Vice Versa Thinking

In this exercise I am tasked with taking what worked well from the section’s exercises and then interchanging it with the parts that didn’t.

On reflection, I found the individual portrait in a controlled environment the easiest to complete as an exercise (Same Model, Different Background – Exercise 2.3) but, I don’t feel the exercise captured the spirit of the person that I photographed.  Of course I know that the photographs were staged even though they are shot as candid portraits and a different viewer would not, however, I still feel the act of staging the image has dampened down the character of the person.

Conversely, the street scenes from the ‘covert’ section of the module (Exercise 2.2), I am happy with in terms of an exercise to show people in their environment, but the images are all groups of people rather than individuals.

For this exercise, I have therefore chosen to retain the street scene element of the images, non are posed, but to capture a set of individuals to see if I could capture some of their individual spirit as well as the locations.

My selected images are a combination of candid and posed portraits. All of them are slightly different in their composition but I feel that this adds an element of variety to the collection and as they are all different, it is not that one is at odds with the others, I feel they work well as a set. I talked to all the subjects to get their names and to get to know them a little before taking the images and so in a sense, all the subjects are aware that I am photographing them even if they are candid shots.

All are taken with a 50mm equivalent lens, and I have chosen the same 4:3 portrait orientation for all of the images to create consistency. I have chosen black and white for the presentation of the images because this most typical for the ‘genre’ of street scenes which a number of the images align to.

Selection Thinking

The contact sheets show other images that I took that came under consideration. Some such as Contact 25 or Contact 26, were close to selection as they fit well into the set I have chosen, my selection choices for these related to those images that I felt captured the person’s character the best. Others, such as Contact 13, I really like as an image, but it is not consistent with the set and so was not chosen. Finally, others such as Contact 21, whilst again I really like the image, it is not consistent with the theme I have chosen for the assignment, it is not an image of an individual.

Selected Images

Contact Sheets