Producing photographs project

Task 1

Patrick Gouldsbrough

Henri Cartier-Bresson

A French born photographer, who was considered one of the highest rated Photojournalists ever, hence him been branded ‘the father of Photojournalism’. His approach to photography was a candid approach, like most photojournalistic images are, due to the true representation you must communicate to the viewer. The colours of all, if not most of his photographs, is black and white, similar to all of the photographers of his time. This is due to the technology and the style yet to be established. The vast Majority of Cartier-Bresson’s pieces feature at east one subject and it’s mostly documentary work, as opposed to landscape style works.

An example of a busy, expressive and documentary photograph.

This particular photograph is a piece of documentary photography, opposed to an abstract piece. However, unlike many documentary pieces, this photograph was taken singularly, instead of been in a set or a collection of images. This is unusual because the photographer wants to convey a narrative to the viewer. Instead, Cartier-Bresson lets his individual works

tell the story.

An expressive form of photography is captured here. This means that the subjects facial features and emotions are captured within the image. This gives more meaning to the photograph, while raising questions, such as: Why is he feeling like this? and what happened in the narrative before the shot was taken?

As well as been documentary and photojournalism, this photograph is also portrait. This is evident from the head and shoulders only been included in the frame of the shot. However, these 3 applications can be linked. For example, someone's portrait could be used to accompany journalistic works, or to tell the story itself. The documentary comes into it if more than one image is been used as a collection to tell the narrative.

The focus of this shot is the main subject within the photograph. This can be seen from the background been blurred out to give greater detail to the main feature in the image.

High key and low key lighting is not predominantly used on this photograph. Instead, features of both are used. The image is a dark and dull image, but has a lot of light parts, more than categorised in low key lighting.

The colouring of the image is monochrome. This is not a style the photographer has used, instead a style all photographers used in those days. This, as previously stated, is due to the technology not been invented yet.

Location, instead of studio is used for this photograph. This is because not many photojournalism pieces are captured in studios. This is because the news stories don’t generally take place in a studio. This inks to the argument of true representations must be carried out when taking photojournalism photographs.

Unlike Cartier-Bresson’s most popular pieces, this image is not an observational piece. The way

Very little visual information is communicated to the consumer through this photograph, which therefore concludes the image is of a passive nature. This is because not many things within the frame. However, this could be also regarded busy if you look in great detail at the quantity of trees in the image. On the other hand, the image as a whole isn’t cramped.

Unlike the examples I have found, along with Cartier- Bresson’s other works, this image is a landscape piece. The Frenchman was traditionally a documentary photographer, due to him specialising in photojournalism. Even though photojournalism does encompass landscapes sometimes, in general, this is

unconventional to Henri’s work.

Due to this photograph been a landscape, which is linked to nature, organic shape is used to create this image. Organic shape means natural things creating the shapes you see on a photograph. On this particular piece you see the tree making a certain shape, therefore demonstrating the organic shape technique.

Trees and roads within the photograph act as lines to guide the eyes to the central focus of the image (the trees and the main path).

High key lighting is used to capture this particular photograph. This is because ambient light from the on location setting is used. Artificial light isn’t used very often in landscape photography, instead, post-production colour saturation and shadowing would be added.

The photograph looks like it goes back some distance and looks like there is plenty of space in the image. In this particular example it is done so the consumer can add their own interpretations to the image, which includes raising questions, such as: where does the path lead? How far back does it go and it bends at both sides, does it split into two paths?

In terms of balance and symmetry, this image isn’t balanced. This is evident in the image, which you can’t see the exact same on one side compared to the other.

Documentary photography as well as photojournalism are the applications used on this photograph. The man on the cycle makes it a documentary piece, however, if the cyclist wasn’t there, this piece would turn to landscape or architectural. This shows how closely linked each application is to one another.

A candid or an observational image is captured here, instead of a manipulated photograph. As mentioned previously, this shot is a documentary photography piece, however, like many documentary pieces, it would have been nearly impossible to take multiple shots of the cyclist. This would therefore mean it would be a stand alone piece instead of a collection, unlike traditional documentary photographs.

This picture is a very unconventional style of taking a photograph. The way Cartier-Bresson has taken it makes the central focus, the cyclist, look blurred and therefore not what the eye is drawn to at first glance. However, like mentioned in the colour and shadow part, the cyclists black colouring, compared to the white background makes it stand out instead.

The image is neither high key or low key lighting. This is due to the image not been bright enough for high key, but not dark and shaded enough for low key lighting. However, the main focus of the image, the cyclist, is shadowed in black to make him stand out.

Dynamic range is featured in this photograph and is one of the most noticeable features. You can see that at the bottom of the photograph, the image is dark and shadowed, where as the top of the image is light, which is the main feature of dynamic range.

The angle which the photograph was taken is from a high vantage point, looking down at the subject, the cyclist. A wide lens was used for this shot, this is to ensure a bit of the surrounding setting was captured, not just the main feature.

Adrian Dennis

Commonly known for his sports photography, Adrian Dennis is a modern photojournalist, who has just been crowned sports photographer of the year 2013. As well as sporting events, Adrian captured photographs to accompany journalistic pieces during his time at the Independent newspaper. Currently working at Agence France Presse as a photojournalist. Like stated above, he mainly focuses on sporting events but does photograph current news events.

Not a proper documentary piece but could be categorised as one. It’s mainly a photojournalism piece, with elements of illustration as well. It has these elements because it could be anchored to a newspaper story to help accompany the written copy.

This particular image conveys expressive photographic features but isn’t actually fully showing the subjects full facial features so can’t be branded an expressive photography piece.

Even though this image looks controlled, due to the pose, it’s actually candid photography with good timing from Adrian Dennis.

The main/central focus of the image is Andy Murray and the Wimbledon trophy. This is further clarified by the photographer, who blurs the background to leave the consumer in no doubt.

Lighting used in the image is natural because of the on location setting. Artificial light wouldn’t have been possible to add in this situation, unless added via post-production

The blurred effect twinned with the busy background which includes the fans, gives the image a repetitious feel to it.

The photo suggests that the fans continue for many more tiers, which makes the achievement look even more greater. This is done by the blurriness of the background and the photographers choice of what to put in the actual photographic frame.

A feature which Adrian Dennis hasn’t used is various angles. If a low vantage point would have been used, Murray's achievement would have looked greater because it would seem your looking up to him. However, the emotions on the subjects face wouldn’t have been communicated to the audience and some effectiveness may have been lost.

A wide lens was used for this image because a telephoto lens would have meant the entirety of the background, which gives it many good features, would not have been captured.

In the Frame, Adrian Dennis manages to depict a picture within a picture. This is a technique that only a few photographers capture or manage to capture. This type of image shows how real and part of everyday life athletes are.

This photograph is a documentary image. You can see this because it aims to capture an event or individual, instead of a natural environment, like landscape photography.

New and unconventional techniques are in place in this photograph. This is due to this image been a candid image capturing a posed photograph. This is very unusual in photography, which is furthered by the blurring of the actual image and the central focus been the camera phone instead. The blurred effect is similar to the previous Andy Murray example, except the picture within a picture is not captured like this one.

The light that is available is bright, however, not high key lighting because of the shadow at the back of the photograph, instead it’s a very well lit photograph.

Space within the photograph shows that the image goes back quite a bit after the central focus. This technique suggests the photographer is trying to show how many people want to get in the picture with one of the greatest athletes, while showing it’s busy and not a passive scene. The fans are captured in this way by Adrian Dennis using a low vantage point and a high angle to show the high quantities of fans.

Space within the photograph shows that the image goes back quite a bit after the central focus. This technique suggests the photographer is trying to show how many people want to get in the picture with one of the greatest athletes, while showing it’s busy and not a passive scene. The fans are captured in this way by Adrian Dennis using a low vantage point and a high angle to show the high quantities of fans.

Dynamic range is used to good effect in the photograph. The colourful and bright scene at the forefront of the image, before going to darkness and shadowing a the back. This is done because it adds enigma to the amount of fans in that darkness at the back, as well as making the bright colours stand out more at he front of the image.

The intention of this image was to show a unconventional style could be very popular, thus the image been one of the reason for Adrian Dennis’s 2013 photography success.

The main theme in the image is continuing the photography type best suited to Adrian, a sports photography piece.

Like his Usain Bolt photograph, this example is also unconventional to photojournalism and documentary photography. It’s unconventional because it’s got a high vantage point, while taking a birds eye view of the action. Documentary photography traditionally relies on expressive photographs of people, which therefore means a lower vantage point is normally taken.

Due to the nature of Adrian Dennis’s work, as sports photographer, candid photographs are the norm for this kind of field. This is due to the subject not been able to stage or pose while performing the tasks Adrian photographs.

Another unusual thing about the composition of this image is the lighting. While it’s got elements of low-key lighting, such as the many shadows in this image, all of the image, including the central focus, are all visible.

The image manages to look busy with only one main subject in the initial photograph. Shadow is used to great effect and allows the image to look less passive, compared to if the image was taken from a level ground vantage point.

What furthers the effectiveness of the image is the photograph could be almost monochrome, if it weren’t for the addition of the bright colours added to the central focus. It’s a real contrast between the dark of the shadows and the light and vibrant colours at the centre of the image. This photograph also gives a good example of dynamic range, where it changes from dark to light, back to dark again.

This photograph is one of only a handful that have been analysed, which can be considered ‘concluded’. This means that the consumer can be confident that the subjects/objects stop and don’t continue past what’s been captured in the frame. Like in the other Adrian Dennis images, he’s left the consumer to decide how far the crowd go up, where as in this image he doesn’t. This is done predominantly by the vantage point been high and angled down, while all the subjects, including the crowd, stop in the original image, instead of been cut out halfway.