Photographing people ... The motivation of the project 26!
The invitation to participate for the Champagne-Ardenne Project 26 has reached a point where I had in mind the wishes of escape. Look elsewhere, beyond the fields and forests. Briefly surveyed the asphalt pavement that I left there ten years for my little green hollow. Find the subdued atmosphere of the counter where you swallow a little black on the run before work. Find the dark figures hurrying to get home in the early winter night. Find all this time for a trip, then return to my country, lighting a fire in the fireplace, dog on foot, a cat shoulders.
I am " mounted to the city" more often than usual in recent weeks in search of inspiration for the first theme of the project 26 : People ...
night scenes in town
I could find my way to the portrait, whether cities or fields. But I'm not particularly comfortable in the portrait, and respect for the project 26, I did not really want to venture on a path on which I could slip. So I went on a more environmental approach: the people in their world. Search photos that carry within them a atmosphere. And since I'm in my phase "night shot" I gradually refined my approach to photographing the dark.
Image Search on urban solitude, the desert are the towns after 7 pm. This quest atmosphere has imposed itself: I lived and worked for years in the city center of Reims. And I loved the city life, made a lot of walking foot, cinemas, cafes, street concerts ... Then there was this desire for a change. Campaign, still walking, but more coffee, more asphalt, even a bakery (great breadmaker! ). Today, whenever I return "my old world" , I feel all the excitement of observing with great tenderness, but also a lot of recoil. This distance is further compounded when I carry a camera around his neck. It is this look on these lonely shadows that make the city at night, filtered by the distance from the city life that gives me my campaign, I try to translate into images. A gaze respect and tenderness, with perhaps even sometimes a touch of nostalgia.
(Click on pictures to enlarge)
It's time to walk the dog! A bookstore
lit, full of books, empty of people. In front of the mirror, the reflection of another shop. The mirror is tinted: "real people" fall naturally in black and white.
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| Walking the Dog, among bookstore and tea shop |
Night food, atmosphere Edward Hopper
A small roadside restaurant. Atmosphere directly inspired by some paintings of Edward Hopper (Nightawks) .
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| A light in the night: a restaurant atmosphere Hopper |
Solitude underground parking ...
Enter a underground parking. Silhouettes like ghosts advancing toward the elevators. As in the first picture, life is here in black and white , dotted by a few cool neon color.
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| Solitude, the elevator underground parking |
Series "towns" (and champagne!)
Reims, Chalons-en-Champagne, Troyes, Epernay ... These are the cities I surveyed to find these images. I hope to extend this series of photos taken in villages ( not clear ... it is often met with closed shutters ) . I'm not sure I will move the photos in this series for Project 26, but it is a possibility, and it is a theme that I will continue to widen.
Behind the scenes Photo series:
Here are some elements to this series of photos: A
- horizontal format, photos, built around horizontal and vertical lines, from a symmetry around a central axis . This fairly rigid construction freeze images, time stops.
- Integrating different plans: a shadowy figure who slips in front of the stage sets of reflections ... As if these people were following cities all have their own parallel path without ever meeting. Feeling reinforced by the different light environments on a single picture: the color does not necessarily reads on the faces, but on inanimate objects.
- side processing photos in this series, I have deliberately chosen a fairly cold white balance, type neon. I'm not looking at all the " portrait", but rather an image that is the symbol of this urban solitude. Influenced by the world of painting, I opted for smoothing noise. This smoothing allows me to depersonalize the characters who inhabit a scene in abeyance, and enhance the symbolic aspect.
Bracket: Noise Management
Noise, its management, accent or lack thereof is a subject that really concerns me. Take into account is part of the act of photographing. By "nature photography", I want a picture without a speck of noise: a few brush strokes on my net connection, and the rest who melts into a soft bokeh .
Pictured urban noise sometimes part of the image, which could be distorted if it is too smoothed.
But in this series (taking between 400 and 640 ISO), having experienced different treatment from my raw file, I stopped on this smoothing would have been too marked for a photo we want "realistic . I'm not looking realism instead. I look for scenes that could be found everywhere, inhabited by those lonely people that we were all one day. (Side noise processing , I proceeded exactly as for most of my macros, wreckage just a little more: I do not denoised entire image uniformly. I applied a treatment adapted to the noise each zone by viewing my photo to 100%.)
My apologies ...
As usual, I let my fingers run over the keyboard ... Really talkative! I hope my post do not appear as a long monologue. I think I need to express in public for photo feeds that this series of photos, and write this article helps me better understand what I want.
A little stressed to present all this while I've used over and over kind of serenity in my pictures. But as you know, in my cabinet of curiosities Home agitated dozens of influences very different from each other ... This work around the construction and interplay of reflections is not really new: I've already submitted through my photos Art Museum . And flower enthusiasts and butterflies worry: I did not abandon the macro. I think instead that practice different types of photos can only encourage the renewal and creativity, regardless of the objective screwed onto the case.
... and many thanks!
I want to conclude a little pompously with thanks:
- Special thanks to the initiators of the project 26: the invitation participation has really been the inductor element through which I finally took the time to think about something other than nature photography.
- Acknowledgements equally Essere individuals who offered me Objective 50 mm f / 1.4 I use more often. He always knew that my curiosity would lead me in different directions, and he was right !
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