Exercise 1.7 Getting the Parr feel

For this exercise, photograph people engaged in a fun or social activity outdoors.  For example, you could go to a seaside resort and photograph people having a good time.  Or photograph people at an outdoor party or function.  Try to capture the Martin Parr ‘feel’.

Use your camera flash or a flash gun to balance the daylight.  You need to take light readings from the ambient light and then set the flash gun to produce a small amount of flash – not enough to turn the scene into night – running the camera at a slower speed than the flash would normally synch at.

Getting the flash/ambient light balance right is the key to the technical side of the whole look.

This is the camera’s reaction under normal circumstances.  A slower shutter speed than the recommended flash setting may help a lot.

If you’re having difficulty getting the Parr feel, or getting the daylight to stay, the contact your tutor or ask around on the student forum.  This will work very differently for a range of cameras and you may need individual support and advice for this relative to your personal camera equipment.

Produce a set of eight colour images.  Ensure that the colour is bright and reflects the nature of Martin Parr’s work.  How does this lighting effect change the nature of your image?  Make some notes in your learning log.

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I went up to an OCA study day at the Science Museum on December 6th to see the exhibition put on by the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) called 'Drawn by Light'. This exhibition showed how photography, using examples of images kept in the RPS archives, had progressed from in the beginning complex metal plates to digital images of today.

Afterwards I walked back to the tube stations, along Exhibition Road, and made use of the crowds visiting the museums and the ice skating rink outside the Natural History Museum to expand my street photography experiences, trying to capture the 'Martin Parr effect.  

Here are some of my images:

Exercise 1.4 The decisive moment

First look at the two Cartier-Bresson images above and try to identify why the photographer might have considered each one a decisive moment.  This is a difficult thing to attempt but have a go.  An important point to note is that the decisive moment doesn’t have to be anything dramatic – it can be something as simple as a facial expression or a fall of the light.

Now go out and photograph an event or location for yourself.  Look for and include the decisive moment.  Produce a contact set of three scenes and analyse your reasons for selecting the image that has the decisive moment.  Your scenes should all include at least one person.

Try to do one scene using as little camera assistance as possible, ie, not on fully automatic and not with auto focus.

Approach the second and third scenes in whatever way you wish.

Does the phrase ‘shutter lag time’ mean anything to you after completing this exercise?  If you have a digital camera that generally functions well enough for your needs, then you may have felt some small frustration with this exercise.  If you shoot on a film-based camera and scan then the phrase may mean nothing to you as there is no lag in the manual system.

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Rue Mouffetard 1954 Henri Cartier-Bresson

The image above shows a young boy walking along a street in Paris carrying two bottles of wine.  Whilst there is not much of the street shown in this image there is enough of the buildings to indicate it's a shopping area.  The boy has a very mischievous expression on his face making him seem defiant as to why he is carrying wine at such a young age.  The whole picture is one of catching that special moment that lifts the whole image from one of being acceptable to one that has captured the punctum moment.


Barthes definition of Punctum: The punctum in a photograph are those (accidental) details (often in the background) that provides no explanation but instead creates questions on the surrounding people in those photographs.
 

Hyeres 1932 Henri Cartier-Bresson

On its own, without the addition of the moving cyclist this is an ordinary graphic image showing angles and curves made up from a set of stairs with railings, steps and curved pavement.  The addition of a bicycle placed succinctly on the left hand third of the image and moving out of the image, adds a point of interest for your eye to focus on.

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Now go out and photograph an event or location for yourself.  Look for and include the decisive moment.  Produce a contact set of three scenes and analyse your reasons for selecting the image that has the decisive moment.  Your scenes should all include at least one person.

Try to do one scene using as little camera assistance as possible, ie, not on fully automatic and not with auto focus.
 

To the Cobb

I saw this image one recently when I was walking along the beach front with friends.  The thing that appealed to me was how all the parts of the image were looking one way.  The handles of the wheelchair, the two women and the sign to the Cobb harbour.  I know it's bad form to take a picture with everyone/thing looking to the right as it encourages your eye to travel out of the picture rather than being pushed back round, but the whole scenario came together in that 'way'. 

I'd got the camera on Aperture mode, one that I usually use as it gives me control of the depth of field and what is in and not in focus.  In this shot I had a fairly large aperture as I wanted the background of the rest of the beach to be slightly out of focus to bring all the attention to the items at the front.  

The camera was set at f5.6 with a focal length of 45mm and shutter speed of 1/640 and ISO set at 200.

Yellow Buckets

 I call this picture 'Yellow Buckets' as there seem to be so many in the picture; that's what caught my eye in the first place.  The family must have bought a job lot so that there were no arguments between the children.  I took this with a wider viewpoint and cropped it down so that it just featured the family group. 
 
The camera was set at f8 with a focal length of 60mm and shutter speed of 1/640 and ISO set at 200.

 

Follow me please

 
I set the camera to f5.3 with a focal length of 70mm and shutter speed of 1/500 and ISO set at 320.  I was trying out my new Nikon lens 18-105mm f3.5 to see how well it adapted to street photography.  I found I had trouble with when the lens was extended to 250-300mm as it made it fairly unstable with my Nikon 5200 camera body.  On the whole, I was satisfied with its performance here and was pleased to have it with me on this expedition.

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Does the phrase ‘shutter lag time’ mean anything to you after completing this exercise?  If you have a digital camera that generally functions well enough for your needs, then you may have felt some small frustration with this exercise.  If you shoot on a film-based camera and scan then the phrase may mean nothing to you as there is no lag in the manual system.

I am greatly aware of the shutter lag time as I find it affects my pictures time and again.  If I see an picture coming together in front of me, even when I have my camera with me and switched on, it can be lost especially if the focus is on automatic and the camera can't focus quickly enough.  If the image isn't in focus to the satisfaction of the focusing system then the shutter will not fire in time and the perfect shot is lost.

I have two main cameras, my main one mentioned above - that of a Nikon D5200 with a couple of lenses.  Then I have a CSC camera - the Nikon 1 version 2 with 2 lens.  They are a standard prime lens of 10mm and a zoom lens of 10-30mm.  This is affected worse by shutter lag time as it has a feature in the zoom lens that allows you to put the camera to sleep by twisting the lens to the left when you have taken your picture.  This can mean that it takes a few seconds to wake up before you can take your shot and those few seconds can mean the difference between success and failure.

Exercise 1.5: Planning the journey Part 2

Exercise 1.5: Planning the journey

Go on a journey.  This needn’t be a long journey but make it a journey you haven’t done before.  It could be to a market in the next town or to a church across town.  If you like to travel then go further by all means, but it’s the process of planning and examining what’s there that you’re engaged with in this exercise.

What will you record?  The transport? The people?  The places?  Who will you meet?

Familiar things – post box, war memorial, bridge – often reveal themselves in more detail when you to a different place and look at what’s around you with a fresh eye.

Produce a series of images in photo essay form.

The photo essay tells a story through linked images.  If you were writing a story you would tell the story by introduction, characterization, scene setting, plot, etc.  The photo essay works in much the same way.  The images must stand alone as great images but reveal more when they are linked together.  Again, you’ll need to make a contact sheet.

Analyse the editing decisions you’ve made in your learning log or blog.

In Lyme Regis we are equidistant between Exeter, Taunton, Yeovil and Dorchester.  The journey to any of these towns is approximately 25-30 miles and takes up to an hour by car.  I decided to journey to Exeter by different modes of transport, eg, foot, car, train and foot again rather than just drive to the city centre and park the car.  To the west of the city the River Ex runs through a series of quays and, as I had never been further than the city centre, this seemed a good place to aim for.

Trains run to Exeter every hour at 3 minutes past the hour so I had to organise myself to leave my cottage in plenty of time to get to the station, park the car, buy a car parking ticket and a train ticket in time to catch the 10.03 am train to Exeter Central Station.  We live in a very narrow street in the centre of the old town and have to park our car in a central car park half way up a steep hill.  Lyme Regis is built on several steep hills which test your knees and hips every time you go anywhere.

My journey would consist of the following steps:

1.     Leave cottage and walk up Hill Road to central car park.

2.     Drive 6 miles to Axminster to our nearest train station.

3.     Park the car and buy both a car park ticket and a train ticket to Exeter Central train station.

4.     Catch the train which then calls as several stations, eg, Honiton, Feniton, Whimple and Exeter Central stations.

5.     Alight from the train into Queen’s Street in the middle of Exeter.  Walk along Queen’s Street, South Street and Coombe Road to The Quays.  Coombe Street leads down to the Quays through a pedestrian tunnel and pathway split between pedestrians and cyclists.

6.     On arrival at the Quays there are many cafes, restaurants, an antique centre and small shopping outlets housed in the long tunnels where goods would have been stored when the quays were used as somewhere to load and unload goods.

Exercise 1.6 Shooting from the hip

 

Take some time out to develop the technique of shooting very quickly.  You’ll probably produce some very blurred and even disastrous images, but fortunately mistakes aren’t as expensive in the digital age as they were when Winogrand was working the New York streets.

Produce a set of eight images that demonstrate the life and vibrancy of city living.  If you don’t live anywhere near a city, choose a spot or a day when there’s a lot going on – the busier the better.  F you need to, re-read the safety advice in the Introduction to this course guide.

Analyse and reflect on your final images in your learning blog.

What makes the successful images work well?

What difficulties did you experience?

How do feel about this type of work?  Is it honest?  Are your images a truthful representation or did you edit the truth in some way, consciously or unconsciously?

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I went round a local market in Bridport one Saturday morning and these are 8 of the best images:

Well, shall we buy it then?

I wonder what's under here?

Making music (1)

Is it me?

Tea and a chat for two plus dog

Listen to the music

Old fashioned social interaction

Analyse and reflect on your final images in your learning blog:

What makes the successful images work well?

Street photography works well when people are interacting with someone else although people on their own can do well, especially if they are in someway isolated from the background by blurring.

What difficulties did you experience?

I've always enjoyed street photography but sometimes find my reaction to a situation is too slow, especially when the camera is still trying to focus.  Lately I've been setting the focus on Manual - set to infinity with an f8 aperture so that I can be faster. I also find that these days people can get very suspicious of someone taking pictures.  Some, especially market traders are afraid if they are claiming benefits that you are from the Dept of Employment.  I live in a seaside town, Lyme Regis, where people are taking pictures of the town, sea front and beach all the time so most people just ignore picture takers.

How do feel about this type of work?  Is it honest?  Are your images a truthful representation or did you edit the truth in some way, consciously or unconsciously?

Yes, this type of photography is an honest representation of life in a market town on a market day.  The only editing I did was to crop unwanted people and items out of the images to focus attention on my main subject(s).  

I always find street photography a challenge as I can go to a place and come home with no decent images although I've seen pictures that I wanted to capture.

Exercise 1.3: Positive and negative spin

November 20th
I'm still struggling to complete this exercise as I can't find any commonality between any tabloid newspaper and a broadsheet.  Not only have I looked online but disrupted the news stand at my local newsagents to try to find the dame story in both newspapers.

Look at some different newspapers and note how racial issues are covered in the modern press.  Don’t just look at stories that specifically involve race – look, too, at stories where one or more of the people involved just happen to be black (or Asian, member of a traveller community, etc.).  concentrate particularly on the photographic imagery used to accompany the stories.  Is there a difference between the ‘quality’ broadsheet press (eg The Guardian) and the tabloid press (eg The Sun).  Make some notes in your learning blog.

Next, compare an image from a broadsheet newspaper with a tabloid image.  If possible, choose two images portraying the same (or similar) person or event.  The story you choose could involve race, but it doesn’t have to.  The idea of the exercise is to show you how public perception of a person or event can be influenced by the photographic imagery used.

Read the commentary and the headlines to see how the person or event is being portrayed in words, then study the images carefully.  For example, look to see whether the images have been cropped differently.

• Where different images have been used for the same story by different papers, what do you think is the editorial basis for each choice?

• Is each story positive or negative, sympathetic or sensational?

• If a reader was just given the headline and the image for each story, what different conclusions might they draw?  Or is there no difference?

• How has the imagery been used to influence/manipulate the reader?

Place the images and your analysis in your learning blog.

Exercise 1.3: Positive and negative spin online research

I just spent the best part of an hour trying to compare images in broadsheet and tabloid newspapers on line.  The problem is that broadsheet newspapers, ie, The Guardian, The Times or The Telegraph, don't carry the same news stories that you find in The Sun, The Daily Mirror or The Daily Star.  Also the way to get the best stories is to subscribe and I don't want to spend £4 a month on something that I won't use other than for the life of this exercise.  Any suggestions on how to overcome this problem gratefully received!

Exercise 1.2 Analysing social documentary

Do some further research into the work of at least two of the photographers mentioned in this survey of the chronology of social documentary from Stieglitz onwards.

Select one image produced by each photographer (either from the course guide or the internet) to analyse in more dept. 

• What is the subject of the photograph?
• What was the context?
• Was the photographer working for pay
• Was the taking of the photograph consensual or non-consensual? (ie, did the subject agree to have their photograph taken)?
• Does the photograph reveal any particular ‘trademark’ or style of the photographer?
• Is the photograph successful?
• Is the photograph an example of social documentary of it is photojournalism?  Try to explain your answer.

Write at least 250 words for each image in your learning blog.

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Definitions:

Social documentary photography: the recording of humans in their natural condition with a camera. Often it also refers to a socially critical genre of photography dedicated to showing the life of underprivileged or disadvantaged people.

Photojournalism: the practice of communicating news by photographs, especially in magazines.

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Photograph 1 by Alfred Stieglitz

The Steerage

• What is the subject of the photograph?

 This photograph shows how poor people travelled to and from America by ship in the early part of the 20^th century.

• What was the context?

Stieglitz took the image when he travelled to Europe.  He developed the plate in a borrowed darkroom but didn’t publish it for several years.

• Was the photographer working for pay?

No, Stieglitz took the image as a set of images but wasn’t paid for it at the time.

• Was the taking of the photograph consensual or non-consensual? (ie, did the subject agree to have their photograph taken)?

The image was taken without the knowledge of the people in it.  Therefore no one gave consent for the picture to be taken.

• Does the photograph reveal any particular ‘trademark’ or style of the photographer?

I’m not sure what is meant by the words ‘trademark’ or ‘style’ in this context.  It would have been what is now called a grab shot taken whilst the subjects were involved with their normal lives on board ship in the lowest class of travel.

• Is the photograph successful?

It certainly gives the impression of how overcrowded it must have been in steerage and the poor conditions that passengers in Steerage class had to endure.

• Is the photograph an example of social documentary or it is photojournalism?  Try to explain your answer.

In my opinion the photograph would be classed as a part of a social documentary portfolio unless Stieglitz wrote about the experience as well.  As I understand it social documentary is a series of pictures on a theme which can stand alone without words whilst photojournalism is a mixture of pictures and words describing what was happening in the pictures and the background surrounding taking them.

Photograph 2 by Dorothea Lange

Penniless Family Dorothea Lange

• What is the subject of the photograph?

The subject of this photograph is of how families were forced to live in the 1930s during the Great Depression in America.  Families had to travel around the country trying to find work to earn money to feed their families.

• What was the context?

The context was how poor families lived and worked during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

• Was the photographer working for pay?

Yes, Dorothea Lange was commissioned by the FSA (The Farm Security Administration) to show how families were managing, or not managing, to exist at that time.

• Was the taking of the photograph consensual or non-consensual? (ie, did the subject agree to have their photograph taken)?

The photographs that Lange took would have to have been consensual.  Her pictures showed families and specific parts of families living and working in the fields.  Many of the subjects were facing the camera, some looking off camera but they must have known that Lange was taking photographs.

• Does the photograph reveal any particular ‘trademark’ or style of the photographer?

Lange took all her photographs on site within the working conditions of the migrants she was recording.  Her style was to focus on women within the family environment as they travelled to find work to feed their families.

• Is the photograph successful?

It shows a migrant family with all their worldly goods packed on the back of an old jalopy.  This was their home, their mode of transport and it carried everything they owned in the world.

• Is the photograph an example of social documentary or it is photojournalism?  Try to explain your answer.

This photograph, along with all Lange’s pictures showed the recording of humans in their natural condition with a camera. It also referred to a socially critical genre of photography dedicated to showing the life of underprivileged or disadvantaged people therefore Lange’s work was in social documentary rather than photo journalism.