Umberto Verdoliva

Umberto Verdoliva is an Italian photographer who is best known for his street photography, he not only conducts street photography workshops but has his own group Spontanea which is dedicated to street photography.

In this photo it sees a person, which I believe is a woman cycling along a road. Like a lot of his images that I like it just has one person in it and a wide area of space around them. This image shows a lot of the area this person is cycling around, what I do like with not only this image but all of them is how you can just see the person as black and not any features of them are visible.

This cycling image I feel is the strong of the two as there is more going on in the photo you can see them at the roundabout. The actual person and bike is quite small in the photo as it shows a lot of the surrounding area and all the detail of the round and the roundabout and path markings as well which I really like. This is because it is not just a boring image of someone on a bike it has a lot more to it than just a bike and cyclist.

This image I also like as it just has one person sitting in a corridor and it shows the entire corridor which has a lot of detail to it. It has all the items on wall and the star hanging from the ceiling. The main thing I think people are wondering when you see this image is what is this good doing, I think that he is either drawing the corridor or maybe even having a smoke. All of the images are quite interesting and of course they look a lot better in black and white I feel than in colour.

Photo Shoot 2

In my second photo shoot I decided to not only photograph the "boring" but also test my skills on the rain drops and see if I could get a good image of them which I feel I did.

 These are just two of the images that I took on the shoot, they are two of my favourite image. I prefer the bike lock as looking at the leaves you can see the texture of the rain on them, they have a sort of slimy look to them which I really like. What I also like is that not many other people would have tried to get a photo of it as most people probably would have just walked past it and ignored it.

This is another one of the images that I liked, mainly because it focuses simply on the rain drops and the bar they are on and nothing else, the background is blurred out to give it a narrow depth of field. This image was originally not going to be part of the project I just wanted to take a picture like this, but I feel that it came out so well that I might well use it as a final piece but it will remain part of the project for certain.

Contact Sheet 2

Dimitri Mellos

Dimitri Mellos is a Greek photographer who is known for his street photography. Mellos would run around town pretending to take photographs when he was young, by using a camera not loaded with film.

 In this photograph I feel that it is quite good as it focuses on the one person, it also has a man who has been blacked out at the side, which is quite distracting but also adds something to the photo, and I do feel that the image would look really odd without the shadow. You can tell that he would have been in quite close proximity to the people, but he would have been really close to the person who is very close to the camera. The main things you think when you look at this photo is what is she holding, which is a spoon and what are they looking at.

 In this photograph it is showing a group of people who look like they are protesting against something. With the photo the people, the tape and the signs all have a wide range of colour on them which gives the photo a really good look to it. With this photo if you look carefully you can see that there is a wide range of ages in this photo which could mean that Mellos tried to find a area where there was a wide age group range or he just chose this area and was lucky that there was such a diverse age range. With the image, first things that come into mind are what are they protesting about and in my mind I was wondering what was the caution tape all about.

In this photo it has an elderly lady crossing the street and some people near her who look like they are trying to reenact a battle, but the lady is either oblivious to them or is ignoring them. This photo does have a lot of colour to it as the lady has a black dress on with loads of different colour spots, the people in the background also have a lot of different colours on their shields and helmets. Looking close at it and at her facial expression she is fully aware that there are there and she doesn't look amused by them. The main thing you wonder when looking at this photo is are they trying to recreate a battle and she's got in the way or are they trying to advertise something. I do also like how he has taken the image at a titled angle it makes it look different to an ordinary photo and gets more into shot.

William Eggleston

William Eggleston is an American photographer who is known for photographing what is perceived as the "boring". Despite this Eggleston has still created some brilliant and iconic images he is also

considered on of the greats in photography. Eggleston was born and has spent his entire life in Memphis, Tennessee. If you look over his photos those that are in colour he has used a wide range of colours which really do stand out. On the two photos taken outside the building on the top image and the pole on the bottom have similar shades of blue. The top image is more than likely an older image as some of the parked cars on the image do look quite old and it could have been taken in the 1960s or later. The other was taken during filming for a DVD that we saw when Eggleston was quite a bit older and was probably taken in the last five years or so.

On the top image the wide range of colours is shown from the blue sky, a different colour building, all the different colours of the cars and signs and the green of the grass. This I think actually makes the image look really interesting to look at even though it is whats considered the "boring". This is the same with the second image there is a bright baby blue pole with wire wrapped around it, the wire also has little things on it, these are also a wide range of colour on these which also makes them stand out. This image also has some clouds in the sky, not many and off in one corner, but they also add some colour and with all its colour it makes it a really good photo, I really like it because of this.

Proposal

For this project entitled Empirical Evidence I will be photographing the everyday life of mainly Burton I may if it I am able also Derby. I will also by photographing what is perceived as the boring like William Eggleston does but in my sort of style so that the images aren't too similar. I will be photographing this because this is something that I have never done before and it sounds quite interesting and when I did my first photo shoot it was really enjoyable.

As this is a location project, I won't have to book out the studio which will mean I won't have to wait to get photo shoots done, I can just go out onto location whenever I need to and this will speed up the process dramatically. In terms of where I am actually going, I will just be going around Burton and the places I will be going to will not need me to get any sort of permission before taking photos, but if I do need permission I will make sure that I do get it prior to shooting, if I can't get permission, I will just move on and shoot somewhere else instead. When it comes to the equipment that I need when I am at college I will be able to borrow a Canon 400D camera which I will be able to use I also have a 40D and 5D Mark III of my own that I can use at home if I need to do any shoots outside of college time. There isn't likely to be any risks in any of the shoots that I will be doing as I will not need to go to any places where risks will be taken to get the images.

With research I have looked into William Eggleston and I will also be looking into other photographers who have used a similar sort of style, I will also be looking into photographers who shoot the everyday life and street photographers, so that I can get some inspiration. I will ensure that I get photo shoots done as soon as possible so that I am not wasting time and that I am also not hurrying to get shoots done at the end of the project.

 

These are the sorts of images that I will be trying to achieve throughout the project, these are some of my early attempts.

 

These are some of William Eggleston's images that I hope will inspire me throughout the project and is what I am aiming for but with my own twist and take on them.

Initial Photoshoot

For the initial photo shoot I went around different areas of Burton that were less busy to focus on was is perceived as the boring this was one of my best photo shoots I enjoyed photographing the unconventional items and things that I could find around Burton.

Any little thing that I found that looked was is considered boring I photographed and I followed something else that William Eggleston does I decided to take just one photo of the item, this was on most photos. If the image didn't quite look right I did take another to try and get the photos right, but for most of the images I took one shot of each. It was something that I found really interesting and difficult at the same time. It was interesting as I had never photographed the "boring" before and this showed me what you can truly do with unconventional items and it is actually quite brilliant. It was also quite difficult because trying just to take one photo of a subject as you have just one chance at it and no redos.

During the entire time I found many different objects that could use and this really helped and I had such a wide range of images. I truly enjoyed this photo shoot I did and it has helped me for the rest of the assignment.

First shoot contact sheet

Initial Ideas

• Everyday life
• Derby
• Burton
• Nighttime photography
• wide range of places
• different places to previous project

The main plan is to go out around the different areas and simply photograph the everyday life in a sort of similar style to William Eggleston and photograph what he called the "boring".

Floating Images

The first mini task of this project was about creating a floating image, this was done by getting someone  to lie on a table or stool and having them pose on it as if they were actually floating. Then, without moving the camera, the person and the stool moves and they take a photo of the background. After this it was edited in photoshop, by getting the blank background and overlaying the other image over it. The  image with the person it is dragged to vector mask tool, before switching the colour at the colour box to black to ensure that when you use your brush tool it removes the stool and nothing else. After removing the stool some editing maybe needed to fix the colouring so that they match.

When it came to making my image the only problem that arose was trying to get the colours on the two photos right. This didn't take long to fix, I managed to fix it by using the levels, the burn tool and the clone stamp tool.

Introduction

This project is entitled Empirical Evidence and will be based around documentary and location photography. For this assignment we are required to produce at least one final image, they must be from the following themes: photojournalism, which can be the everyday or the unconventional, scientific or forensics or fictional documentary.

For this project we can use props to show proof of myths. We can also document the everyday, which would mean going out and about and shooting the areas around us over several days showing different areas and how it changes over these days. We can also document the unconventional, which would be a more abstract side of photography than if we were photographing the everyday and normal areas. This would be a very good way to show of photography and Photoshop skills. It could also be scientific photography, which would me collaborating with the science department and taking photos of the different equipment that they have.

Prior to doing this project, I can easily see that there is a lot that this project can be based around.