Photography Project Evaluation

After being introduced to a number of street photographers last week I was particularly interested in using street photography in my project. I thought since the streets are our everyday surroundings it made sense to use them as a way of presenting our memories. The story behind my photos is that once I walked through Piccadilly listening to soundtrack of the grand Budapest hotel and now as a result I am reminded by the film whenever I walk through the street. I found places and objects in the street that reflect key themes and motifs in the film. After taking the photos I edited them on Lightroom. I took each picture in portrait as the film the Grand Budapest Hotel has varying aspect ratios and I thought this would be an interesting thing to explore in my photos. My main research consisted of looking at reference images from the film; however I also looked at the work of Matt Stuart as his street photography is humorous and uses a lot of vibrant colour as well being set around the streets of London which I thought captured what I was trying to do with this particular project as well.

Research

       

Final photos

1. The package presented in this picture is from the bakery patisserie Valerie to mirror the pastry boxes shown in the film. In Lightroom I played around with the colours so that the pink(being one of the colours used in the film) stood out boldly against the more muted surroundings. In all of my photos I was keen to experiment with the aperture and learn how to produce a greater depth of field. I was interested in the background being out of focus as it reflected how the real world was drowned out my the music I was listening to and the only elements that I was focussing on in the streets were the objects that reminded me of the film.

2.This photo was taken in the Burlington arcade and I dressed Caitlin in a purple hat and cardigan the same as protagonist Zero in the film. Similar to the previous image I altered the colours in Lightroom to make the purple clothing stand out. In the crit I was told that it would be better if I had waited until the arcade was completely empty and there was no passersby. I personally disagree with this feedback and had deliberately chosen to include pedestrians in the peripherals of this images because again I thought it further highlighted the idea that for many people this street in Picadilly is just a normal street where they abide by their daily business whereas for me it holds a lot more memories as I had been listening to the soundtrack of the film.

3. I feel this photo is my weakest photo. It is a picture of the Ritz Hotel,again keeping with the theme of a grand hotel. Similar to my last photo it shows a pedestrian walking past for the same reason and I added a purple hue in Lightroom. I used a low shutter speed in hopes of showing a blurred motion of the man walking past. Overall I do think this photo is quite messily done. To improve I would perhaps taken a long with me a tripod because I struggled to hold the camera up high enough to capture the entire window in the frame. The other reason I would've used a tripod is because I was using a low shutter speed in relatively low light. I also think that I should've planned my day a littler better as I ended up taking this photo as the sun was setting and I didn't have any external lighting with me either so make the images sharper so perhaps if I had arrived a little earlier I would've been able to take the picture in the daylight. I also think the edit is quite sloppy on this photo as when I cropped the sides the right hand side of it shows more wall than the left hand side. I think with practice I will get better at using Lightroom but these are all things I should take into consideration next time I do any photography.