Street shoot 2

Street shoot 2





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The top left image is what I chose to use for the landscape in my montage, and I used the image below for the sky. I took both photos on my digital SLR. The top image was taken with fairly standard settings, but for the photo of the sky, which was actually taken in daylight, I used a fast shutter speed (1/500) and a small aperture (F32) to capture the sky as if it were night. The sunlight coming through the clouds can be seen because it was bright enough to saturate the film, even with the fast shutter speed and small aperture.

This is an montage I made in Photoshop using two photos I had previously shot. From one image I used the landscape, and from the other I used the sky.

To create this picture I had to layer the two photos. I did this by using the 'magic selection' tool in Photoshop - selecting either what I did or didn't want and keeping or discarding the selection. I then layered the sky behind the tree line of the other image. At this point I found that there was light from the sun in the landscape image, being shone on the trees that was not in keeping with the image I was creating. To get rid of this light I used the 'Burn' tool on the trees, which darkened the highlights on the trees until they were totally black (shadow).

By using the 'Levels' adjustment on the two separate layers I was able to make the image look like one, creating similar lighting in both images. Now that the two images looked like one, I was able to flatten the image and begin editing as if it were a normal image in Photoshop.

Using the 'levels' adjustment tool again, I changed the lighting of the whole image to make it appear darker like night conditions. I then used the 'sponge' tool to saturate the image from the centre outwards, and leaving the outskirts of the image less saturated. This created a kind of fading frame. I also used the burn tool to darken the outskirts.

Because the image had been so heavily edited at this point, much of the colour and tonal quality had been lost. To regain some of this quality I used the Hue/Saturation and Shadows/Highlights adjustment tools, which brought back some of the tones lost and got rid of some of the large blotches of colour.

Street Shoot

I shot these photos at night on the street outside my house using my digital SLR. Unfortunately I didn’t have access to a tripod, and because I was shooting at night using long shutter speeds, this led to some blurry images.

So that my images didn’t turn out under or over exposed I used a chart that guided me as to what aperture and shutter speed to use under street light conditions.


I chose to use ISO 400 as this would give me smooth gradients of tone while using a shorter shutter speed than would be needed for ISO 800+. By using an aperture of 5.6 I was able to get photos with a reasonable depth of field, and although the chart said to use a shutter speed of roughly 14 seconds, I used only between 1 and 3 seconds. By doing this the photos appear much darker and mysterious, leaving many objects silhouetted.

Even though the blur from the movement of the camera was not deliberate, it does look quite good in some photos. It gives them a distorted perspective, making the night appear more surreal and intriguing. Particularly in the image above, the motion from the camera gives a painterly effect.

Rut Blees Luxenburg

'Cockfosters'

'Vertiginous Exhilaration'

Luxenburg is a photographer known for her photographs of urban streets at night. She seeks out run down city locations, such as Hackney, which are lively and populated during day time, and shoots them at night when only the shadows and eerie street light occupy the city. This allows the viewer to see the city from a fresh and new perspective. By using a slow shutter speed she allows herself to use light from street lamps and office blocks as her only source of light, giving a genuine and sinister appearance to the photos. Some of her photos could be labeled as abstract - reflections of street lights in the puddles of cracked pathways which are sometimes hard to depict. some could argue that her photos show night life in the city as quite subdued. This is suggested by the stillness of the photos - there's rarely any people seen in her photos. The emptyness of the photos give a uneasy and almost sinister impresion of the usually lively city.

The tones in her photos are neutral and very rich, this breathes life into the image; even though the subject matter is still, the images look charasmatic; they have personality.

By shooting the photos from unusual angles (for example, the above image 'Vertiginous Exhilaration') places and objects are seen from a new perspective, causing the viewer to question the image.

Bill Brand

Bill Brandt - Nude (1959)

Brandt is a photographer well known for playing with scale and depth of field. Before photographing his collection now known as 'A perspective of nudes', Brandt photographed much of the English society and London during the blitz of world war two. Although he became well established for these photographs Brandt felt the need to push photography further. He mentions how modern cameras capture an image like a mirror, and how he wanted to step inside the mirror in order to give "an altered perspective and a less conventional image" he said how he wanted an image from the perspective of "perhaps, a mouse, a fish or a fly". A friend suggested to him to purchase a brass and mahogany stand camera. Although this camera did not give him the perspective of a mouse, he was told he could "look into his camera as the storyteller once looked into his memory".

He often uses a tiny aperture in order to flatten an image and distort perspective, making it hard for a viewer to see the actual scale of the objects in his photos, giving him this unique dream like scene he had been looking for.

Brandt links the human body to natural surroundings by shooting close ups of the body among similar natural objects (in this case he has taken a close up of a woman's legs crossed among pebbles with similar texture and tone.) By using a tiny aperture causing the image to look flat and confusing scale, the legs and the pebbles are made to look very similar, as if echoing one another. The way Brandt shoots the body is quite abstract and verging even on surrealism, causing a viewer to see the image from a new perspective. He also took the shot from very low down to the ground adding to this new perspective.

The tones seen in this photograph are consistently smooth and gradual adding to the dream like atmosphere; everything looks very natural and elegant. The smooth lines of the legs add to this feminine elegance, while the dark tones suggest a more masculine and solid appearance. The contrast of tone separates the two legs with a solid line. This emphasises the smooth line of the leg and it's feminine appearance. Presumably the light used for this image is natural light from the sun. He obtains a chiaroscuro style of lighting, creating depth in the image in both the background and the foreground. The darker tones act like an anchor to the eye, giving the viewer something to visually grasp. This chiaroscuro style of lighting evokes emotion from the viewer, adding to the dramatic elements of the photo.

The emptiness of the softly toned sky in the background causes the pebbles and the legs in the foreground to stand out as a solid.

I believe the grainy texture of the picture is more aesthetically pleasing than anything else, but it gives the photo charisma; a personality. Almost like wise wrinkles on an aged face. It also contrasts well with the smoothness of the tones in the picture.

Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann - Untitled

Uelsmann is best known for his creative work in the dark-room. He often spent several days and up to 12 enlargers at a time to create a single image. He created his images by merging film he had previously shot together in the dark room. Similarly to Bill Brandt's 'A perspective of nudes' photography, Uelsmann uses a mixture of soft tones and high contrast, creating a fantasy, dream-like and dramatic image.