Summary.

After the disappointment from my last idea for this project, I never thought I’d come back and create better images for this project. I was really knocked down and I never wanted to come back to this… Bit after settling back into uni and starting two more projects I felt I needed to come back to this project and ‘finish off’ what I started.

To help me gain some inspiration I looked though some ideas to help me with my new images I found a few images of the city lit up at night and some even accompanied by water that reflected their own image of the city. Even though I knew what I was doing unfortunately I didn’t get much help; I didn’t get much feedback from lectures until the very end, I ended up asking for feedback from friends and family. They helped out as much as they could; considering they didn’t know that much about what I was doing or even that much about photography.

I’m happy with the images I chosen; considering I didn’t have much time to do this – I worked with the what I could do. Some of the images that I have chosen for my finals could be better, some of them were over exposed and too bright, but considering this was my first time taking photos at night I thought I did very well.

The idea was to show that even at night the city is still alive and busy with people walking round and messing around and I wanted to capture people moving though the city, I did this by blurring people out slightly as the walked passed me, and even drove passed me by having long exposure times while capturing the people of the city, and I even managed to capture water capturing the lights from the city, these create very interesting images as water capture their own image – an image we don’t tend to stop and look at, especially in a busy city.

Finals

These are my final chosen images; I felt these were my strongest images to support my idea of showing that the city is a very busy place even at night. Even though you can not see any people in these images (apart a few outlines of them) you know they are still there because they have left traces of themselves with the lights from some of the buildings and as they travel through by cars.

Second Shoot! [29/03/14]

Another great night shoot! I managed to capture more of the seaside city (the same place as my last shoot); and even got the chance to do what I couldn’t do very well last time and I captured the headlights of moving cars passing through. I tried capturing the boats again; but I had the same problem as last time, the boats moved because they were on water. The weather that night wasn’t very good, there was fog everywhere and you can see it in my images slightly, in fact when I mix the images from the other shoot with the ones I did here I’m not too sure whether people will be able to tell if these images where taken on different days, with the different weather I had to shoot on different setting on my camera, but this image I could shoot on a longer time than I did on my last shoot.

First Shoot [15/03/14]

My first night time shoot went really well, especially after doing some research into what other people did, and they inspired me for my shoot and really helped out a lot. A couple of problem did come up that couldn’t really be helped; then I was photographing the boats some of them where blurred slightly because they moved on the water will I made the exposure. Also some of the images that I did take where either too dark or over exposed; which meant that I had to take a few shots of the same scene before I got it right. However after a long few hours I managed to get some pretty cool images (below), that show the city lit up at night and the life surrounding it. The weather for this shoot was perfect; it was a clear night and wasn’t windy (but it was cold!), I’m hoping my next shoot will be like this, after looking at my images some do need reshooting and I didn’t quite capture the cars on the road very well, so I’ll need to experiment with that again.

Inspiration for shoots!

The image below is a beautiful example of the city reflecting at night in water. The blurred lights are just so beautiful, I’d love to do something like this (maybe not to this scale, something smaller might just be as nice), I’d love to experiment with this during my shoots.

Image source: http://www.craftsy.com/project/view/city-lights/154083?NAVIGATION_PAGE_CONTEXT_ATTR=PROJECT

A lovely example of cars’ headlights captured in the city, a great way to show people moving though the city, even at night. Another technique I’d like to try out in my shoots.

Image source: http://www.craftsy.com/project/view/longexp/138693?NAVIGATION_PAGE_CONTEXT_ATTR=PROJECT

A VERY long exposed image to get empty street; you can tell because you can see a blurred figure to left on the road. Even though the image is taken at night it’s still bright and colourful.

Image source: http://www.craftsy.com/project/view/photography/139330?NAVIGATION_PAGE_CONTEXT_ATTR=PROJECT

Another image of the city at night (with a river or lake reflecting the lights back).

Image source: http://www.craftsy.com/project/view/longexp/140559?NAVIGATION_PAGE_CONTEXT_ATTR=PROJECT

Lights shining on a status with the city behind all lit up in the water.

Image source: http://www.craftsy.com/project/view/longexp—the-keeper-of-the-plains/140680?NAVIGATION_PAGE_CONTEXT_ATTR=PROJECT

Lights reflecting in the water, plus the moon! Most (if not all) of the water is filled with lights from the bridge and city.

Image source: http://www.craftsy.com/project/view/starburst-bridge-longexp/140900?NAVIGATION_PAGE_CONTEXT_ATTR=PROJECT

The idea of photographing the city during horrible weather could be quite interesting; maybe photograph the same part of the city over a few days and compare them.

Image source: http://www.craftsy.com/project/view/chicago-landscape/156354?NAVIGATION_PAGE_CONTEXT_ATTR=PROJECT

After looking at other people’s work and getting some ideas, I feel more confident in my shoots – I can now go out and know what sort of image I want (I have narrowed my idea down to photographing people moving through the city at night).

 

Simon Roberts

• Simon Roberts is a British photographer.

He takes landscape images of people at a seaside holiday towns/cities, in the countryside, castles, and English landmarks; he tries to shows the ‘best’ of England on current social and cultural issues by photograpghing the people doing ‘British things’ like going to carboot sales, golfing, camping, walking through the fields, BMX or pigeon racing.

© Simon Roberts // Image source: http://www.we-english.co.uk/gallery.html

Photographing people like this – but in a city environment, could be interesting; whether I photograph people doing their shopping, eating or heading somewhere because different people do different things while they are out. I would like to capture people’s movements as the walk through the city as it can be quite busy and crowed and showing this in my images could be a great way to express this idea and theory by using long exposure times to blur their movements slighting.

© Simon Roberts // Image source: http://www.we-english.co.uk/gallery.html

New ideas!

– City at night/traffic/moving cars: Like Dave Beckerman work, show the fast moving cars moving through the busy city, even at night.

– Empty streets/roads (VERY long expose): You expect the city to be full of people, having long exposures will make the people disappear if they move.

– Blurry people: Like the first idea; but during the day and photograph people moving through the city

– Light drawings – I like the idea of capturing the lights in the city at nice, but I could draw using lights in the city at night; like Darius Twin but I’m not sure if I want something that doesn’t look ‘man-made’.

– City Lights reflecting in water – Water captures it’s own image of the city, so why not capture what we see from the water’s reflection.

Starting Over?

Even though I left feeling really upset and annoyed about this project; as I kinda gave up on it due to problems I had – after a long hiatus of not posting anything on this blog I have decided to come back to ‘finished what I started.’ I needed to ‘start a new’ this time around; I don’t want to try and do what I did last time, as I felt that I didn’t want to ‘reawaken’ the memories of the nightmare I had near the end of this project. Also the reason I’m not doing what I did last time was because my lectures said that what I did didn’t fulfill the brief.

I’ve left it this long to post on this blog due to my other projects; however I have been taking photos while doing my other projects, just haven’t had the time to post anything here.

❝Evaluation of Overall Project!❞

Originally typed – 7th December 2013 (Due to technical problems I’ve been having trouble posting on WordPress).

 Though out this project; my ideas have changed a lot; especially from feedback I have had.

The idea of this project was to create joiners of landmarks in a city, however I would find myself wondering round aimlessly taking photos of other things around the city (almost like a tourist) the idea was for me to head into a city I don’t know very well and ‘navigate’ my way around the city and even the surrounding area – encouraging me to explore and find things that would make interesting images. I did have some problems along the way, the main on was loosing two photoshoots due to a corrupted memory card… However even though I didn’t get more photos than I wanted to; they photoshoot in Whitby did help me walk up to strangers and ask for their photo (if they hadn’t been dressed up, it might have been more difficult as I didn’t have a good enough reason).

Apart from the lost images I have enjoyed this project; I feel more confident wondering round a place I’ve never been before and made ‘baby steps’ towards asking random people for their photo.

❝Final Images!❞

Originally typed – 7th December 2013 (Due to technical problems I’ve been having trouble posting on WordPress).