Exercise 21 - Making Figures Anonymous

What: The main brief of this exercise was to use certain techniques to photograph a person or persons making them anonymous and less prominent than the area that they are in.

Where: Various Locations

When: Differing times.

How: While out photographing other exercises and other practices I kept an eye out for situations where I could photograph people making them anonymous against the background of the location that they were in.

I chose these photographs for the exercise as I feel that they work very well in making the people within the images completely anonymous and indistinguishable against the foreground of the image. I liked how doing this exercise forced the people into the background and made the balance of the image weigh towards the surrounds rather than the people.

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Nikon D80, Aperture Mode Manual, focal length 25mm (35mm equivalent 37mm), aperture f9.5, speed 1/45 second, ISO 3200, Shade white balance, Spot metering, Beanbag mounted camera, 18-70mm lens,

I really like this staircase, the way that the lines are out of balance with the rest of the building gives me a small happy feeling. I just like the out of kilter perspective of the image.

Here the person is walking up the stairs their back is the camera and they are also small against a large space. The fact that you cannot see the persons face means that you have to apply your own experience of the location to them. In this case I believe the person was enjoying the location.

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Nikon D80, Aperture Mode Manual, focal length 70mm (35mm equivalent 105mm), aperture f9.5, speed 1/90 second, ISO 3200, Auto white balance, Spot metering, Hand Held camera, 18-70mm lens,

I noticed a number of people walking backwards and forwards over a high gantry way between two parts of the building. Part of the structure had vertical slats on it and as people walked past it gave them a zoetrope style of movement. I waited until one of the people started to walk back and I captured them as they passed between the slats, partially obscuring them from view. I like fact that they are shadow like and by pushing into the partial view that they are phased out of the image and that the attention is given to the location rather than the individual.

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Nikon D80, Aperture Mode Manual, focal length 52mm (35mm equivalent 78mm), aperture f27, speed 15 seconds, ISO 100, Auto white balance, Spot metering, Bean bag mounted camera, 18-70mm lens,

I was watching the visitors as they milled around the car at the entrance of the building. The car is one of the formula 1card driven by a childhood hero who I discovered was also very dyslexic. I wanted to take a long exposure showing motion blur as I wanted to capture the different lengths of time that people stopped at the car. Motion blur also makes them anonymous pushing the balance over to what they are looking at rather than the people themselves.

DSC_0062- A failed experiment

Nikon D80, Aperture Mode Manual, focal length 52mm (27mm equivalent 40mm), aperture f19, speed 2 seconds, ISO 3200, Flash white balance, Spot metering, Hand Held camera, 18-70mm lens, Strobe flash

Here I attempted to combine motion blur with multiple exposure using a fast strobe flash. Unfortunately all that happened was that the fast strobe blurred the image more than I expected, perhaps if the camera had been better supported and the location darker it may have made a difference.

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Nikon D80, Aperture Mode Manual, focal length 50mm (35mm equivalent 78mm), aperture f1.8, speed 1/500 second, ISO 800, Auto white balance, Spot metering, Hand Held camera, 50mm lens,

While photographing the Chinese lanterns exhibition I noticed that I could silhouette people against the lanterns if correctly composed. I tried a number of shots before this obtaining this image. Here the figure is silhouetted against the lanterns and the reflections of the lanterns and has almost disappeared against the light. The person body shape almost mirrors the stance of the figures that she is observing.

SUNP005

Bonzart Ampel Tilt Shift Camera, Aperture Mode Auto, focal length 9mm (35mm equivalent 9mm), aperture f2.8, speed 1/30 second, ISO 100, Auto white balance, Multi Mode metering, Tripod mounted camera, 9mm lens,

I really wanted to try using a tilt shift lens to see if I could make figures anonymous, here the people are a distance away and although there is a large number of them and they fill quite a large space, by using the tilt shift lens the figures have been made to look small and model like anonymising them by our own concept of perspective which is fooled by the tilt shift lens.

This has been a good exercise as it has allowed me to work with ideas that I have had for a while as well as teaching me the concept of giving anonymity to figures within images through a variety of techniques.