Here are the 10 best photos from the photos I took last weekend:

This photo is nice partially because the beam covering the guy’s face is kind of funny, so it makes the picture more interesting to look at. The pillars make a nice divide in the different parts of the image, creating contrast while not completely overpowering the other things either. There’s a nice amount of people both in the background and closer to the camera, and you can take the time to see what each of them are doing if you want (like the two people on the left looking at their phones, the people shopping on the right, the person with a stroller near the middle, etc). It seems like a normal scene from a normal day that captures normal people going about their lives.

Like the last picture, this image is also a photo of people just going places (I think that’s going to become a consistent theme with these crowd photos). There’s a nice balance of a bunch of different colors here, with lots of vibrant colors in the trees and the people while the buildings are in more subdued colors, and I think this contrast really points out how colorful and bright living things can be. I especially like the guy in blue in the middle, I find it really funny how their pose is so still compared to everybody else (it’s probably because of the scooter thing), but also they stand out nicely against the other people and they’re in a nice centered part of the photo, so it all works out pretty nicely.

This image is unique because it depicts animal subjects instead of human ones. I think the puppies are super cute, and this is one of the few images that I really managed to get close on (I think that’s reflected in the level of quality and detail in this image compared to the others haha). I like how one of them (the one on the right) is kind of side-eyeing the camera while the other one is staring blankly ahead, it gives the puppies a lot of personality. Overall this image is pretty bright and peppy, but still with some darker tones to balance it out.

What I like about this image is that it almost seems abstract? The repeating pattern of stairs and handrails and straight lines, as well as the few people scattered throughout the staircase… It’s a little strange and very interesting to look at. This image is also considerably more focused in terms of color palette – most things in the image are made up of some shade of green or orange, which helps add a sense of cohesiveness and order to this image compared to the delightful slice-of-life chaos of the crowd photos. I think it’s good to have these sort of less cluttered pictures amongst the cluttered ones, both for diversity but also so that I show many different sides of life, including the sides that aren’t always busy and bustling all the time.

This image is also a little different from the others, as it focuses on a specific pair of people as if we’re seeing a little snapshot of their lives. They take up the majority of the frame, and they are the main focus of the photograph. I like how focused both of them are, with the artist working their craft while the other person sits there and watches. It’s a really nice image, and the colors are slightly chaotic but still orderly enough to create a vague sense of cohesiveness.

On the other hand, this image is about as cluttered and chaotic as it gets. There is very little negative space in this image, with the crowd and buildings taking up most of the photo. There are a bunch of different intersecting lines in this photo, with the beams of the bridge and the shape of the building in the background, and the people and market stalls in the foreground. There’s a lot of people and text and a bunch of different objects everywhere, and it’s just a very very busy image in general. However, there’s a vaguely consistent theme of red that sort of ties it together, while still letting the image retain its chaotic nature. I think this look into a messier image is important to the idea of sonder as well, as I find these kinds of crowds to be really filled with that people-feeling (人气 in Mandarin) as you become part of the crowd. There are so many people doing so many things, and if you stop and listen, then you can hear a thousand different conversations going on at once. It’s nice.

This is another crowd image – it’s not really that different from the first two crowd images, and I don’t know if there’s anything specifically that sets it apart from the others.  This one does have a lot less negative space than the first two, while not becoming as chaotic and busy as the market image. The colors are nice and vibrant, but otherwise I can’t think of a lot else to say about this one.

I really like this image because it’s one of the less busy ones, and I find the perspective to be really interesting. Instead of seeing the subjects up close, you’re watching them from afar, like a brief glance into the life of someone you’ll likely never see again. It’s a moment of brief connection that maybe neither parties are aware of, as you ponder, “hey, I wonder they’re doing over there.” I find the trains to be really fitting for this image too, (though I might be biased because I love old-styled trains, they look super cool in my opinion) because an analogy could be made about how we’re all passengers on the trains of life, hustling and bustling from station to station. Sometimes we bump into someone in the crowd – an interesting-looking stranger or someone you used to know – but the moment passes just as easily as it arrives. They are swept into the crowd and becomes just another figure in a sea of unfamiliar faces, and you never see them again.

This image is another less busy one, although there are still a bunch of different patterns and textures present in the image. This one is unique because of its perspective – we’re looking down at the people from above, instead of from eye level like the other images. It is also the only image in black and white, which adds a strange, abstracted quality to it. The people stand out clearly against the background with their bold, contrasting colors (compared to the neutral greys of the building surrounding them), and they seem to be having fun chatting and hanging out with one another. Why are they sitting on the sidewalk? Nobody knows (except them, I suppose). Maybe they got tired? Maybe they always come and sit on this one sidewalk when they meet up? Maybe they just bumped into each other on the road and decided to sit down and have a little chat? Whatever their reason may be, though, that’s up for them to know and for us to wonder about, as they stand out as a bright clump of lights and darks amongst a vast, neutral world.

This image is my personal favorite out of this set, not only because it was one of the few images that had something close to golden hour lighting, but because it’s just a very very nice image in general. I like the bright but not overwhelming colors, I like the lighting, I like how the people are reflected in the surfaces of the bus stop, and the image gives off a very warm, comfy feeling in general. I think this is a image that captures the slice-of-life really well, as it has a clear focus on the simplicity of daily life. The two people are walking together from a bus stop, like they just got off the bus, and they’re holding some bags of what seems to be groceries. They look like they’re friends with one another, and it’s just a nice photo that captures a cozy moment of the mundane.

These images relate to the work of Robert Doiseneau because they all have and focus on human subjects (except for the picture with the puppies), and I incorporated the background into the narrative of some images (especially the train one). However I have a lot of silhouette shots or shots from the back, so I don’t have as many subjects showing their faces.

My images tell the stories of people – maybe not any specific story, but a brief paragraph from their lives. It is about the present moment, and how everybody in the crowd has a life just as bright, interesting and vibrant as yours. I would say that is an overall strength in these images – they’re a little weird and vague and messy sometimes, but they’re also really interesting and filled with bright colors.

One skill that I’ve applied is the skill of capturing brief moments – although I still missed some really cool moments, I still got a lot of them too. I also applied the skill of being sneaky (although it does mean that some of my photos are more blurry as they’re taken from a distance). However, I didn’t really get around to asking anybody to take a photo, except for the puppies and that one time where someone was walking their cat.

I think that some things I could do better is to get closer to the subjects, as a lot of these images are kind of blurred (or at least, not in very high definition). Having a better camera would also help increase the quality of my photos as well (and it would allow me to get closer to my subjects because I would appear more professional). Having stronger lighting would also be great – it was pretty gloomy the entire weekend, so I didn’t get many photos with the nice golden hour light, even though I went outside during the golden hour. I hope that the trip on Monday would have the nice light though (it’s looking promising based on what the weather forecast says, but the weather kind of does what it wants sometimes, so I don’t know if anything is set in stone yet).