Practical Brief - Example Inspirational Photographs and Final Images

Eugene Atget

Example Photograph:

This photograph is from Atget's series of work 'Saint Cloud' taken between 1919 and 1921. I chose it because I think that it represents this body of work well, and it is typical photograph of Atget's, with the colouring, contrast, format and subject matter. I wanted to try and replicate Atge's photographic style, in particular the central framing, sepia colouring and subject matter. I went to Temple Newsam for this photograph, as I knew there would be trees there with high roots, but whilst there I found this fountain and seized the oppertunity to photograph it. I was really happy with the result.

My Photograph:

Alexander Rodchenko

Rodchenko's photography is almost always shot at extreme angles, never vertical, and usually this is to try and represent the scale of his subject. I looked at his work on buildings, noticing the key similarities between the images. There was usually people present in the image to emphasise on the scale, however, on some of the images like the one below they are not included. The photographs are all obviously film, black and white usually with a fairly high contrast. I wanted to photograph a building in a similar way to this, and so I again went to temple newsam and photographed the house there, as it is a historical building, and I thought that the best way to simulate Rodchenko's style would be to really try match the subject matter.

Example Photograph: 

My Photograph:

Rinko Kawauchi

As I found out from my initial research of Rinko Kawauchi, she tends to photograph around 3 key elements - life, death and nature. She uses medium format square film, in colour, and often uses pastel colours. I wanted to focus on 2 of the 3 elements - life and nature. I photographed my cat's ear because I knew that Kawauchi often photographed a section of a body or animal, and not the whole figure, and I made the depth of field very deep so that the background was blurred, and you could only recognise the colour. I then just desaturated my image in order to try and get those pastel colours, and increased the photograph's brightness slightly as well to help emphasise this. I then finally cropped the photograph into a square format to follow suit. I am really happy with the result of this image.

Example Photograph:

My Photograph:

Daido Moriyama

Daido Moriyama almost always uses black and white film, with an extremely high contrast, sometimes so high you cannot make certain areas of the photograph out. He has a very strange method of photography in which he does not usually compose an image, but simply goes around with a small point and shoot 35mm camera, and takes snapshots of what he sees. I decided the best way to go about photographing in the style of Moriyama would be to do as he does, and go out with a camera snapping away. I came out with the photograph of tree branches infront of a bright lighting, and thought that this would work well for Moriyama, as the street light makes the lighting of the image unequal, perfect for increasing the contrast of the photograph to make the whites really white and the blacks of the photograph really black. I also used a slow shutter speed in order to emphasise on the snap shot aesthetic.

Example Photograph:

My Photograph: