Urban walk

A few days ago we went on an urban walk about Manchester, looking for things that I wouldnt neccessarily notice, from looking through the photographs that I took, I dont feel that they are as good as they could of been, I am going to go out around the city a few more times, exploring different areas, and not knowing what I am going to find. Below are contact sheets showing the photos that I took during this urban walk.

 

 

Gilad Benari

Gilad Benari first had an interesting in writing, he later decided to combine his writing with his photography producing photographs with a deeper meaning that just what is on the surface. I like Benari' work due to the fact that you can see their is some emotion within them, it may be because of the colours and tones that have formed within this photos, creating a really strong impact. Some of the compositions he uses make the image more interesting and effective as well. I also like the fact that when he goes out to take photographs, he has no idea of what he is going to find to photograph, relating to psychogeography.

"Are your shots mostly carefully prepared or spontaneous?

Definitely spontaneous. I never know what I’m going to find when I go shooting. I throw my gear on my back, and just take what ever comes my way. It’s such a wonderful feeling walking the streets, and traveling with a camera in hand. The world looks differently. Everything is potentially a story".

http://www.broowaha.com/articles/549/an-eye-on-the-world-an-interview-with-gilad-benari

Marcin Stawiarz

Marcin Stawiaz' photography is focused on landscapes, and more recently he has started to look at cityscape's, looking at the use of the light and how it lights up the city.

I really like Stawiaz' work because of the way in which he uses either natural or artificial light to light up the area he is looking at, I really like the effect this gives to each of his photos. His photographs give off a very strong atmosphere due to the different colours and tones that are within his photographs which again makes the outcome more effective and gives a bigger impact to the viewer.

"I’ve always been fascinated by landscapes – places that are absolutely desolate, where I can stay one on one with nature. For me, the growing joy right before pressing the shutter button as well as the possibility of interacting with the world filled with inspiration is as important as the creative act itself. This initial fascination has rapidly grown into obsession that eventually took control over my life". 

http://www.martinstavars.com/autor.php

 

Urban photography...

I decided to do some research into urban photography, looking at the way in which photographers capture their environment. I searched 'urban photography' on google images, obviously showing me lots of different photographs exploring urban photography, some of which I found more effective than others. To me urban photography is exploring a city, looking at the areas you wouldn't usually consider interesting in any way, I also think about graffiti, purely because there can be lots of it found in places like back streets and such. I also think about people, and how they are in their environment going about their everyday lives, not really taking that much notice of what is happening around them. Architecture of buildings as well as street features such as lights, signs and lamp post also come to mind when I think of urban photography, I feel that they play a very important part in our environment, and again people don't tend to pay that much attention to where they are.

Here are some of the photos that I really liked which I found on google images:

Brassai

Brassai was a Hungarian photographer; he moved to Paris in 1924 after he moved there he started to photograph Paris during night time focusing on street photography. As it was hard to get a good photograph at night because of how dark it was, he used a flash blub to light up the area, when he opened the shutter on the camera he would flash the light so he was then able to capture the image. I like Brassai’s night time photography as he has captured Paris for itself and how beautiful it is. I also think it’s really effective how he lights the scenes; using street lights (and a flash bulb) Paris is almost in total darkness, yet the photographs he produces have a very strong impact on me as a viewer due to the composition and the atmosphere produced within the photos. 

"Gyula Halász's job and his love of the city, whose streets he often wandered late at night, led to photography. He later wrote that photography allowed him to seize the Paris night and the beauty of the streets and gardens, in rain and mist. Using the name of his birthplace, Gyula Halász went by the pseudonym "Brassaï," which means "from Brasso." As Brassaï, he captured the essence of the city in his photographs, publishing his first book of photographs in 1933 titled "Paris de nuit" ("Paris by Night"). His efforts met with great success, resulting in his being called "the eye of Paris" in an essay by his friend Henry Miller. In addition to photos of the seedier side of Paris, he also provided scenes from the life of the city's high society, its intellectuals, its ballet, and the grand operas. He photographed many of his great artist friends, including Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, plus many of the prominent writers of his time such as Jean Genet, Henri Michaux and others".

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/B/brassai/brassai_articles1.html

Stephen Gill

Stephen Gill is a British photographer he looks at both landscape and portraiture. I really like his landscape photography because of how his photos are so simple, yet effective. He finds random everyday things that we wouldn’t necessarily take much notice of if we were there, and he photographs them in a way that you can see something different within them. He also has a series called ‘Outside in’ where he has gone to different places and picked up random items off the floor and them placed them inside his camera, meaning that when he took a photograph of something, the items that were in the camera would appear on the image, creating something more effective that just a simple landscape photograph and it gets me thinking a bit more about what the environment there might be like.

Quote from Iain Sinclair:
“Stephen Gill is emerging as a major force in British photography. His best work is a hybrid between documentary and conceptual work. It is the repeated exploration of one idea, executed with the precision that makes these series so fascinating and illuminating. Gill brings a very British, understated irony into portrait and landscape photography.”

http://www.stephengill.co.uk/portfolio/about

Sergey Larenkov

Sergey Larenkov is a Russian photographer. Within his work he takes photographs that were taken during the war and puts them on top of photographs that were taken during this time period. By doing this he is creating a then and now type photograph, showing what that same scene was like many years ago, and what it is like now during present day. This makes me feel quite strange as you are seeing what that area within the photos looked like during the war and it is hard to think that it is the same place that you see today, looking completely different. There is a strong contrast within the two images; you see the mess within the photo taken during the war and the calm and peaceful scene within the present day photograph, which is quite surreal. This is why I really like his work, he makes something that is simple really effective, the combination of two photographs creates a strong atmosphere and gets the viewer thinking a lot more about what they are seeing, and I feel that by having the two photos together Larenkov has been able to make a stronger impact.

“Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov is a master of a technique called, alternatively, perspective-matching photography or the fancier computational rephotography, which consists of precisely matching the points-of-view of vintage and modern photographs and exploring what happens where they merge”.

http://www.geekosystem.com/tag/sergey-larenkov/