Shoot 6

Shoot 6

Plans for my Shoot

Artist Influence - Ben Boswell & Alexey Titarenko

Ben Boswell

This shoot was heavily influenced by Ben Boswell's photos of London Underground stations. I have completed a previous shoot in relation to his work and I focused on quite a small platform. I would like to use his ideas and compositional features in order to capture photos involving the movement of people. Although Ben Boswell doesn't specifically look at the movement of people I like the composition of his images. I specifically like the photo above because I like the way the camera is looking down the platform as this shows you more of the station itself. I would also like to involve an element of movement of trains because I think that this has connotations of the consistency and constant public transport in London.

Alexey Titarenko

Throughout this shoot I have been  influenced by Alexey Titarenko's use of movement within his work. I like the way he has used movement to make a train station seem very busy and crowded however he has just captured the movement of a select few people. I like the way you can see the progress of someone's movement through the image above. This is something that I would like to focus on but I want to do this in a different way. I would like to capture this movement by taking photos of the same location multiple times as people are moving. This will show the movement of different people but rather than being in one photo, like Titarenko has done, I would like to show this through multiple images.

Contact Sheet

The aim of my shoot was to capture movement on train platforms rather than in large stations like I had done previously. I wanted to show the business of the underground stations themselves rather than just the station in general. I feel as though this was successfully captured because I was able to take photos that included a lot of movement and also from a range of angles that I feel were very effective. An unsuccessful element of the shoot was that one of the platforms I visited was not very busy. This was due to the station not being a well known station and also I completed this shoot on a Sunday. Although one of the stations was not busy I did manage to capture some busier stations and get some very interesting photos.

My Best Images

2.5 S     F/25    ISO 200

I have chosen this as one of my best images because I feel as though the angle that the photo has been taken from resembles the composition of some of Ben Boswell's images. I also like the movement that has been portrayed. I feel as though this image could have connotations of the chaos of London train stations.

2 S   F/22   ISO 200

I have chosen this as one of my best images because I like the way the photo captures the movement of only one person. I think that this shows someone's individual experience at a station rather than a large group of people. I also like the way the camera is directly facing the woman because I feel as though this focuses your attention onto the woman. The composition of this image resembles Ed Ruscha's photos. This is because he takes his photos directly facing the object he is photographing and also uses a wide depth of field which I have done within this photo.

 2 S    F/29    ISO 100

I have chosen this as one of my best images because I like the way the consistent movement of a select few people has been captured. This reflects Alexey Titarenko's work because he has captured movement in train stations using a few people but made it look as though there is a lot of people there.

Images That Require Improvement

1 second    f/29     ISO 100

This photo requires improvement because it is under exposed. When taking this photo I used a shutter speed of 1 second. Due to the photo being taken on a train platform there was no natural light. This meant that when using this shutter speed not enough light could be let into the camera. This was also due to the fact that I was using a high aperture. If I were to retake this photo using a shutter speed of 1 second I would decrease the aperture. 

2 seconds    f/22     ISO 200

I have chosen this as an image that requires improvement because there is no movement within the photo which was what I wanted to portray within this shoot. There is slight elements of movement but it is not obvious when looking at the image. I think that this was partly because there was not enough people on the platform in order to capture enough movement. If I were to retake this photo I would use a longer exposure time to clearly capture the small amount of movement that was happening whilst I was taking the photo.

Camera Settings and Equipment

Throughout this shoot I used a canon eos 400d and I also used a tripod in order to capture movement. The reason I used a tripod was because I wanted the entire image to be still whilst I captured the movement of the people walking. Due to using a long shutter speed I needed to use a high aperture. This was because I did not want to let too much light into the camera as this would have resulted in over exposed images. When I was at the first station I used a shutter speed of 2.5 seconds, an aperture of f/25 and ISO 200. I used this aperture due to the shutter speed being so long. There was some artificial lighting within the photo therefore I was cautious as to what aperture I used because I did not want the images to be over exposed. In the second station that I went to I used a slightly lower shutter speed of 2 seconds. I also used an aperture of f/22. The reason I slightly lowered the aperture when taking these photos was because there was less light at this station. This meant that if I had kept the aperture at f/25 the images would have been under exposed. I continued to use ISO 200 at both of these stations due to not being in natural lighting. When I was at the third station I was on an outside platform. This meant that the environment was slightly lighter and so I needed to use a lower ISO and a higher aperture. This was because a higher aperture means the lens opening of the camera is smaller and therefore will let in slightly less light. This was why I used an f-stop of 29.  

A03

When creating ideas for this shoot I was looking at my previous shoot and I wanted to incorporate elements from multiple shoots that I had created. I decided to focus on the work of Alexey Titarenko because this was the photographer that I previously focused on and I liked his work with movement. I also liked how my previous photos looked and I wanted to expand upon this idea. I then took elements from Ben Boswell's work. He photographed London train stations and some of his images looked at the train platforms. This inspired me to include this within my work and to incorporate some of his compositional elements within my work. I feel as though this worked and made my photos very effective. I also feel as though this shoot works very well with my previous shoot to show the business of London train stations as it allows you to see the different areas of a train station and the business of these areas. A lot of inspiration for my edits within this shoot came from research into different kinds of diptych techniques within photography. When looking online many photos using this technique incorporated only two images that were similar to each other however I wanted to use more than one image so I was inspired by the photo below. I wanted to use this technique but use four pictures rather than three. I felt as though this would be very effective for this shoot because I captured photos in the same locations but with different elements of movement in them and I wanted to be able to edit them so that this could be seen.

Edits

Firstly I copied and pasted each photo onto a blank canvas that I created. 

I then used cmd+T to resize the photos and move them into the desired position. During these edits I wanted to created a square of photos.

I then used the crop tool to alter the size of the entire canvas, ensuring that there was an even border around the edge of the photo.

Once all of the photos were in the desired position I merged all of the layers together so that I could edit the image as a whole. I then altered the image to black and white and used the curves tool to further deepen he contrast within the image. I then added a grain to the photo. 

My Final Images

Progression

In order to progress onto my next shoot I would like to move away from capturing movement and focus on photographing elements of underground stations. I would like to do this because I feel as though it would be interesting to have some photos taken in a station that is not busy so I can capture the train station itself.