Initial Thoughts

When first reading this assignment my first thought was OK, I need to do street photography.   But then I remembered the view that I formed on what exactly the decisive moment is, and the alternative views, so then I thought: OK, but what kind of street photography?

Namely should I aim for supporting the Decisive Moment in which case, the images would need to tell a story within each single image, in some way showing what has gone before, what is happening now and what is happening next.  Or, should I aim to go against the theory and capture a set of ‘timeless’ images – more aligned to Egglestone’s style perhaps.

I do feel quite strongly that my images should be beyond interesting, I want them to be thought provoking; but that alone is not a criterion to choose the style of approach.

Location

The first location that came to mind is Camden Market; this is a place that I have had on my list of places to photograph for some time on the basis that it is full of interesting people but I am intrigued to see if I can capture something that is thought provoking as well.  I have decided that this is where I will capture the images for this exercise.

Approach in Relation to Decisive Moment

As yet I am undecided as to wether to follow the decisive moment approach or to go against it.  My plan is to spend a period of time simply immersing myself in the environment, then spend some time with a ‘decisive moment psyche’ to see what happens and then to adopt an alternative view psyche and see what happens then.

Other Considerations

I am also conscious that for Assignment 2, the design of the exercise was to use a long lens, wide aperture combination to achieve a very shallow depth of field.   But that is not the effect that I am want to achieve here.   For this assignment I want to achieve a more regular perspective and to have the background in focus too; so that means a 50mm lens. This in turn is going to mean that I need to be a lot closer to my subjects than I was for Assignment 2 and this is already making me feel nervous.  I recognise that is something that I need to overcome for this style of photography so I may fit a 50mm prime lens before my shoot so that I don’t have the option to just go for a longer lens!  In researching this particular point, I came across a great guide by Thomas Leuthard on techniques and approaches for getting close to the subject (Leuthard, 2011).  Watching Parr in his documentary(Parr, 2011) perhaps gives me a clue as to how I should behave!

Bibliography

Leuthard, T. (2011). Going Candid. [online] Going Candid. Available at: http://thomas.leuthard.photography/ebooks/GoingCandid.pdf [Accessed 7 May 2017].

Parr, M. (2011). Photography-Martin Parr VPRO. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/dDlnjtVGLOo [Accessed 10 May 2017].