LSP - Photojournalism and Street Photography - Day Four

Day Four (27th July) was amazing!  The brief was to start the day by shooting a documentary.  I chose to document Speaker's Corner at Hyde Park.  We had discussed this in class previously, and Holger advised me to think about the following:

• What can you say that is new - don't just photograph speakers - people already know what that looks like!  
• What do speakers do when they are not speaking - what is their real life?  Are they normal or crazy?
• What is their agenda?  How are they changing the world?  Or are they just bored on a Sunday?
• Can you follow a speaker afterwards?
• Who are they people listening?  Are they part of a club?  Are there any secret rules?
• Remember Speakers Corner is about freedom of speech.

Well, in the moment, I forgot about any possible themes, and just shot photographs as they caught my eye.  I am after all a "right-brain" photographer - it's all about spontaneity and being in the moment for me; even if I plan, I often forget my planning.  Fortunately, by now, I was starting to feel that I could handle my D810 and was getting better at managing the ISO.  (With my D5000 the ISO was so useless, I only changed it between 200 and 400 because of the grain).  I also initially started out shooting in b&w, but changed quite quickly to colour.  There was so much colour around that it was impossible to think in b&w!

After an initial panic that there was nothing going on (I got there too early), suddenly at around 11am, there was loads going on!  It was great - so many people and so many angles.  This is exactly the kind of photography outing I love.  I shot 850 photos in total (Holger not very happy - he only wanted 30-50) from which we needed to make a documentary of around 15-20 images. 

During the image review back in the class, Holger showed us how to select and put together.  From my photos, Holger put together some images showing speaker's gestures and facial expressions, which was interesting, but not compelling.  (And to be fair, he had to do that very quickly within the class time).  While I was shooting, I had tried to focus on some speakers setting up, but these weren't the best images.  Afterwards, when I got home and reviewed the images myself properly, I found two distinct themes: spectator reactions and the MH17 protest story (which I converted to b&w in processing to avoid colour distraction and focus on the message of the protest).  Lesson learnt: shoot with a theme in mind!  In this situation, it turned out ok - I found themes afterwards, but that might not always be the case!

Here are the results:

Spectator reactions:

MH17 Protest:

And that was the end!  A fantastic course spanning two weekends and excellent timing for the start of my Context and Narrative module!