Documentary Shoot Two Image Bank

Documentary Shoot One Image Bank

Documentary Shoot Two Straight Images

  I took this image as one to represent rural life. This is a picture of a pond near to where I live. It would be highly uncommon to see a small pond such as this one in an urban area such as London. This is because other areas are extremely built up and most natural life is destroyed. This pond supplies me with feelings of peacefulness and it is very quiet around this area which would be highly unlikely to see when visiting a urban area. Even in the evenings when it is less busy, many cars are still on the road so is continually noisy.

Documentary Shoot Two Work Diary

   Planning

Evaluation and Progression

Evaluation

  Here I took an idea from my mind map of taking photographs of forests as showing rural life. When living in a rural area, there are forests located in close proximity and therefore, it is not uncommon to see here. In an urban area, such as London which I had previously photographed, most of the rural life has been destroyed due to demand of housing and buildings. Furthermore, there would not be particularly many forests such as this one when walking the streets of somewhere such as London. I like this image because the trees create a natural walkway for visitors to walk down and I like the fact that it creates a calming effect due to the muted colours and overcast sky.

Progression

  To progress my work, I used Photoshop to make only subtle adjustments because I think that the original picture worked well. I made adjustments to the saturation, contrast, curves and exposure settings here. The colours have been intensified and the picture generally looks brighter and better. If I were to take this picture again, I would maybe use a tripod and try to capture more of the tree length in to add depth to the image.

Evaluation

Here is an image that I took in a local park / pond area near to where I live. I really like this image because I have also captured people walking here. This adds some variation to my work within this project - instead of just capturing snapshots of empty rural areas, I have captured some action and movement in the scene. This particular area in somewhere where many individual come to relax, walk their dogs etc due to is being very calming and quiet. I like how it is not centred and path is offset. . It would be unusual to find somewhere such as this in a urban area such as a busy city such as London. Most of the space is built up with roads, houses, buildings, tourist attractions etc and there is not as much greenery or life within these areas.

Progression

   Here is my final edited image of the one previously shown. I used Photoshop to make some only small, subtle adjustments to this picture because I really liked it how it was. I adjusted the contrast and vibrancy of the colours which made them more vivid. I also adjusted the brightness and exposure of the image to make the people in the distance more visible. I like the final image better than the original one, despite only small adjustments being made. I like how the colours such as the green grass and the dashes of yellows from the planted flowers are now more saturated and vivid. This really highlights the beauty of an urban area such as this one. I don't think that I would do anything particularly different if I were to reshoot this image because I really like the final outcome. I feel like I really took my time when thinking about many things which build a good photograph such as composition, angle lighting and camera settings when taking this image.

Evaluation

    Here is an image I took of a small pond near to where I live. People come here regularly to feed the ducks and just relax in an environment away from drama etc. Small pond areas such as this one are not uncommon to see in rural areas like where I live. In the background, some houses are visible. If you were to travel to an urban area such as London, it would be rare to come across a small pond area like this one within a housing estate. I like the reflection of the surrounding trees on the pond. There is not much of a variety of colours in this image. I should edit this image in Photoshop to improve how visually pleasing it is.

Progression

   Here is my final edited picture to the one previously shown. I only made some very minor adjustments here because I liked how the original picture worked. I made the image brighter using the 'brightness' setting on Photoshop because I felt as if the previous image was very dull and dark, possibly due to the overcast sky on this particular day. However, I only adjusted this slightly because I felt like that this was all that was needed. I contrasted the tones more using the 'contrast' option on the editing program. I also adjusted the vibrancy of the colours to make the green in the image stand out better because I felt as if they were very muted. It is clear that I have only made some small changes to the previous image but I think that they have been very effective in the presentation of the image. If I were to take this picture again, I would maybe take it at a different angle to try to let more natural light into the image - this would prevent it from being as dark.

Progression

   I chose this image as one which I would need to improve. I did not choose this particular image because I think that it is bad however I think that it may work better in another area of photography such as line photography, rather than landscape. This is because I have not really captured the type of landscape image here which I was aiming for. I think that the images previously shown are a better take on landscape photography.

Documentary shoot One Work Diary

Planning

Evaluation and Progression

Evaluation

  I chose this image as one which I wanted to explore and progress because I like how this shows London from above and because it is not something I would usually photograph. I took this image on the London Eye which is a popular place in London. It shows the city from high which means that people can see across London. I therefore seized this opportunity to capture a great landscape image whereby the extremely built up city can be seen. I like this image because you can see the Big Ben which is another popular object in London. Due to there being so many popular places in London which large groups of people visit daily, it means that the city is constantly busy. I wanted to photograph this because from what we can see of London from above, there are buildings/houses covering the entire area which again highlights just how busy the city is.

Progression

      To edit this image, I used Photoshop to enhance the colours because the original image was too dark and it was hard to see the buildings well. I had noticed that the colours were very plain and muted, even the water was a grey colour. The colours we may see in a rural environment such as greens, oranges, yellows etc such as in forests are not visible here. There are barely any trees or greenery as everything has been built upon. Furthermore, there is not really any interesting colours presented here as they are all dull blues, greys, browns etc. Therefore, I adjusted the vibrancy, exposure, saturation and brightness options on Photoshop. This has made the buildings more outlined and made the picture brighter as a whole. I like the developed image because it is a good landscape of London from above.

Evaluation

  I took this image in Canary Wharf, London. This is another popular place in London which again, many people visit daily. I like this image because of the orange tones in the skyline. I also like how the buildings are arranged against the skyline which acts as a good background. I like how the picture is fairly dark but the background illuminates the outlines of the buildings. I also like how we can not see any details of the buildings because it prevents us from distractions and helps us to focus on the buildings as a whole and what they mean. There are lots of cars parked and a group of buildings in the background which suggests that even in different parts of London, it still is busy and built up. I like this landscape because it looks like something which would be used as a picturesque background.

Progression

           
  To develop this image further, I used Photoshop to adjust the colours because although I liked the dark mask in the picture, I wanted the orange tones in the skyline to be vivid also. I liked the edited image better because the buildings are darker but the background is brighter which makes a better base of the buildings' silhouettes. I also cropped out the moving car from the image because I felt like it was unnecessary in being there. It split the image up which is not what I wanted to the image to present because it distracted us away from what I wanted the eye to focus on. If I were to take this image again, I would possibly try to get closer to the buildings, to the point where I could still present them against the skyline but cut out distractions.





Evaluation


  This image shows one of London's many busy underground train stations. A large amount of people use train services daily. In the picture, there are crammed escalators and many people are rushing to reach their destination. I wanted to take an image such as this one to present life in a busy city like London, not only because it is not a typical picture of the buildings/tourist attractions, but because it shows how there is a high demand surrounding train/bus services due to London being such a wide spread, highly populated area. Here you can see that there is little space to manoeuvre because of how busy it is. I like this image because I was able to capture how busy the underground stations in London can be on an ordinary day. I was also able to capture a small amount of motion blur because people were rushing and walking fast.

Progression

  To progress this image, I used Photoshop to make only subtle adjustments to it such as: turning it into black and white, making the vibrancy higher and making it more contrasted. I think that the black and white version of this image is better at presenting the business of the underground station because it merges the commuters together rather than our eyes focusing of certain individuals. Our eyes are also better lead towards the centre of the picture and therefore, the busy escalators. The black and white I think, also highlights the emotions the people are displaying. For example, we may now notice the fact that there is no one in sight who is actually smiling, possibly because everyone is rushing to where they want to get to.

Documentary - Shoot One Straight Images

I took this picture in Canary Wharf, London. I like this image because it shows the built up and busy part of London that I wanted to present. I like this image because the tall buildings in the background are muffled and not vivid. We cannot see any details of the buildings, only the outlines which means that we focus on the group of buildings as a whole and what they mean rather than individual buildings. I like how the sky is a mixture of soft orange and blue tones because it creates a pleasant background. I will use Photoshop to makes adjustments to the image such as cropping etc.

I took this picture on the London Eye. I seized this as a great opportunity to take a landscape photograph of the extremely built up city that London is. As you can see, there are lots of buildings and houses. London is a very busy and popular place and the London Eye is just one of the many things in London that people visit on a daily basis. I like this image because it really does show how built up London is. I think that this picture is really interesting because it is unique and it is unusual to see London from above as a take on landscape photography.

 

  I chose this image as one of my favourites because again, it shows how busy London is. I took this in one of London's underground stations. I was able to catch people rushing around the train station to get to where they want to be. I like it because within this freeze frame, I was able to present just how busy London can be on a average day. I was also able to catch a small amount of motion blur when people were walking and rushing. Furthermore, I think that this image is interesting because it would not be what you think of when imagining landscapes.

I took this image in Oxford Street, London which consists of many popular shops which large groups of people visit often. Oxford Street is constantly busy due to the large demand of people wanting to shop there. Therefore, I wanted to photograph how busy it is. 

Documentary Research Post (Henri Cartier Bresson)

  Henri Cariter Bresson was a French documentary photographer. He first discovered his passion for photography when he saw a image taken by Martin Munkacsi in the arts magazine Arts et Metiers Graphiques. He then started to look further into photography and travels across Europe with his two friends, continuing to take photographs. Bresson suggested the idea about 'the decisive moment'.

The decisive moment refers to capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous, where the image represents the essence of the event itself. 

    
  This image presents the decisive moment in action. Henri Cariter Bresson took this image right as the birds flew away from the steps. He took the image at the precise moment and if he were to take it any later or earlier, the birds may have already flown away or not even flown yet. He has also captured the moment before the women probably moved (due to the birds near her flying away).






                                                                                     This image was taken in Greece, Cyclades, Island of Sifhnos in 1961. Henri Cartier Bresson had taken this photograph while the girl was running up the stairs. Her body shape tells us that she is in the middle of running. The style of the buildings present the style of old Greece. The building are not modern or up to date (as we can tell by the arrangement of the staircase and how the door frames are not particularly straight). This image is a good representative of the decisive moment and how the photographer had to think carefully about the precise moment to take the picture. If he had taken the image a few seconds later, the girl would not be visible. This would make the image less about documentary photography and less intriguing to look at. I like this image because although we can only see a singular person in the image, there could have possibly been several others running up the stairs also. Therefore, the photographer had taken timing very seriously. In conclusion, timing is very important when documenting an event. I also like how there is a clear distinction between the light and dark tones. The child is far away and is a area of shade is casted over them which makes the outline of the body and the action they are showing more vivid.

Documentary Image Bank

Documentary Definitions