Shoot 8-London City

Shoot 8-London city

Plans for shoot 

For this shoot in London city i plan to show the effects of urbanisation in a capital city. As London is a large and highly populated city i would expect it to have quite a lot of negative impacts in the environment that has been created by people. I also want to show how these images how London are different or similar to my other urban shoots, as  with this project i want to show the negative impacts of people in different urban and rural environments.

Contact sheet

Photos that need improving

I took this image because i thought that i would be able to portray how a consumer society can destroy the environment, as the smoke from cigarettes are harmful to he environment and people. So for this photo i needed to get the depth of field right, so that i could have the cigarette bin fully in focus and the wall behind it out of focus, which i wrongly did to the top section of the photo, as i made the very top out of focus and so the cigarette bin is slightly out of focus too. So to improve this photo i could try on photoshop to lessen the effect of how blurred the top part of the photo is, or crop the very top out, so that the whole photo would not look as blurred.

This photo was one of the very first photos that i took, as i had just exited the underground station. So whilst taking the photo i wasn't really prying attention to how the shakiness of my hands would effect the blurry ness of the photo. As i was trying to get the framing of the image right, i didn't realise that because the area of the photo that i was taking was slightly darker than the area closer to me that i needed to change the shutter speed and aperture to suite the image. The aperture that i shoot in was only F/5.6 along with a shutter speed of 1/200 seconds and an ISO of 400. So because i ddi not use a tripod the photo was blurry, and if i ddi have a tripod i would have been able to sort out the correct settings for that photo.

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

For this shoot my intent was to show how different the landscape is in a main city like London, on of the most urbanised places in the United Kingdom, so that I could contrast these photos from the city of London, to photos of normal towns that have a compromise of urban and rural like Enfield or Harlow. And also to show how even though London is a very wealthy place, it still has faults like litter or graffiti. Thats why i went to the area around The Shard, however when i took my photos i think that i focused more on taking photos of the buildings, instead of the area around the buildings, as i found it quite hard to get good quality photos of the area. However because of this, it is now hard for me to link this work to my other shoots in other urban areas. However i did get some photos that did show the landscape,  for example the photos that i took that include the thames also include the landscape of the bridge, trees, streets and the buildings. So from those photos it does show what i intended to do and has a clear link to my other work. So to improve this shoot i should have taken more photos like the ones of the thames instead of the buildings, as those photos do not show the landscape as a shoe, only certain elements of that landscape.

Straight images














AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

As my intentions for this shoot on London was to show how the development in a city was greatly different to  normally developed urban town. So i think that out of all of the artists that i have researched, Rut Blees Luxemburg is the most relevant photographer for this shoot. I think this because i know that Rut has taken numerous photos based on London city, called London dust which takes an oblique look at the redevelopment of London city, so i thought that my intentions for my shoot were very similar to Rut's because she looked at redevelopment. However the photos that i took in London were of the real buildings themselves, but Ruts photos are of computer generated imagery versions of the buildings like St Paul's cathedral that property developers would use.

AO2 Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

For this shoot i used my Nikon D3100 camera that i used in all my previous shoots. As this day was very overcast, the lighting was very grey, dull and just generally dark. So because of this i had to shoot with an ISO of 200 which is still fairly low considering how dark it was for the time of day. However the photos did still all have an overcast effect, but i think that it added to how London is a highly polluted area compared to the majority of the United Kingdom, so the grey tone of the photos is reflected though this. I used shutter speed of around 1/125 or 1/250 because of the time of day and i couldn't have a shutter speed and lower as the trembling of my hands from me holding the camera would have effected the photos with blur. I did not think that it would have been very practical of me if i had used a tripod because of how busy London city can be, especially on a weekend. However me not using an tripod has effected my work as a downside, as a tripod would have allowed me to keep the camera steady and used slower shutter speeds if i needed to. I used a small aperture of f/16 which allowed me to take photos that had a wider depth of field so that everything was in focus as some of the photos that i took did contain a lot.

*Separate photo files of the shard and tree landscape, then i selected the whole tree landscape photo and overlaid the shard photo*

*Polygon lasso tool*

*Spot healing brush over the crane*

*Change opacity and type of opacity to overlay*



*Change opacity and type of opacity to vivid light*

AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements

I think that with this shoot i ddi take some good photos however they are not really relevant to the other shoots on urban landscape that i have done. So in regards to my intentions for the shoot, i did show how London city is one of the most urban areas in the uk, which i showed by capturing how advanced and built up the area is compared to normal towns. However i did have exceptions of capturing areas to contrast with this so like damage to buildings e.g vandalism or litter in the street, I did pot ray this side of London but only in a couple of photos, therefore i didn't truly capture the downside of the environment. And if i did find something that was relevant to the destruction of the environment, i didn't have time to spend to capture the perfect image, resulting in those images becoming blurry. For example-