LSP - Photojournalism and Street Photography - Day One

The past couple of weekends, I have been doing a Photojournalism and Street Photography course at the London School of Photography.  Ideal timing for the start of my Context and Narrative module!  And very lucky to have professional photographer Holger Pooten as a tutor :)

Here are the highlights and points noted during the course, starting with my big passion, Street Photography on Day One:

Street Photography

Street photography has a social function; it creates an archive of the present day, e.g. the photos created by Colin O'Brien of Spitalfields' Kids on the Streets.  There are three main elements to street photography:

• Random events
• Unorganised
• Breaks rules

And of course, must be taken in public place, but not necessarily a street.  It is the assembly of these random events within a frame.  But, there has to be a reason to take the image.  The picture must tell a story or be part of a collection of themes.  The subjects need to have a relationship with the surroundings; the photographer needs to bring order to chaos.

Street photography originated in 1890s Paris, and primarily captured the "decisive moment" (Bresson): a singular moment in time which describes an entire scene or collection of independent events.  The photographer does not only choose what time retain and omit from the frame, he/she is also choosing a moment in time to freeze.  The resulting image is the photographer's view of the situation at a particular instance.

Looking at Bresson as an example - very strong use of lines and shapes/elements of design.  In 1952 Bresson published a set of images called Decisive Moment shot in black and white to give strong abstraction.

Street photography is often shot with 50mm lens (which is close to how the eye sees naturally - equivalent of 43mm) and is also often landscape format (again close to natural vision). However, this perspective does not account for peripheral vision.  Humans also are able to zoom to a narrower focal point, e.g. to read.  Because of the correlation between sensor size, focal length and angle of view, 50mm full-frame is very close to reality.

We also spoke about Robert Frank and his work "The Americans"; Frank spent two years documenting life in the USA.  He compiled 28,000 photos, of which 83 made it to final edit.  The body of work was the antithesis of the "American Dream", as Frank documented social divisions, race, class, segregation, and so on.  Each celebrated photographer has his/her own basic philosophy; compare Frank (social commentary) against Bresson (abstract/surreal).

In 1960s, New York City became the street photography hub, with Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and Joel Meyerowitz leading the way, each with a different style:

• Winogrand's images have the perception of having been shot from the hip; they are spontaneous, raw, and the wonky horizons give the perception of spontaneity (Bresson would not have liked this - he believed in composition, straight lines, angles);
• Friedlander created a social landscape of USA; his images are humorous and chaotic - he looks for symbols, layers, contrasts;
• Meyerowitz is the pioneer of colour in street photography making the most of strong contrast, clear light and high dynamic range.

Other notable street photographers to consider are:

• Vivian Maier
• Martin Parr
• Nick Turpin
• Polly Braden

 Holger gave us some tips to consider:

• preset exposure
• watch a scene develop
• shoot plenty of pictures
• concentrate on a small area and stay there

Composition and visual elements:

• look for geometry - use lines and shapes created by buildings etc
• frame within a frame
• repetitive elements
• diagonals
• spaces and barriers
• wait for interesting light, e.g. Polly Braden used spotlight on a subject (or centre of tension) from natural light
• look for extreme weather or extreme light situations

Contemporary street photographers:

• Trent Parke - very high contrast b&w images - uses shadows and light, rain and street lights
• Gueorgui Pinkhassov - colour and light - like stain glass windows
• Martin Parr - very bold lucid garish colours - created by fill-in-flash resulting in a very personal touch - very subjective view point.  To illustrate the point of subjectivity, Parr created a serious of images of couples who were bored, but this is a selective view as they may have only just finished the conversation of a lifetime.  This moment in time does not necessarily show the true nature of the relationship.  Parr also makes use of high ironic juxtapositions
• Nick Turpin - all about juxtapositions, interesting poses, uncomfortable positions, communication with the background

Assignment 1

For our first assignment we were asked to create the following:

1. 50mm b&w - lines and geometry (like Bresson)
2. interesting use of light
3. interesting use of clour
4. interesting or funny situation contrast

Here are my results with feedback underneath (this was also my first outing with my new D810 - and yes I felt like I was using boxing gloves!):

1. 50mm b&w - lines and geometry

Positive feedback for this; this is the crop recommended by Holger from the original (we reviewed straight from camera in the classroom)

2. Light

Positive feedback, good observation, photo needs something in the reflection to add to the British theme - reflection is a very important part of the scene

3. Colour

Good colour capture and interesting that the girl in the front left isn't having fun!  This is with the crop recommended by Holger.

4.  Funny situation

Funny situation is my kind of street photography!  I will wait ages in front of the right background for the right kind of character to walk into the scene.  So pleased I got great feedback for this shot, with no corrections. I asked about the guy being a bit out of focus - because I focused on the photo and then snapped when the right character walked in front - Holger thought this didn't matter, but said to try pre-focusing on the gap in between.  He also said to use a smaller aperture for this photo - although I had used f/13, so would f/16 made much difference?  Had I been further back with a zoom, I don't think there would have been any differential.

Photo Story / Narrative

• Daido Moriyama is a classic example of the photo story.  His images are freely combined in such a way that is hard to know what the story is about.  He shows a hidden or dark side of Japanese culture.  For him, taking images is his way of understanding a word - he doesn't care what his images look like (this is hard to believe...)
• David Hurn - describes Arizona as a topic - looks closely at different elements

At this point, my notes suddenly stopped.  It might have been that I decided to wait for the slides to be given to us..

Assignment 2

For our second assignment, we were taken to Covent Garden and asked to think of a theme that would illustrate the nature of Covent Garden - so not a landscape study - a character study.  I found this very hard.  I had chosen to try to find graphic shapes and elements in people formations, but this was actually a disaster.  Covent Garden is very crowded, and like with the Oxford Street exercise with In Public, nothing jumped out at me :(  In fact, my photos were dreadful, although Holger was positive about a few of them, I'm only going to show one that has an unusual juxtaposition of legs:

And that was the end of Day One.  Exhausted....