation can be achieved. I would like to explore something along the lines of can you take a picture during golden hour and a matching image not during golden hour and have the matching image feel just as strong as the golden hour image.
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