. . I don’t know why they’re sideways.

In my top five photographs, I intended to capture candid photos of people in deep thought. I liked the idea of having the true, raw, emotion written across their face. Having prepared and posed photos doesn’t show what the person really feels in the moment.

Top 3 photos

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I chose these three photos as my top ones because they are all expressing different emotions and they are all doing different things. In the second photo, the woman is looking off into the distance in thought as she walks on the sidewalk. I wanted this photo to be soft and comfortable and her clothing helped to convey that with pastel colors. In contrast to the background which is mainly dark colors, she is like a soft cloud in a thunderstorm. There is a feeling of comfort when I look at this photo, her facial expression is thoughtful and kind as she looks to the distance. In the third photo, the man is standing behind a fence looking towards the outside of the fence. I wanted this photo convey the feeling of trapped and stuck in one place. I used the bars from the fence to frame the man and make him stand out with his white shirt compared to the dark, dull colors surrounding him. His facial expression matches the intent of this photo because his face is set in a resting position that is a slight frown, enhancing the intentions I had for the photo.

Top photo

In the first photo (my chosen photo), you can see the woman is happy as she rides her tricycle down the road. To enhance the joy and happiness she’s expressing, I ensured that her clothing was like a splash of life and color to add to her smile. I kept this photo in color because I think that black and white expresses more of a dull, sad feeling. This photo enlightens peoples perspective on it because there is a brightness to it that draws people in and captures their attention with her facial expression and clothing. I want the viewer to get drawn into the photo so I put the woman in the center with a cool colored background to have the colors that are on her and her tricycle stand out. When taking this photo, I waited on a sidewalk and when the woman approached I snapped a few photos straight on. As I was editing this photo, I cropped it to make sure that she was in the center of the photo. Using a wide angle lens helped me to capture as many photos as possible as well as a calm, cool, sedentary background. Encorperating the road helped me to convey what she was doing and her joy of travel and living. I am far enough away from the person that the focus isn’t completely on her but this was intentional, I wanted to show the cars in the background because it shows that she wants to live freely. She doesn’t want to be confined in a car where she can’t feel the breeze on her face, she wants to be biking down a road with the feel of the wind whipping through her hair. This photo conveys the emotion of happiness and freedom.

In this photoshoot, I took more candid photos of people in their everyday lives by finding angles that drew many people in. Similar to Garry Winogrand, I captured photos of many emotions while using surrounding objects to help convey the feelings, similar to how Winogrand uses backgrounds and props to enhance what the person is feeling in the moment.

I chose these images because they are all moving and feeling. Even though the pictures are still, you can clearly see in these photos that everyone is doing something; most of them are going somewhere , and this leaves the viewer’s mind to complete the story. Where are they going? What are they doing? What is on their mind? Leaving the photos to the viewer’s imagination helps to capture their attention and lets them enjoy the photo even more from their point of view.

Since my first photoshoot, I explored more with background, objects, angle/direction, person/people, and composition. I wanted a slightly busy background that wouldn’t distract the focused person too much. To further improve this skill, I will work on having a calmer background with darker colors to make the person stand out so that the viewer’s eyes immediately get drawn to them. I wanted to use specific objects that could help explain the person’s identity, similar to how Winogrand took his photos. When taking these photos, I found hidden spots that captured a full image of the person and surrounding objects. Getting the right angle in these photos is important because the wrong angle could impact the message you’re trying to convey. To improve this skill, I want to get closer to the person so that it’s obvious what I am trying to do to the viewer. Finding the right people can also impact the intention of photographs. I chose people who had clothes that stood out to me so that they would draw attention to that person. Having the person at the center of the photograph will help draw attention to them; however, placing them on the sides to use the background is also powerful. I want to find calm backgrounds and place people accordingly to improve this skill.

Chosen photo

In this specific photo, I used composition with the dinosaur and the child to show anticipation as the child walked up to the dinosaur to play with it. His bright blue pants draw the viewer’s attention directly to him so that they can see what he is doing and what he will do. In the future, I will make sure to use my space better by getting the child closer and having less negative space. Having the person closer allows the viewer to see the emotions and the actions clearly.

Intent: Capture candid photos of someone’s everyday life. Use color to represent the happiness and brightness in someone’s life and use black and white to represent the sadness or impending sadness in someone’s life.

Improve: Work more on getting candid shots of action. Show people in movement and in thought. Include blurry background people or a partner in the photo.

Garry Winogrand captures any emotion he can find on the streets. You can tell that these emotions are raw because they are candid and unexpected for the person who is getting their photo taken.

Winogrand uses the background of his photos to show what the person or people are doing at the moment. This helps the viewer to understand the photo and why the photographer took the photo. He uses negative space to include more detail in the photo and make it more appealing to look at. The person’s placement determines how much negative space there will be and how the photographer can use it to their advantage.

Although Winogrand’s photos are in black and white, he still manages to pull genuine emotion through his photos. Colors are bold and vibrant. They can sometimes be deceiving to the viewers by altering what the picture is supposed to convey through popping or dull colors. Without color, you can see genuine emotion without being deceived.

I want to take candid photos that show genuine raw emotion. Winogrand’s photos convey precisely that. He has been influenced by theater, shown by the pictures he takes and how each one has a different emotion that is expressed boldly.

The title of this project is Street Photography. The way I see street photography is capturing the genuine emotions of people living their everyday lives. Candid. While walking down a street or sidewalk, millions of things are going through people’s heads. It could be great memories, sad memories, what their future will look like, what they did that day, people, or pets; there are many endless possibilities. Sometimes, without realizing it, people show what they are thinking through their facial expressions. Capturing these moments and expressions tells so many stories. It could be a sad memory. A happy memory. A frustrating memory. A terrible memory. An impending moment. A person that makes them happy. A person that makes them sad. These all tell stories not only through their facial expressions but also their eyes. Even if you take a photograph from far away, the background, clothes, body language, surroundings, and location can tell you so many things about what could be going on in their life and in their mind. To capture all aspects that bring the photo together, you want to make sure that the focus is on the person so that viewers’ eyes are immediately drawn to them, then the background. That leads me to ensure that if you have negative space, use it to your advantage. Depending on the photograph’s mood, you can use the background to make the person stand out or blend in.

Yearning Youth

Fading

Pure

My main intent for this photoshoot was to capture the changes through a lifetime/generation and how time affects someone throughout their life.

In the photograph “Pure,” you can see the girl with soft, pure skin smiling. There is so little age on her face, only the overflowing joyous memories etched into her face, visible by the faint lines near her smile and the slight wrinkle under her eyes from smiling so much. Almost all of her hair is bright, showing the youth flowing through her; only a tiny bit of darker hair is bleeding into the light hair, showing the age coming.

As the girl ages and moves on in her life, the darker hair begins to bleed through even further. This is shown in the photo “Fading.” As the girl gets older, her hair turns darker, and she learns more about the hardships in life. Her smile is barely visible anymore, and her eyes aren’t shimmering with joy and excitement as they once were. Her cheeks are now more hollow as her youth begins to fade away. There is now a heaviness in her eyes and weight in her face as she gazes away.

In the final photo, “Yearning Youth,” the woman’s hair is entirely dark, showing that she has made it through her youth. She is no longer a child or a girl. She is now a woman. You can see the creases on her face from years and years of sadness, happiness, and anger; all of the emotions have been alive in her features; however, the emotion that is now shown is yearning. Yearning for the youth back. Yearning for the happiness back. Yearning for the full cheeks back. Her hair is now thin and frail, running out of health and liveliness. Her face is now more hollow and bony, showing the life slowly brushing away her body over the years. Looking back at the young girl she once was, so full of life and happiness, she feels pained that she is no longer like that girl.

These three photos were taken by the inspiration of the photographer Dorothea Lange. More specifically, her photos of the “Migrant Mother”. In these photos, the mother is looking off into the distance as children are tightly nestled against her sides. I liked how Lange took the photos with the mother looking into the distance because you can clearly see that she has millions of thoughts going through her head and they are all written in her eyes and facial expression.

In the photos of the young girl, she has makeup on to enhance her beauty and show off the emotions that swim in her eyes. The makeup and roots of her hair draw your eyes to her eyes. Entrapping your vision in the picture to analyze all of her emotions. In the photos of the woman, your eyes are immediately drawn to her dark hair which hints at the overall intent of the photo. Her hair is free and wavy. Careless. It looks as if she tends to it as she would a delicate child; however, she lets her true self show through keeping the hair down and open.

Forgotten Smiles

Obscure Light

Confined Shadow

Blooming Darkness

All these photos convey the emotion of vulnerability. When you first look at the photos, you’re drawn to her eyes. The eyes show stories. Stories of struggle, of hurt, of betrayal. Of vulnerability. My intention for these photographs was to capture the viewer’s eyes and feelings through the raw vulnerability in these photos. To enhance the creases on her face, I took the photos close up instead of showing more background space. This forces the viewer to look at the model and her emotions and facial features rather than the background.

Presentation: From left to right: Obscure Light, Forgotten Smiles, Confined Shadow, Blooming Darkness. I chose this order because it shows the acceptance of being in the darkness and vulnerability. The expressions go from little hope of safety and happiness (Obscure Light) to the realization of being trapped in their own mind and exposing what they feel to people who shouldn’t know (Blooming Darkness). In between (Forgotten Smiles and Confined Shadow), she goes through the happy memories that are now forgotten and in the past. The feeling she was once so familiar with was now lost in the darkness and blur of the shadows that now covered it all up. She is stuck within herself. Within her mind. She now lives within the shadows of her mind and body, no longer in herself and her heart.

These photos link to my inspiration because they show the stories through the eyes. You can see the emotion swirling throughout the iris even though it isn’t colored. The black and white show the lack of emotion and the lost positivity. In Kadar’s photographs, his stories and memories are shown through his facial expressions and eyes. In this set of photographs, I decided to focus more on the emotion in the eyes.

Photoshoot 1

Improvements:

• Background: I want a plain background so that the viewer can focus solely on the figure and their facial emotion and detail.
• Eyes: I want the model’s eyes to look away from the photo and appear thoughtful and sad.
• Lighting: I enjoyed using the light to showcase half of the model’s face or only a part of it. I want to stop using full lighting to enlighten the person’s face because I want the overall color to be dark and sad.
• Emotion: For some of these photos, the model is resting their face. I want there to be a slight frown on their face to convey the message of sadness and vulnerability.

I chose this photo as my favorite because the person has a detailed facial expression. You can see all the creases on her face, along with the fear and sadness that are portrayed. Kandar said that this photo is of a lady who survived the Holocaust as a Jew. Based on her facial expression, the tears, and the hand placement, we can see that she was clearly scared of something and saddened by it, too. The hand placement shows a shock as if she just lost her breath because of something she had gone through or witnessed. Her facial expression and tears show that she’s looking back at something that happened (the Holocaust) and how she feels about it. The background and colors show that what she is looking back on isn’t anything good, the overall feeling is dull and sad.

I chose the photographer Nadav Kander. From my chosen photographs, Kander intends to portray fear or sadness through people’s facial expressions. In these photos, I realized that much of the emotion he captures isn’t only through the eyes and the eyebrows. The way the eyebrows are angled in the photos shows a different emotion. Kandar seems to like the straight-ahead angle when taking photos. Sometimes, he tilts the person to get a different face profile; however, in all the photos I chose, he took the pictures straight ahead.