Final Photos

   

 

 

So these are my final 6 photos. I aim to provide a feeling to audience that Chinese people like to stick together all the time. Within their groups, they share happiness, joyfulness, love, and care. Most of the photos we can see the Chinese people are smiling or laughing, audience basically can interpret the Chinese are living happily in the UK most of the time. Through the interaction, movement, facial expression and gesture of each individual taken in each image, I would say it is remarkable to express my feeling about Chinese togetherness with the narrative between each image.  But how audience perceive the meaning of the images may differ, everyone have their own experience , history, memories , which all could affect the presumption. As Berger noted, ‘Yet when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affect by a whole series of learnt assumptions about art such as ‘truth’, ‘form’,’status’, ‘taste’, etc.’ (Berger J., 1972)

 

Project Milestone + Edit (5+6)

The fifth and sixth photo is related to activities that Chinese students always do. Standing as a 1st person experience, hot pot is a kind of dinner which a lot of Chinese love, and it forms the joyfulness and warmness into the same table. We share the same one or two pot, and we put foods into it. It is a very warm and happy thing to do with close friends, family or partners.

As well as previous photos, i have used Photoshop to crop and adjust the brightness in this last two photos as well. The 5th one, we can see from the original photo, there is enough amount of light and the quality of light is tend to a warm colour – yellow / orange. So I haven’t done much about adjusting the brightness in this photo. But the last photo, it is taken in a Karaoke room. Less light is in the room but I didn’t have any flash gun with me. Therefore I have to adjust the photo to brighter but preventing to make the photo look too artificial with the light.

Project Milestone: Edit (3+4)

The third photo I have chosen was outside a Taiwanese tea shop -Chatime. Following on the day I have failed to shoot in a style I intended to, I have waited near the shop for an hour to capture photos of Chinese people.

 

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I have cropped out the women on the left and allow all 4 Chinese more centred in the frame. I have adjusted the brightness into brighter since the colour of the people clothes are dark, it is less likely to see the contrast when the photo turns into black and white.

The fourth photo was a bit tough for me to pick. For the one with the bus crossing, I like the movement of the bus and it doesn’t affect the focus of the group of Chinese in the bus stop. However, I finally picked the first one, the one without the bus. It is because the photo looks more clear and easy for audience to identify who they are, what they are doing, and above all, the form of narrative between the six final pictures.

  The 4th photo I will pick into my project.

 

 

The one i gave up because of the quality and depth of field is a bit shallow and out focus.

 

Project Milestone+ Edit (1+2)

I have taken some photos which are relevant and suitable for my final project: Chinese Togetherness .

The first one I will show here is a picture features three Chinese lady waiting the traffic light. The random smile, gesture and pose looks comfortable in the group, I can identify the lady ‘chit-chat’ or ‘gossip’ in this picture.

 

 

I have slightly cropped the photo in order to allow the ladies fit equally in the rule of third as shown as below:

 

As I have mentioned in weeks ago, I would like my project in Black and white photos. But the thing is , I do not hope audience feel I use Black and White as if I have to, but it is the expression that I would like to give out.

 

The second photo I chose it a group of Chinese who dress like hikers, I have shown the whole movement and process of this group of people walk. And I have decided to choose the second one because in that one, people act more natural and it is easy to identify the interaction within the group. However I will crop the photo in order to make the group more likely to become the ‘subject’ in the frame and eliminate the space on the left.

Key Photographer: William Klein

William Klein was born in 19 April 1928, who is a French born in American. He had a great approaches in both photographer and filmmaker.  He is a photojournalist and fashion photographer in his stylish black and white colour scheme. He was ranked in 25th best professional photographers over a hundred competitors.

His photographs started to give energy on mid 1950s, about taking photos and portrait in the city, predominantly in New York city. He also played a role in film. In 1966, Klein directed his first feature film, Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? He has since directed many others, including the cinéma vérité documentary Grands soirs et petits matins, the 1964 documentary Cassius the Great, re-edited with new footage as Muhammed Ali, The Greatest in 1969.

Last but not least, he started his work on organising and holding French tennis championship “Roland-Garros’ in 1982, entitles that his work was getting more and more important to the public and increasing influential, which he had contributed a lot to the society.

 

 

Random Practice

After doing the presentation on Robert Frank, I am totally inspired by I have been his great works.  I decided to go to Brighton and practices how to take some inspiring street photographs, which could help me to do my final project as well.

Here are some photos which I have used Photoshop to either crop, add filters, turn black & white or adjust brightness and contrast, in order to fit in the best way to express my thoughts.

 

I like these photos, each photo says a thousand of words through its randomness of the people, the location background, facial expression ,etc.

It gave me a great push to work forward on my project in this style.

Flash Light Shooting

This is the first time I have used the flash gun to take photographs. With the use of flash gun, I can take photo with fast shutter speed even the room has almost no light.

Also, I have played along with some effects of the light, I switch to a relatively slow shutter speed like 1/4 and I panned my camera at once after I pressed the shutter, this makes the bit of light across the image like below.

The portrait is my classmate- Nikki.

  

  

Key Photographer Presentation: Robert Frank

Robert Frank

http://prezi.com/owrprxjiolhl/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Above link is the prezi online version.

 

History background

• His father became stateless after WWI and hence failed to apply the Swiss citizenship of Frank
• After the WWII, Frank tended to escape from the limit of his family business and started learning photography.
• He was trained under a few photographers before he created his first album in 1946. Sooner he emigrated to the U.S. in 1947.
• He then found a job in New York City n work as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, which is a women’s fashion magazine.
• But Frank found the scope of the job was too limited, he left to Peru and created another hand-made book of photographs and returned to the U.S. in the 1950s as a freelance photographer.
• In 1957- 1959, Frank traveled across the U.S. and took around a total of 28,000 shots in different cities.

Inspirations

• Henri Cartier- Bresson : When Frank first moved to New York, one of the first photography exhibitions he saw was by Henri Cartier- Bresson . Frank was deeply impressed and he said he had the feeling that he could do something else, he wanted to try them and do them. But he realised that merely following some other photographers works or use the same equipment they used wouldn’t create any interesting or unique art. Frank understand the importance of originality, which you may have inspirations from the others, but you need to be unique to your own style and work.
• Walker Evans : Frank leaned many lessons from him although they share different style of works. He worked in a methodological manner which often use a large-format camera and wanted to create transparent and objective photographs, Frank learnt the importance of how a photo to be more reflective rather than spontaneous and gradually he shot much more with emotion and feeling. For Frank, the feeling that the viewer got from the photograph was the most important.
• Edward Steichen: He is one of the most influential photographer of all time and he gave a lot of advice to Frank when Frank was still a young lad. He advised Frank to get closer to his subjects not just physically but emotionally, he stressed the importance of getting to know ‘the soul of man’. After hearing his advice, Frank went to Wales where he photographed a miner named Ben James. Frank spent a few days to live with the miner, follow his daily life and work. All he tried to do was get into the life of a miner. This kind of training of early traditional documentary photography had a great impact to Frank himself into his ‘Americans’ project.

On the other hand, Steichen also advice Frank not to do photography full-time. The thing is he would like Frank to keep photography separate from the need to earn a living, so that Frank could focus on taking photography purely based on his favour and personal style.

• Alexey Brodovitch: When Frank was young, he mostly shot with a medium-format camera. He suggested Frank to switch for a 35mm Leica, which could create more immediate, fluid images. Also, He encouraged Frank to get out of his comfort zone, change his old habits and go to take risks, which we can understand later in the album of ‘The Americans’ .

 

  

  

Society Reactions

• ‘The Americans’ was contrast with Franks earlier work which was described as “graphically rich, and poetically elliptical”.
• It is a highly influential photographic book in post-war American photography.
• “his basic reaction might well have been one of dumb amazement as he investigated the gaudy insanities and strangely touching contradictions of American culture.”
• This divergence from contemporary photographic standards gave Frank difficulty at first in securing an American publisher

Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written about The Americans as social analysis:
Robert Frank’s (…) enormously influential The Americans is in ways reminiscent both of Tocqueville’s analysis of American institutions and of the analysis of cultural themes by Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. Frank presents photographs made in scattered places around the country, returning again and again to such themes as the flag, the automobile, race, restaurants—eventually turning those artifacts, by the weight of the associations in which he embeds them, into profound and meaningful symbols of American culture.

And this photo ‘Elevator’ is very famous, which capture the elevator girl who worked in a hotel. Her face, emotions, facial expression are something more than one meaning. The most interesting point in the photograph parts from the conception of social differences that Frank wanted to reflect. The young girl, the little elevator girl who is always ignored, is the only one who is focused, while the rest of the people, guests in an important hotel, are blurry. With this, the photographer shows us what normally goes unnoticed as the main point in the image.

“He saw in me something that most people didn’t see… that only people who were really close to me can see. It’s not necessarily loneliness, it’s … dreaminess.” said by Sharon Collins, whom the elevator girl found the photography years after the photos taken.

 

Test Shoot

Today I went to Brighton to do some test shots.

  

 

I have used Photoshop to crop and edit the brightness and contrast. Then I apply the black and white effect, which I wanted to do for my whole project. I want to use black and white to highlight shadow, make people’s face and emotion become outstanding. But the photo above is out of focus, the focus goes to the Black gentleman but not those Chinese. Sigh… guess I have to shoot another one.

And I pick this photo as well, I have cropped to allow the Chinese people stay inside the frame with the application of the rule of third.

    

I really like the right one, some students walking near ChurchChill Square, the shallow depth of field makes the photo easy to focus on them, although we can only see their back, but somehow it works with other photos, audience may still identify them with Chinese.

 

These are other available photos I have taken, I was supposed to capture the moment of Chinese people gather together and buy a drink happily, but I think I fail to express my feeling in the images. The control of aperture and shutter speed, camera distance and angle fail to offer a strong point of view.

Project Proposal Presentation

I have been advised and given feedback from the tutor about my potential idea of the project, I have to be very careful about the identity in relation to my cultural position. The idea of ‘Lost in Happiness’ is good but it may be difficult to connect identity to all photos. After considering this, I will choose another new theme, which is fairly related to my identity: Chinese. I have noticed that Chinese people like to stick together all the time, as I am doing the same as well. Unlike other ethnic groups, they may have mix of people from different countries, but Chinese don’t. Their group of friends seldom exist other ethnicity. I have done some research over the togetherness of Chinese.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-04-06/business/8601250547_1_chinese-american-traditional-chinese-values-open-space 

The article is linked above.  This article mention ‘The Chinese people, as with other ethnic groups, prefer to live among their own kind who speak the same language and share the same culture and values.’ So the main reason is Chinese may find difficulties to express their views and opinions to local UK people here because English is not their first language. It is easy to communicate as ‘colleagues’ or ‘classmate’ but hard to communicate as ‘friend’ or ‘bestie’. Therefore, Chinese people easy to form their groups of themselves rather than with local UK people.

Frankly ,this could be a shame of ourselves, our parents pay money to fly over thousands of miles to a new country to learn but we live and our social groups are still the same as our home countries.

Theme: ‘Chinese Togetherness’

Genre: Street Photography

Style: Candid Photography

Key address: Focus on the Chinese togethereness in UK

My position: Closely realted to myself, as I am one of these group of people.

 

 

These could be the way I do my project, but instead of other ethnic people, I will aim to shoot Chinese people on the street.

It is quite hard to search on the internet, so next week I will go to Brighton and have some test shooting.