Low angles

High angle

Motion/Movement

Triangle Techinque

Blur

The message of my photography creation will be the presentation of urban aesthetics. Urban is not only about modernized cities, but can also be demonstrated through the use of mood and atmosphere. As a response, I want my audience to evoke the feeling of excitement, freedom, intrigue, and overwhelming. For inspiration, I will try to find and develop my ideas by looking for photographers that use the techniques of point of focus, geometrics, contrast of lighting, and objects with picture frames. I want to find photographers with a variety of colors, high saturation, irregular patterns, and sharp focus. My photo sets will have a mixture of low and high angles with most of them about cars and buildings. In my opinion, outstanding the busyness and color of a scene is the best way to emphasize the uniqueness of street photography because the photo is filled with traces of human life. From the inspiration of Liam Wong, I will adapt the style of cyberpunk and the visual effects of an illusory/dream-like world.

1. Neon
2. Cyberpunk/Si-ffi style
3. Asian alleyway
4. Contrast
5. Hallucinatory

Liam Wong uses vivid colors in alleyways to create a Cyberpunk/Sci-fi style of the scene. These characteristics of these photos bring a hallucinatory effect to the viewer by making them feel unrealistic from the real world.

I chose Liam Wong as my photographer because the location where his photos were taken is very similar to where I will be next week. At the same time, I also want to focus on colors and how they visually grab the audience’s attention and emotion.

Photo#6: The photo I chose highly outweighs the aspects of street photography. For instance, the people, light signs, convenience stores, and everything that records everyday life in a public place.

The photo was taken in places that are not as luxurious and modern. However, the photographer was able to create a variety of bright colors, contrast lighting, and geometrical shapes.

These art elements are important because they’re the main aspects that make a photo outstanding in street photography.  For example, when the infrastructure of a location is not as significant, adding colors can construct composition and visual appeal to the viewer’s attention and emotions. As for lighting, the dark lighting works perfectly with the colorful scene because it adds balance and contrast.

Liam Wong’s photos are highly suitable for the definition of street photography because he captures the beauty of everyday life. In every photo, there are clear traces of human life with sharpness, efficiently demonstrating where this photo was taken and what the factors of the street are included.

Something that I like about his photos is the cyberpunk style that he adapted in simple locations. Specifically, the high capture of contrast through the use of color, lighting, and architecture. Most of his photos were simply taken in remote alleyways, yet they look like cityscapes and unreal or too perfect for the real world.

To begin with, I will adopt this style by placing full emphasis on the architecture and culture of Beijing Hutong. Later on, I will try to edit diverse colors to my sets of photos if the actual scene doesn’t satisfy what I’m looking forward to doing. This photographer inspires me by establishing street photography in a unique way.  Before I did research on him, my focus was only on cityscapes and modernized infrastructure. But now I’ve developed a new inspiration for the beauties of cultural characteristics.

Atelier Robert Doisneau:

The photograph that I’m inspired by this photographer is “The Kiss.” In my vision, I want to create photos that only focus on one or two people. At the same time, the surroundings should be captured with motion while the main subject stays still.  This creates full emphasis on the emotions that person expresses.

Dougie Wallace: The inspiration I took from Dougie Wallace’s photos is the filter and image quality it creates. With the mixture of color, his photographs are very vintage and bustling. Most of his photographs give off early 2000s which is something I’m willing to create.

Saul Leiter:

The main aspect I want to take from this photographer is the color. Leiter uses complementary colors with less crowded people and more details of the streets.

Melissa Breyer:

Similar to Atelier Robert Doisneau, this photographer takes photos of a still life surrounded by movement and motion. The person has a frame around him filling in the negative space. This is something I want to include in my vision.

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The three photos were chosen as red because they demonstrated contrast and tension. The three of them satisfy most of my goal techniques and the inspiration by Saul Leiter’s style. This includes the color, tone, and the concept of reflections. Similar to Leiter, the three photos use only two colors of the opposite as the main color scheme and reflections with unique patterns that create different shapes of beauty. These three photos are most likely what I intended to aim for and are the best examples that show the connection between Leiter and my photo sets.

Contact Sheet Sets 2

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1. Compositional
2. Complementary colors
3. Reflections
4. 1960s style
5. Foggy

In most of the sets of photos, Saul Leiter uses similar color schemes and subjects in the images.

Since the photographer’s career was during the 1960s, his photos are mostly vintage-styled. This can be seen through the artistic elements such as the colors, tone, and forms.

This photographer uses similar styles that I want to focus on for my second set of photos. Last time I focused on the shapes and tones of the subject, this time my vision mainly focuses on pulling emphasis on the color. Just like what Leiter often refers to in his creations.

Photo #10:  I chose this image because it is most likely to interest the audience. It has a balance of simple colors and an interesting pattern between reflections to create beauty and aesthetics. Something unique about this photo is that the camera brings focus on both the reflection and the objects beneath the glass. This draws the audience’s attention to the pattern the two concepts create but also doesn’t bring too much sharpness to the subjects that it becomes too outstanding.

The color of this photo is an important element of this photograph because it creates a visual appeal to the viewer’s attention and emotions, evoking despair and sadness. Since Leiter uses complementary colors such as blue, orange, and yellow,  it makes the imagery seem brighter and more vivid. The photographer also uses this strategy to make the subject complementary to the background so that the subject is on full emphasis even though the camera isn’t focused on it.

The photographs of my photographer use a mixture of different shapes and patterns. This visual effect gives freedom to explore the artwork rather than viewing the image as a specific object or place.

The aspect that interests me the most in Leiter’s style is the colors and shapes. In many photos, he uses a very simple amount of colors to create contrast and emotion.  The colors are mostly low saturated with a slight tint of high saturation, this maintains balance and makes it more engaging for the audience. At the same time, the shapes created by the reflections and the foggy environment create unique shapes that demonstrate beauty and aesthetics.

This style will be adapted to my own photography by taking photos of scenes that have a darker environment and a small amount of lighting. This photographer inspires me to develop my visual and emotional state that I want to express

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These three sets of photos are labeled red because they demonstrate the beauty of abstraction. They have a contrast between light and darkness, where the negative space is dark while the subject is bright which draws direct emphasis from the audience’s perspective. At the same time, the three photos also met all the expectations in my planning process. For example, the reflections, distortion, complementary colors, and gloomy mood.

Contact Sheet Set 1

1. Reflections
2. Distortion
3. Natural life
4. Blurred motion
5. Light & dark contrast

Why did you choose this image in particular?

This photo uses an efficient amount of colors with low saturation and a balanced contrast of light and dark. With the simplest colors, the photographer creates emotion and aesthetics with unique patterns and lines.

Photo 4: The lines, shape, texture, and lighting are the most significant and unusual aspects of this photograph because it makes it hard for the viewers to identify what the subject is. The objects used in this photo may be simple and straightforward but the reflection is what affects the theme and makes the imagery special.

The aspects of this photo are important because the elements that were mentioned play an essential role in abstraction. The strong emphasis on lines, shape, texture, and contrast lighting transforms the photo in unexpected ways either than literal imagery. The effects of these important characteristics don’t bring an immediate association with the physical world. Instead, they create a mysterious emotion telling a story rather than just recording a moment.

The photographs of my chosen artist express an emotion instead of just recording a scene or a moment.  The chosen color schemes, the shape of reflections, and the motions of the subjects all bring the viewer’s attention because the photographer placed high emphasis on them. Even though the image seems unrecognizable in the real world, the twisted scene brings beauty in unexpected ways rather than ugliness.

The style that attracts me are blurred visions and natural colors. The blurring style of the photos creates a mixture of different colors, lines, and patterns. The colors don’t look deliberate, they make the mood and atmosphere feel calm as if the photograph kept the natural colors of the scene without much editing.

This photographer inspires me to develop the theme, style, and emotions of my own collections. I will adapt this type of style into my photos by finding places and natural phenomenons that are similar to what Ernst Haas records in his photo sets. This artist inspires me by creating natural photos that contain very small amounts of editing and more focus on the shapes and patterns in the photo.