Street Photography Assignment – Evaluation

Introduction

Following the brief for street photography  I researched the subject on the internet as it was a completely new area for me , the best way to define the subject is as the following:

‘Street photography is a type of documentary photography, it uses strong graphical lines, reflective surfaces and shadows and features people in public places such as streets and parks to capture a moment or tell a story in a single frame’.

I do feel that I am the least experienced in the class, however, I am prepared to give it my best shot and see how I get on.

Camera and Equipment

I started by borrowing a Pentax k1000 35mm film camera from the college store with a 50mm lens which is recommended by various street photographers as it means  you to get close to your subject.

It was the first time that I used a 35mm film camera but the light meter made it pretty simple to use, though manual focusing slowed my work down a little.

It wasn’t practical to keep borrowing a camera from the college store and returning it the next day I therefore purchased a Canon camera from ebay (which unfortunately  didn’t work properly)  I then bought a Canon Av 35mm film camera with a 50mm lens, this is a nice camera with few settings and aperture priority but I decided to stick with it to complete my assignment. 

Getting the right equipment was important, however, it delayed my work by a couple of weeks so I had less time to complete the assignment.

The second film that I loaded into the camera didn’t load properly and both my money and time were wasted taking shots, as I didn’t realise till I developed the film that it had all come out blank, lesson learned – always ensure that the film is loaded correctly in the camera and follow the manual for your equipment to fully understand the equipment and its settings before venturing out to take photographs as you may not get the same opportunity again especially when you are doing street photography and most shots are taken at the spur of the moment.

Developing and Printing

Working in complete darkness was quite awkward at first, the most difficult part being to wind the film onto the reels, which if not done correctly could mean that parts of the film does not get developed properly and if the film is underdeveloped and the correct mixture and timing is not followed then you will get dark underexposed film  - as I found out when I printed my second contact sheet.

As I never done any previous manual developing and printing I wasn’t familiar with the darkroom equipment and enlargers.   I printed a number of photos but wasn’t happy with the quality, I then experimented with the equipment  i.e. enlarger lens, aperture settings on it, turning the filters on and off and finally looking at the picture in detail to fine tune the focusing and being able to see the grain in the picture and doing a number of test prints with different exposure times to produce better  prints. The results were much better than my previous prints as I realise it is important to do a number of test prints at different aperture settings and exposure times in order to get the right definition and contrast you want in a photo.  Most of my prints were done on glossy paper, however, I did finish some on a pearl effect paper which also gave a nice slightly matt effect.

Study Materials and Research

I looked at several books in the library including ‘Street Photography, from Atget to Cartier-Bresson’  and also followed the street photographer Eric Kim but found it easier to study using the internet as there was more study material and photographs to choose from. 

As I was a person that always said to other people that I don’t believe in Facebook etc, I did struggle with the concept of creating a blog and actually using it as a place to display and share my work which is why most of my work wasn’t uploaded till late on, I originally made notes on Microsoft Word before copying it on to my blog, however, this is changing and hopefully will improve.

Conclusion

Overall I have found this assignment a nice challenge, it has made everyone go ‘back to basics’ and go through the process of film photography right through to development and printing using basic equipment and my photographs  have turned out ok but am happy with the content as my first assignment.

The theme of street photography was different for me and made me develop my confidence as a photographer as well as approaching people and taking street photographs without fear.  I feel that this is reflected especially in the last two contact sheets as I managed to stand in the middle of the market with people looking at me and some people finally approached me to ask me what I was doing and I responded positively.