Photograph 3 – Assignment 3 – Landscape | Johnathan Hall Photography

I felt I managed to show London and some of its inhabitants well in this photograph. This was because they were clearly in the context of enjoying London, with the London Eye being the most prominent landscape feature, clearly visible within the frame. The inhabitants included passing crowds on a bridge popular with tourists in my experience: one of the Golden Jubilee bridges between the Embankment and the South Bank. The other inhabitant was someone, who I felt I could relate with; namely another photographer; apparently taking photos of the London Eye. This person was obviously absorbed and concentrating on his photography, which I felt lent to the character of the image and meant he was fairly unmindful of the channel of tourists behind him, which I also captured in the eventual photograph. This conveyed how the photographer was wrapped up in his own thoughts as he took photographs and so I was pleased with how compositionally he was in the middle of the frame; with the rest of the frame seemingly based around him.

One area I felt the photograph could somehow be improved on, was how obvious the flow of people across this Golden Jubilee bridge appeared to the viewer. Although the flow of people was just discernible as a flow of people, I don’t think it was prominent enough in the frame to make up an intended main element of the photograph. I put this down to one key factor: this being the time of day and quality of lighting on this flow of people. Had the time of day and therefore quality of lighting been more similar to Photograph 2, the flow of people would have been more easily apparent. I had experimented with various long shutter speeds (ranging from 4 – 15 seconds) and decided the shutter speed of 8 seconds for the flow of people gave the best results. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the long exposure effect for the flow of people only just caught the eye.

Photograph 3 – Assignment 3 – Landscape

Conceptually, I thought this photograph was interesting, because it offered a different way of looking at London; namely at another photographer looking at London. The fact that he was in profile added to this twist, where it showed him in context but gave the viewer an insight into what he was photographing simultaneously.

The Golden Jubilee Bridges or Hungerford Footbridges, built in 2002; ‘you get some spectacular views across London, with the London Eye, County Hall and the Houses of Parliament on one side’ – (LondonTown.com, 2015). This was the side the photographer I was photographing, was shooting from and so it would seem he was attempting to capture one or more of these views in a single shot; which gives further insight into what he was thinking/photographing.

Camera settings for Photograph 3 were:

Because I took multiple exposures and combined them (one for the photographer and a handful for the long exposures of the tourists passing by), I have written down the settings separately for firstly the photograph to ‘freeze’ the photographer and then a setting representative for one of the long exposures.

Photographer exposure:

f/3.5, 1/13s, ISO 2500, focal length 13mm and no neutral density filter. A tripod and cable release were used.

Long exposure:

f/11, 8 seconds, ISO 200, focal length 13mm and no neutral density filter. A tripod and cable release were used.

References:

LondonTown. (2015). Hungerford Bridge in London. [online] Available at: http://www.londontown.com/LondonInformation/Sights_and_Attractions/Hungerford_Bridge/a758/ [Accessed 18 Nov. 2015].

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