The Photostory

Photostory- Cheltenham street photography project.

After looking at the brief I am very excited to get stuck in and already have the perfect project to shoot for it. I will be shooting some local shrimpers that are based around a local town where I am from called Southport. They are all artisan craftsman following the same techniques that have been used for a few hundred years passed down from generation to generation through the local shrimping family’s.

I started this project a couple of years ago unfortunately due to bad weather and a bad shrimping season I have been unable to get a shoot date arranged with the shrimpers. The art of tractor boat shrimping is starting to become less used due to the shrimp population being in decline and the art dying out with the latest generations not wanting to pick up the nets.

After planning the whole of this project around the shrimpers I have been unable to get a shoot organised due to bad health and weather. So although the shoot will go on it will unfortunately be in late April which will be too late for the Photo story project.

My second idea is to continue my street photography. Street photography is what I have a great passion for, I love capturing moments and the fast pace of street photography. I am also currently shooting a street photography project in Birmingham although I feel that I will not get sick of street photography.

I feel this is a great opportunity to shoot as much street photography as I can while testing out as many different style and techniques as I can that I have not already used in my past works. I started shooting street photography 3 years ago, after being introduced by my college tutors.

I will aim to reduce the amount of different camera I shoot on my current idea is to shoot on my Pentax ME super for more moment style shots as well as a Pentax 67 for more detailed shots and portraits.

I will also look back on past works and inspirations before going on to new inspirations that I will try and apply while out doing photography. My main aims while shooting will be to produce works that will eventually go into a book for a module at the end of second year. The works will go along side past works and future works that will hopefully be shot all over the UK and possibly some places in Europe.

After 3 years of photographing street and creating written research on photographers and research it has become boring and repetitive for me to do a research blog in the normal way. I will instead analyse my past street photography up until my current work providing an analysis of the photography as well as talking about my inspiration at the time. I will then go onto talk about photographers and other research relating to this specific project.

My earliest work.

looking at my earliest photographs I can see that my earliest inspirations Bruce Gilden and Thomas Leuthard really stood out in my work. The first shots clearly taken as inspiration from Thomas Leuthard I feel were very strong first street shots. I later found inspiration from Bruce Gilden takin the streets with a sigma 10-20mm. I ended with some very different looking street pictures I found the experiences frightening but pushed my confidence when coming to peruse later ideas and shots.

Early work 2

Later in my work after again losing love of Gilden I started looking at a little-known photographer at the time Vivian Maier who’s work made me look into pursuing self-portraits and also the art of working with reflection and incorporation of one’s self to get a clear image of the other side of the glass. An art I first fell in love with after getting inspirations from Thomas Leuthard but never incorporating myself until considering Maier’s works.

early work 3

Looking further in into my work my inspiration with Vivian Maier inspired what I know see as my long-term style. A style that I stick with mainly with my long term project. After shooting a man with a beautiful scarf he suggested I look further into the works of Henri Cartier Bresson someone I had never heard until then. I then started waiting for “The Decisive Moment” I waited for the perfect moment where the whole picture comes together.

Early works 4

Moving on to my first works produced on 35mm film again bringing all my inspirations using reflections on windows and waiting for “The Decisive Moment” I continued my work progression but I found it easier and better on film. Due to I found myself slowing down and thinking to consider the shot even more due to the cost and limited shots on film.

This I found helped my work progress further and faster than when I was shooting on digital. I decided to then convert to film shooting all my personal work and most academic work mainly on analogue formats.

Early works 5

My works started to include glass as a way of obscuring and creating depth to an image I also started to play with reflections and self portraits being added into the street pictures. I also started looking into Alex Webb at this time looking at his works due to my love of obscuring and creating depth in the image.

Early works 6

My work went on delivering the same style for a while until a photographer by the name of Tom Wood visited my college. Wood becoming well known for his work in photographing on the buses and also the youth of Merseyside from 1978-1996. Wood told us about his way of shooting from the hip as well as eye level as this gets a completely different style and take on the world. He was right it really did I spent the next few weeks photographing from the hip chest and all places swinging my ME super in front of passers-by left right and centre. Of course this didn’t just get me good shots it also got me faster and faster with my now favourite camera which I will be using for this project the Pentax ME super. The Pentax ME super a 35mm camera that I picked up with a 50mm 1.7 for 25 pound on Ebay was made between 1979-1984.

I find this camera amazingly fast, easy and intuitive to use finding its more like an extension than a camera with all controls at the tips of your fingers giving you more and faster control of the creation of your photograph.

After the meeting with Tom wood I began to again document my journey to and from college on the buses for the next couple of years at university. It was around this time I had my first encounter with the police a couple of weeks later picture on the bottom right.

Luckily, I had been looking in depth into my rights as a street photographer from the start researching mainly on YouTube and the metropolitan police website and their recommendations for confrontations with the police about this matter. I also had a copy of the law I had handy to present to the owner of the jewellery store (The owner of the hand in the picture) and the police when they arrived.

Early work 7

I was lucky enough to have the experience of traveling to both Ostuni and Berlin. I found the light in Berlin to be breath-taking especially when it came to reflections which I found myself mainly focusing on. Although 3 days was all I had so unfortunately not a lot of work was created. I also found the light in Ostuni to completely different the light being very strong bright almost always direct sunlight.

I found both city’s both challenging and exciting but I think I got great shots out of both I also noticed my style changed in both this is when I started to realise the ways of shooting and both mine and the viewer’s perspective of my photography and me photographing them.

After shooting for all this time I have noticed all the different things that go together to make my photography. This starts with the equipment I use this can completely change the look to the picture as well as the reaction that my subject has towards both me and the when looking at the camera. I found that the clothes that I wear also drastically alters the way someone looks at my camera. As well as changing the way my subject reacts in my pictures. I believe that my consideration not only towards the final outcome of the image I.E. how the image is made a looks down to the f stop and shutter speed I use as well as the equipment, but also towards my subject is what will make my photography stand out.

My research along with my photography I hope tells a story and shows the progression of my street photography along the years with clear influences along the way, My main aim for the Photostory is the progression of my own style within street photography.

My main idea is to change every aspect of myself when shooting street as well as my equipment to see how this may affect my street photography mainly about how my subjects react to the camera.

I have found that in the past different cameras gave me different reactions as well as when I wore my hood up blocking my subjects view of me gave me a bit more time to shoot I found.

I will not only just change my cameras and equipment but start to change the cloths I wear. As well as how I wear them as I believe that this may change the way I shoot the way I am perceived and reacted to by my subjects hopefully changing my photography entirely.

I have also decided to change my persona and try and display different emotions as this affect the way that I photograph the people around me as well as the style of photography I stick with and what I can see in the street scene. It also I found changes the way that people react to me looking more intimidated or more welcoming and curios towards the camera.