Initial Thoughts

I enjoyed part 2 of this course because although I was aware of the techniques and have practiced them in my day to day photography already, by engaging fully with the exercises I still learnt new things, especially around the art of framing the image whatever the technique.

I had this learning  outcome in mind when I read the categories that we should choose from for the exercise, and noted that the instructions do actually say “or a subject of your own choosing” which seems to give carte blanche to do anything.

Considering Views, this would most likely lean towards views of the countryside which is something I have done a lot of in the past.  I thought maybe I could learn some new things but I felt that aside from super-narrow apertures that I might not always go for, I would not be pushing myself as far as I might.

For heads, that might be a challenge for me as I do have an underlying objective to get more people into my photographs.  But ideally I want to capture people in the context of their environment and so I felt that the brief was too tight for what I want to explore at the moment.

That leaves crowds.  Living in London, there is plenty of subject matter for this topic and it is something that aligns to my objective of capturing people from within their own context.  It is also a topic I have not even attempted to capture in the psst and so I think that this area will grow my skills and particularly  challenge my creativity, and my ability to capture people in context.

I have therefore selected Crowds as my topic.  I shall begin with research on crowds and street photography. I am looking forward to embarking on something that is entirely new for me.