Evaluating My Images

Overall I am very pleased with my photographs which I have collected from the two location shoots. I found that going to explore the location first, and planning where I will be photographing, using maps, was very useful. It gave me a better idea of where to go and what to do on the test shoot. I found that on the test shoot, my intentions changed slightly from the beginning. It allowed me to realize I wanted to primarily focus on the people on the streets, rather then the different aspects of the location in general. When I was editing the test shoot images, I found due to the light conditions of the day, and the atmosphere I wanted to create, the images looked better in a mixture colour and Sepia. However, when I shot for the real shoot, I decided to edit them slightly underexposed and in black and white, to create a more dramatic series of images. I am happy with this choice, and next time I would have also edited some of the test shoot photographs in this way, to have a better idea of how they would turn out, before the final shoot. 

 

To further improve my images, next time I would have shot on the streets for longer on the final shoot, 2-3 hours, rather then 1, so I can have had photographed even more people, and had more images to choose from. Overall I am very happy with them, and believe that the five chosen images work very well together as a collection. I purposely chose some images shot in landscape and some in portrait, as I feel like a mixture of both works well for the final collection. Finally, I feel like the chosen images really start to tell a story about the people and the place of Preston, just as I set out to do, displaying really what Preston is all about, which is its people.

 

Five Chosen Photographs

Out of all my Photographs from the Preston town centre loaction shoots, I have chosen five final photographs. I believe that these photographs best document Preston, and capture the real people who live and visit there. 

'Mini Me'

'Times Never Change'

'Welcome To The Streets'

'Friends'

'Watching The People Pass'

Final Shoot On Location

For my final shoot on location, I stayed around the main high street of Preston as planned, photographing people on the streets, going about their day. I wanted to capture the cultural diversity of the city of Preston, and the general atmosphere of the location. Within the hour I was shooting, lots of people of different ages, genders, religions and ethnicites passed me, and I wanted to capture this through my photographs. I decided for this shoot that I wanted to complety focus on people within their surroundings, rather than have photographs only capturing buildings, signs, shops etc within Preston.

I once again used my Nikon d5000 DSLR camera, and used the 70-300mm lense or most of the shots, ans used the camera on manual mode, as I did for the test shoot. I had the camera set to a fast shutter speed, to capture people moving quickly with minimal blur. I also had it set it to low aperture, to give the image a shallow depth of field. This allows me to have the people or object that I am photographing as the main focus of my image, with a slightly blurred background. 

 

 

Test Shoot on Location

I decided to do a test shoot, so I had a better idea of where exactly along Preston high street I wanted to photograph for the real shoot. I aimed to photograph a variety of people, objects and buildings, to portray what Preston and start to tell some sort of story through my images. I wanted to try taking black and white, and coloured images, so I could see which worked better for this location.

I mainly photographed people who were moving, meaning I had to increase my shutter speed on my camera so not to get blurred images. I used a long lense (70-300mm) when I was shooting passers by, so I could shoot from further away, therefore getting more natural, relaxed shots of people, then if I was close up photographing them.

My Chosen Location

I am planning to shoot my photographs in the city centre of Preston. I wanted to set my photographs in a urban setting, capturing the people on the street around me. I will be staying on the main high street in Preston, and around the university. I will be shooting in these locations as it enables me to capture a wide diversity of people, due to the varied amount of facilities there is in the town centre. I am aiming to capture very natural shots of passers by, taking part in day to day activates.