Hi Marcel thanks for submitting to Crit My Pic with your image I’ve titled Red Commuters, although red angry faced commuter might be a better description. Instantly you’re drawn to the lady, who looks a little disgruntled in a way which reminds us all about the pleasures of public transport.
Theres been a lot of talk and banter on our G+ community page regarding film over digital. Street Hunters are quite divided on the subject; digital is the lazy art of photography, and analogue some weird ju ju akin to Alchemy or digital shooters are the jedi masters of speed and agility and film buffs doddery relics of a golden age.
I shoot digital, although as an artist I believe having a fixed position, especially when in the early stages of your training is restricting. So with that in mind, a few weeks ago I happened to be browsing through E-Bay and stumbled upon a Yashica Electro 35. £9 plus £6.15 p+p.( please use a currency converter – in short the camera was being sold for less than four pints of lager) In the description the owner had written ‘ This was my grandfathers, I think it still works.’ As a sucker for the sentimental I was now riven with E-Bay fever. Click, and after 17hrs of waiting, the e-mail arrived! I was now the owner of the Yashica. It arrived 6 days later, and these are my thoughts.
This image immediately peaked my interest with my love of all things Martin Parr and Coney Island by Bruce Gilden. The Beach is a treasure trove of the natural and the grotesque both in behaviour and characters. We have tattoos, trainers and what is called in the UK ‘Wife Beater’ – cans of Stella Artois, oh and look a warm bottle of white wine for the girls!
Although I do have a penchant for making something the focus of the image, there is in this image the grand idea of the beach snapshot, wide and unfocused, a broad comment on the culture….BUT thirds rule in my world and so it is where I always always begin.
Josef Koudelka was born in 1938, trained as an aeronautical engineer until 1967 when he decided to take up photography.
He had returned from a project photographing gypsies in Romania just two days before the Soviet invasion, in August 1968. He witnessed and recorded the military forces of the Warsaw Pact as they invaded Prague and crushed the Czech reforms. Koudelka’s negatives were smuggled out of Prague into the hands of the Magnum agency, and published anonymously in The Sunday Times Magazine under the initials P. P. (Prague Photographer) for fear of reprisal to him and his family.
His pictures of the events became dramatic international symbols. In 1969 the “anonymous Czech photographer” was awarded the Overseas Press Club’s Robert Capa Gold Medal for photographs requiring exceptional courage.
This lovely scene was dropped into the office by Ditch Mingo and a subject well worth spying through the viewfinder and admittedly a difficult image to improve upon, as any more time spent would have the girl looking either at the camera or being disturbed in some way but I feel there might be some post which could just help direct the audience more keenly to the subject.
As you might notice Henning I’ve changed the title of your image to Oslo Nine. This is because rather than it being taken in Oslo and was 9th in the series, on first glance, it felt like an underground bunker of some secret military base. Who knows what is going on?who knows who is who? And the POV , the so called ‘rats eye’ view really helps sell the story to me.
There is a really strong exit point in the image and your eye is immediately led down past the feet, across and past the pillars into the free air outside. The exit point is as near as dammit on thirds, as is the floor level, which all mark this out to be a classy image. I always ask though how could it be better.
I’ll deal with the irrational better first. She could be wearing heels and dropping a smoking cigarette. Chances of achieving that? Very little but it just gives you another insight as to how I see the image.
It’s time to sharpen the pencil and consolidate a period of time measured out in 1000’s of your images in an effort to move forward consciousnessly by understanding your unconscious previous work.
Parked in yellow folders there are big folders, little folders, placebo folders,4wd folders in the digital multi storey car park of your computers memory….hundreds of folders…..thousands of images……..so much has changed…..
It would be easy to leave it.
Thanks for dropping this one in to Crit My Pic Edward, lets dive in and see what we have.
A busy street scene, in amongst modern architecture. There are some great colours and contrasting colours going on, some bright points and darks. So my first thought would be what aspect is the crux of the image story…is it the people or their environment? I ask this because it helps me focus editing. If it’s the ‘smallness’ of the population going about their same day business, then we need them ‘small’ but if it’s something like the similarity of people (which there seems to be a lot of in this image) then make that the focus. Currently I don’t feel there is a focus for your audience to hang on to. This can be fixed in the crop and brought about by, as I always mention, the thirds hotspots. I am trying to develop taking these in the viewfinder but because of the parallax between lens and viewfinder it is always off and I have to compensate with some cropping in post although more and more not using cropping to find the story.
We’re really pleased to announce that at this Sunday 11th May we will be hanging out with street photographer Charlie Kirk in a Q+A session. Seats are very limited and can only be offered on a first come first serve basis.
The event will be recorded and posted on our You Tube channel and our GooglePlus Page soon after the close of the Q+A.
Gathering at 21:50 Central European Time for quick introductions and hellos! The Q+A will begin at 21:00 CET. Just to avoid confusions, you can check your local time for the event using a world time website such as Time.is.
If you want to learn more about our Special Guest, mr. Charlie Kirk you can visit the links provided below.
I have downloaded the short version of ‘Everybody Street’ onto my main computer.|It sits on my desktop and in the low moments where the doors of creativity are closing , I crank up my useless speakers and listen, listen and watch. I really do feel the force of the players in the short movie. Gilden, Boogie and that chappie who’s name I can never remember but says ‘ If…If I can’t do this, if it’s too much, then I’m in the wrong business’ and he loops his camera over his shoulder.
I’m not a music fan, in fact 9.9/10ths of the time I work in complete silence except for the chatterings of my mind, which I can assure you aren’t musical in the slightest BUT because of the video above and it’s inspiring soundtrack I do now, should I need a stand up and get going tune listen to:
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