Harry Gruyeart is a Belgian photographer known for his vibrant use of color and for capturing the moments of everyday life in the city. His style was influenced by cinema, especially by directors such as Henri Verneuil and Michelangelo Antonioni. These films have improved his photographic characteristics. Also, because of his extensive travel experience, he can better capture novel things. In late 1960, his work was touted as a “new color” by American critics, along with those of contemporaries Ernst Haas, William Eggleston, and Joel Meyerwitz.

Harry Gruyaert’s street photographs are a mixture of emotions, composition, and lights. His photographs are kind of landscape style because he is not only focused on people but also on the colors and backgrounds. These conditions make his photos more attractive than the other usual street photographs. I like Harry’s works because his photos give us strong visual feelings and abundant emotions. They are very colorful and well-blending, and also let the audience feel comfortable while they appreciate the photos.  Harry’s photo inspired me to think that while we are creating street photographs, only people inside the photos are not enough for a good picture. Just as Harry states: “For me, photography is not only a matter of composition or color, it must also talk about place and time.” The overall tone and light source are also very important for helping us get great photos. And they will make the whole picture look more lively.

This photo is my favorite one. The picture shows two girls holding hands and jumping on a stage, and the other younger girl is standing beside them and led by an adult. The major tone of this picture is basically high saturation red, and the composition is quite active because the photo captured the girls’ movement while they jumped. The photographer must be standing in front of the girls so he could take photos from a head-up view. The frame used the rule of thirds because all the people are not in the center of the picture, they’re mostly in the left half of the picture. The background of this photo is the red curtain with a Russian stamp on it. The red curtain corresponded to the girl’s skirt and shirt, which could make a good mix. The photographer basically only took the photo of these girls, and the distance between him and the girls was not very close (the girls didn’t discover him by looking at the lens), he used gestures, which are the girls’ movements. The highly saturated tones and the main subject of the photo create a strong and original visual impression for the viewer. And the entire picture shows a positive emotion, there is no serious atmosphere in the photo, only a childlike and relaxed atmosphere created by the smiling faces of the two girls. I might name it ‘Red Childhood’ because this picture reminds me of my childhood and memories. And I want to be like Harry, to use my own lens to record other people’s colorful lives. Overall, all those elements’ combinations explain a strong idea about the colorful moments in daily life, they could be very simple but vivid.

While taking these sets of photos, I tried to reach my intention as close as possible. The final works did meet my intentions mostly, and they had the effect I wanted to achieve. The artist I chose gave me abundant inspiration, and from analyzing their photographs and styles, I learned more new and interesting shooting techniques. During my own shooting, I combined multiple elements together: colors, lines, angles, etc. These elements create a stronger version of my photos. I also faced many questions while I was shooting, I always had various problems and challenges with the technology and the use of the camera, but fortunately they were solved, and the photos were satisfactory. I wish my photos could give the audience a strong visual feeling and deep meaning inside the photographs. The photos I take should reflect my own spiritual ideas and thoughts.

I aimed to take photos using light sources and blurry motions to create the abstractions in this set of images. My style of this set will show more of Ernst Haas’s style, and the whole tone in the pictures will be more abundant, too. I will combine this shooting method with different periods of nature scenes. This can show the light and night background as well as the background and level of the subject so that the photos will have a deeper level and better feeling. In addition, blurred pictures can make the image more artistic.

Full Contact Sheet:

These are all the photos I attempted to take.

Yellow Contact Sheet:

These are the photos I picked out, and they are pretty much in line with my concept. They sort of show my central idea and also have suitable composition and color.

Green Contact Sheet:

The above 7 photos in the green contact sheet are all photos that I think have effective lens effects and composition. Each composition has a light source, which is a very important part of my plan this time. The processing on the camera is also blurry, which makes them more abstract. The color in the picture is also relatively rich. The contrast was also shown inside this set of pictures, which can make these pictures more attractive.

Red Contact Sheet:

These 3 photos are the final pictures of my red contact sheet because they are the best presentations and combination of my theme and also the most successful photographs. Their blurred images and abstract concepts form a good blend. This makes the whole picture full of hope and vitality. The sequence of backgrounds and scenes in a photograph creates depth for the pictures, and the colors in the photos can show the abstract beauty of nature. These are the reasons why I chose these three photos to represent my set 2: they are hopeful and also mystery.

For this set of photos, I prefer to make my photography style close to Keld Helmer Petersen’s, so I choose to use filters to adjust the color of your photos for better consequences. For the compositions, I want to make my photos more abstract, so I avoid the centered composition but more focused on the patterns and the contrast between the scenes.

Full Contact Sheet:

Yellow Contact Sheet:

I think These yellow photos are the most abstract and the closest photos to my topic. The basic composition and style are all reflected in some of these photos.

Green Contact Sheet:

The green photos are more over than the yellow photos. I picked them from the yellow photos because they are the basic representations of my photography style. While I took these photos, I thought about the composition and the light sets for several images. But the other I just took them randomly, and then I found they are actually pretty artistic. The photos have a retro and mysterious vibe.

Red Contact Sheet:

After flipping and adjusting my photos, I chose these 3 pictures as my final red photos. These 3 photos create the most abstractive style and show my modern architectural style very well. (Which is also the theme I focus on this time) The top left one is the clearest and can show the architecture theme; the whole image builds a sense of postmodern industry. And it is also the smiliest one to my artist’s style, which is successful for my topic. The top right one shows more contrast. I used the contrast of black and white to create the abstraction, and during the post-processing, I also added more texture to create the style in the picture. The last one presents a mixture of patterns and contrasts. I considered a lot about the composition, and I also cut and rotated many parts in the post to best achieve this effect during my post-processing. Overall, I have taken some satisfactory photos during this 798 trip. For next time, I may choose a more colorful style to analyze and create my own photos.

Keld Helmer Petersen’s photography style represents strong contrast, steric, complex patterns, and impactful and Industrial feelings. His photographs focus on the structural aspect of creating abstraction.

“it is not the life in the city, I have sought to depict, but the architectonic, in other words, that which frames the everyday life of people” – Keld Helmer Petersen.

I like this style of photographs because they are quite realistic and texture-ish. The graphics and composition in some of these photos are very complicated and full of visual impact. The other part of the photos shows the high contrast of the architecture. These photos represent a kind of fierce beauty. The beauty of these photographs is that they are not very artistic and tender but angular and modern. Keld uses the most basic building structure to show us angles and views that we don’t normally observe in our daily lives.

The most inspiring picture for me is this photo just right above. I’m so into this photo because of its spaciousness and patterns in the graphic. The wonderful thing about this work is that it has a strong sense of extension, allowing the viewer’s vision to enter the deeper picture. The repetition of this photograph creates the fantastic composition for it, and it also brings the depth for this creation, which I think is the most important element of this photo.

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