ONE SQUARE MILE Assignment : Street Photography

Researching photographers :

Martin Parr

Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer and photojournalist. He is most famous for his photographic projects that take a critical look on modern life, particularly in England. The photographs I have displayed here are just a random selection of his works. I like how every picture of his tells a story whether it is displayed in a set or not. I consider Martin Parr to be one of the true 'documentary photographers' as he literally seems to just snap things in the moment. I think this makes it seem closer to home for the viewer as it hasn't been set up or staged or used models, he just documents things as they are. He always seems to photograph really interesting things which may be a useful influence for my own One Square Mile project because I want to photograph tourism in York and all the quirky things that come with it such as people dressed in costume and the touristy things like souvenirs etc. 

Martin Amis

Martin Amis is a British documentary photographer. Unfortunately I couldn't find out much information about him, I could only find his photographs. I really like his style of photography and it links to this One Square Mile project really well because he does a very good job of documenting an area through a set of photographs. I think Amis' images look slightly more planned out and artistic than Martin Parr's but I still think they have been taken spontaneously - he has just taken a photograph of what he saw rather than staging an image. I can tell from these images that they are very British and shot at a seaside town. I think the images describe a lot about the place - I would like to try and achieve this with my images. I like how this set of images shows different aspects of the place - the people who live there, the holiday makers, the older generation, younger generation etc.

My test shots : 

I don't really like this shot because it is quite blurry around the mans head.

I like this image because of the composition. I like the way the man on the ladders is diagonally positioned away from the woman at the bus stop. I also like the lines and shapes in this image because it has been taken straight on. I like how the road creates a straight line which runs parallel to that of the roof of the bus stop. And the windows, ladders and doorway create vertical straight lines.

For the above 8 images I set my camera up in a particular place and waited for people to walk into the frame before I took their picture. I sat on the steps leading up to Leeds Town Hall and positioned my camera on my knees. This was to make it not look very obvious that I was taking pictures as people act differently if they think that they are on camera. 

Here are some pictures that I took of people in the streets of Leeds. I didn't enjoy this task because I felt like I was invading peoples privacy by taking pictures of them without their permission. I got a lot of dirty looks from people if they noticed that I was taking pictures of them and I didn't like this because I felt really bad and uncomfortable and didn't want to carry on taking pictures of other people.