The Everyday : Eggleston/Parr

           So what is the everyday, I hear you ask. Well I'll tell you. In my opinion, when it comes down to photography, the everyday is basically just all the things we see on our daily travels but are that commonplace that we usually just pass them by without giving them a second glance, or thought.
             If you'd like someone else's opinion then you wont go far wrong with the concept of everyday life tries to capture life as a set of routines, practices, ways of living, thinking and doing things. It's purpose can be summarized by the paradox that it aims to see 'what is extraordinary in the ordinary' which is more or less what I meant but with a few fancy words to pan it out and make it sound more arty. 
           Or, as the slightly more studious than me Mr Aspinall pointed out by quoting Larkin the days where we live, which, if you think about it, is all in all a pretty accurate citation ( I use the word loosely in the hope of trying to fool those that don't know me into thinking I had a better education than they did ).

             Armed with this knowledge we were then split into two groups with the first being given the task of researching Martin Parr, probably best known for his Last Resort: Photographs Of New Brighton, and the second (ours) the one and only William Eggleston, or Billy Egg as I've affectionately renamed him. Upon completion of our research we were instructed to create a powerpoint presentation on our designated photographer which we would present to the other group before finally being set loose upon the surrounding vicinity under the instruction to return with some images that we felt were a good interpretation of our subjects work....so we did.

            William Eggleston was born July 27, 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee. Following on from a rather introverted childhood which he spent playing piano, drawing and playing with electronics he went on to attended 3 universities but was unsuccessful in acquiring a single degree but what he did develop was his interest in photography after being given a Leica camera by one of his friends. He was inspired by the work of Henri Cartier Bresson even though he admitted that it took him a while to grasp the concept of his The Decisive Moment , and also the work of Robert Frank. He originally started working in black and white but by the period 1965-66 began experimenting in colour after being introduced to the medium by William Christenberry , a fellow photographer and artist. In 1969,  John Szarkowski convinced the MOMA to buy one of Eggleston's images after a chance encounter left him impressed by a suitcase full of his of his 'drugstore' colour prints. Between 1973 and 74 Eggleston taught at Harvard University and it was during this period  that he discovered the finer qualities of dye transfer printing after seeing it used for commercial effect and admiring it's over saturation so much so that he began to wonder what his own images would look like via the same process. Dye transfer is a long and complicated process involving separating the individual colours from the master negative and is a technique usually used in advertising to achieve much more saturated colours and so in Egglestons case the colour sometimes became more of a focal point than the subject .The obvious image to use to show this to full effect would be The Red Ceiling from 1973 and then his first portfolio 14 Pictures from 1974, which when exhibited in 1976 was regarded as a major turning point in the acceptance of colour photography as an art form.

All that was left to do was to try and come up with a few images in a style not a million miles away from that of the man himself so I gave it a go...

There's also plenty more information and images on Eggleston available on the www plus a few good documentaries on youtube but if you're looking for somewhere to start let be help by pointing you in the right direction  

Now then, before I forget, the other group showed us their tasty powerpoint presentation on Martin Parr and although I may produce a page on my own blog on the man himself in the mean  time it's worth  checking him out for yourself while you wait, so to speak.

Brief 1 , : Exterior Locations

In all honesty, my passion for street photography came with the purchase of my first DSLR, a Canon 400D approximately  4 years ago, followed almost immediately by that of a cheap 70 - 300 mm Sigma lens at around £89 ish which just made me want to get on a train into Manchester and head for the Chinatown district to see who I could point it at. I'd decided on Chinatown as I expected it to contain more folk going about their day to day business rather than the chaos that inhabits city centre Manchester in it's more popular locations. And that was basically it, a camera. a lens and memory card or two to jam full of jpegs and that I did as I was out from lunchtime until the early hours of the morning after stopping for something to eat in  the Night & Day Cafe and ending up getting a lock in after the bands who were to play that evening just presumed the guy with the camera was with one of them....I wasn't, but that didn't stop them asking for any images that might be suitable for their website purposes....Malakai anyone ? No ? Well I sent them a few anyway. Anyway, enough about my insomnia and instead I'll show you a few images from that afternoon so you can see how my vision has progressed from street portraits of a fashion to a busier style of street photography with a little more to look at. 

f5.6 @ 300mm  1/125s  ISO200

f4 @ 86mm  1/320s  ISO400

f5.6 @ 300mm  1/100s  ISO200

   It was not long before my new found passion developed into a love affair and with that came the desire to bathe in as much influence as I could muster in my quest for absorption. So who were my influences ? Well now, this is where I have to hold my hands up and say I don't really know as I was influenced by so many images that I failed to take much notice of the person who had taken them and it wasn't until starting this course that I realised there was a fascinating history of photography out there to which I'd previously turned a blind eye. I had books, plenty of them,  but I'd spent more time looking at the images than reading the text, which probably goes back 40 plus years if you ask my parents, so what I will do is name some of those that I know for sure have had more than a little influence in my desire to capture candid street shots. Firstly there's Elliott Erwitt who, to quote the preface is "utterly individual, yet impossible to classify"  and who is able to capture "sudden coincidences and chance encounters with objects and situations that allow him to capture glimpses of the ridiculous or the comical side  of everyday life"........there's also a few bare bums in the book but I wont show any here.

                                             



                                         

Next there was the work of Eugene Richards, who was more of a documentary style photographer often working on assignments, but away from his more dramatic shots there are plenty of others that make me smile either by the simplicity of their composition as in the first image from his Dorchester Days collection or the joy on the faces of those involved in the second from his Americans We collection. Additional images available here together with further reading for a greater knowledge of the man himself.

    

                                              

                                          

Finally I've selected Chris Killip because I was given a gift of a book of his images a few years back and was instantly taken aback by the pure grit that is present in many of his photographs. Although initially from the Isle Of Man his strongest images come from up on the North East Coast and possess the occasional sinister moment where you are made to feel unwelcome by the residents of the image and feel you may be asked to leave the page any time soon. You can find his website here but to be honest it's pretty barren on the image front and you'd be better off doing an image search, presuming you like what you see below of course. The first one entitled Crabs & People was taken in Skinningrove, North Yorkshire and for me sums up the completeness of the guy with the Ford Cortina's life in a single frame...what else could he possibly need ? The second is again taken in Skinningrove and backs up what I said about being made to feel unwelcome.....fortunately I have no idea where Skinningrove is but suspect it would be one of those villages you'd find by accident after taking a wrong turn in the fog.

                                                

                                            

The location photography brief required us to produce a series of 10, A3 size images on any subject as long as they were shot in an open, unenclosed space where we weren't in full control of the lighting conditions...in simple terms, outdoors. 

Being an admirer of not only street photography but also my fellow human beings I opted to try and capture a series of images where the two are inclined to meet and came to the conclusion that even with the onset of Winter the average Northerner could still be found enjoying the qualities of a "nice cup of tea" somewhere on the streets of the ever popular mecca of the North, Blackpool...so that's where I headed. 
So what was I looking for I hear you ask. Characters. Yes, characters, the very thing that I believe is a crucial ingredient in the making of of a good street shot. Now they don't have to be flamboyant, odd, funny, strange or down right weird, they just have to draw you in and make you want to look closer, either just out of general curiosity or even in a way that makes you relate to the person or people in the image be it through a genuine connection, to raise a smile or even in sympathy ....just as long as you look deeper. 
In the past, when I first started shooting street photography, I would have opted for my cheap Sigma 70-300 mm f4-5.6 lens (now deceased)  but this was probably more out of cowardice than anything else as it meant I could shoot from a distance and at the same time get a good head start should anyone have decided to give chase, but it also made it feel sneaky and more like a game as I attempted to pin point faces more than situations that were happening. I then went on to use my Canon 70-200 mm f2.8 L lens which there's no denying is great for quality and speed but I found it to be even more obtrusive than the aforementioned Sigma and I always thought it made anyone who spotted me slightly suspicious of my activities and more likely to turn away....not to mention the dull ache one would acquire in my limbs by the end of a days trudging.  So what next ? On the days where the memories are still strong of the limp arms generated by the 70-200 I will quite often just leave home with a 50mm f1.4 strapped on the front as not only some kind of mild physiotherapy but also because it makes you think more with it being a prime lens so there's no zooming in and out to achieve your objective and instead you have to use you legs and mind to fill that frame but the main draw back was that I wanted more in my frame and without going into the technicalities a 50mm lens on a full frame sensor wasn't going to give me the width or flexibility of field of view that I was looking for to complete my objective. That left me with my Sigma 24-70 mm f2.8, light enough to carry, quick enough to shoot, still good enough in the quality corner despite having a rebuild thanks to 'lend' mishap a while back and unobtrusive enough not to put the fear of God into anybody unfortunate enough to catch me pointing it in their general direction and once bolted onto the front of my Canon 5D MKII  not a bad bit of kit for trawling the streets in the ever diminishing light of Blackpool's nooks and crannies.
All I needed now was a keen eye, an every ready smile and a healthy slurp from a big pot of stamina and I was good to go. 
One of the main things to consider with street photography is that you're not really in control of any situation apart from that moment when you decide to release the shutter and even then a second either way can mean you either get what you want or puff and blow at your missed opportunity but that's where digital comes into its own meaning you can fire off plenty off shots shooting in the continuous mode and have some kind of faith in finding the shot you thought you saw, buried deep in the bowels of your memory card when you get home, but in saying that you still have to have that keen eye to not only spot the decisive moment but to be able to anticipate it's arrival. 
In my series of images I was looking to produce plenty to look at, be it people, signage or backgrounds so a shallow depth of field wasn't really part of my agenda and I really just wanted to draw the viewer in closer looking for the finer details as their gaze was drawn slowly through the image from front to back. With this in mind I was aware that a wide aperture wasn't necessarily going to be a priority on this shoot so to compensate for any lack of shutter speed I was going to have to increase the ISO accordingly, which I did, and I like to think I've achieved my objective. I also made the decision to process in black and white as I feel it puts all the subject matter on an even plane without some sudden burst of colour over shadowing something else in the frame and creating more of a distraction than anything else. The choice of processing my final images in black and white also meant I had to be careful with tones and try and make sure there was a good balance in the levels etc so that whites weren't appearing as greys and such, and for that reason I didn't venture down the straight use of any desat, black and white or greyscale conversions and instead created a new adjustment layer and incorporated the gradient map feature which I feel gives you greater control over your final image coupled with a tad sharpening where needed and the slightest use of the crop tool where necessary to assist in the removal of any intrusive distractions that I felt didn't quite belong within the frame. 
Now then, having achieved my objective of producing a series of images, I wasn't quite home and dry as the next stage was trying to whittle that series down to a set of 10 that all worked together and featured a common denominator in the form of 'cafe' , as well as varying enough in content to keep the observers attention within each image. With that in mind I had to reject a few  such as this one ....

f4 @ 70mm  1/160s  ISO800

...which, although I love it's slight abstractness as created by all the activity within its reflections, and also that it contains a couple of characters (Percy Sugden ?) and the cafe menu, it doesn't quite sit in snuggly with the others as it's ventured slightly further inside the cafe for the finished result. Another one which didn't quite make the grade was this one ....

f2.8 @ 30mm  1/640s  ISO200

....mainly because I didn't feel there was enough to capture the viewers interest even though there is the old guy sat in the chair with a cup of tea but I feel he isn't distinctive enough to grab your attention but I also feel this could have been used if only the sign in the foreground was rotated through 90° or even 45° ....it's the little things that make all the difference. One more that didn't quite make the cut because it was more of a close up and didn't sit comfortably amongst the others that feature a wider field of view so the choice to omit here was a little more obvious as you can see.

f7.1 @ 70mm  1/200s  ISO200

So with the whittling out of the way (there were others) it was down to the final 10 which are as follows starting with a simple introduction to my theme shot with a nice use of depth of field thanks to the distance between me and the point of focus and the greater distance between the point of focus and the people approaching so as to draw the attention to the sign yet at the time make you look deeper into the frame to spot the two ladies on their way up the street whilst contemplating the thought of a "nice cup of tea " ( possibly ).

cafe culture...Northern style 

f6.3 @ 70mm  1/320s  ISO400

Second choice features a whole host of signage to draw you in past the main character in the photo to explore behind the glass and then in the glass as you discover the lady on the left with Rolling Stones bag before drifting back to the slight movement visible in the guys trailing foot which, coincidentally, is one of the things that was a deciding feature in this image. 

f6.3 @ 70mm  1/100s  ISO400

My third choice features three characters that I initially started shooting from a distance, well, there were only two to start with but by the time I'd crossed the road to introduce myself and explain my intrusion, they were joined by the chef who couldn't have struck a better pose ( I have a few) if I'd asked. They didn't have to do much else apart from carry on as they were and I was more than happy with what they served up even if they were unaware of what they'd brought to the table....see what I did there ? Twice !  

f6.3 @ 24mm  1/100s  ISO400

The next one doesn't really require much of an explanation as it's all there to see and just comes from being in the right place at the right time and keeping an eye on your surroundings. As it turns out I'd only just finished shooting the people outside the bistro when I spotted at least half a dozen of these young ladies marching down the street on a mission, or maybe they were just trying to find themselves ( I'll be here all week) , and all I had to do was quickly spot what was available as a suitable background and wait for the appropriate moment. Viola ! Plenty to see, and a lovely contrast all thanks to the jumpers and hats and once again that smidgen of movement from a singular shoe....the downward arrows were just an added bonus . Thanks girls, I owe you a drink. 

f6.3 @ 52mm  1/100s  ISO400

The fifth in the set contains that wonderful moment of subject interaction and not only once, but twice. And then on top of that there's a nice big slice of signage to remind you where you are and if that wasn't enough the depth of field gives you a subtle introduction to the tower to help you along. I do love it when I get the occasional eye contact from a subject and even more so when they are unfazed by it all and carry on as they were, but then again, very little usually gets in the way of a seasoned smoker and their desire to be at one with nature the way they know best. 

f8 @ 48mm  1/50s  ISO400

Number six once again rewarded me with the subject's gaze as they pondered over my loitering habits, which just goes to prove it isn't necessarily best to shoot and run as something better might be waiting in the wings, and I don't just mean the lady to the right almost out of frame. I'd shot her moments earlier but she wasn't doing much to captivate my interest so I mooched around the front of the cafe to see if there was anything else going on and that is when I saw my framing whilst at the same time being lucky enough to include the lady around the corner and that wonderfully situated polystyrene cup which helps bring the front and the side of the cafe together as it draws you in close to explore what else is going on. A little tweaking of the levels on this one as I didn't want to lose anything from the faces behind the glass whilst making sure my signs still popped.

f5.6 @ 30mm  1/250s  ISO800

The seventh in the set was chosen simply because I love the variety of light I was presented to work with including the way the vertical of the fluorescent in the window helps draw you in towards the solitary figure with his tea and cigarette and then there's the natural light highlighting the metallic street furniture without any awkward glare or loss of it's shine. Once again plenty to see once you've looked beyond the obvious even if you initially feel that there isn't too much going on... " to me, to you.".   

f5.6 @ 70mm  1/250s  ISO800

Number eight in the set  is one of my favourites simply because it's wider field of view once again means there is plenty going on and not only in the foreground with the people seated and those passing through but also as you look into the back of the cafe and spot the silhouettes of those seated and the clock on the wall. It's shots like this that wouldn't work the same with a wider aperture as so much of what's going on in the background wouldn't be clear and so much of the potential subject matter would fade into insignificance. Once again I had to be careful in post processing to make sure I didn't lose any of the detail within the cafe interior whilst ensuring there was no excessive highlights occurring from the lighting or street furniture.

f4 @ 39mm  1/200s  ISO400

The ninth in the set primarily features the signs around the door but on closer inspection you discover the little old lady peeping through, and her hand, nicely framed by the the edge of the door and the door frame. Simple, yet once again one of those decisive moments as seconds later she was on the move after her top up of tea so there wouldn't have been a picture...well, not the one I wanted. 

f11 @ 52mm  1/25s  ISO800

My final choice for number 10 features a whole host of those things I love the most in my images, people. People sitting, people standing, people riding (wheelchair), people doing, people observing and even a person with a camera, which is a nice way to round of the set as that's what I do. There's no eye contact with anyone in this photograph as they are all too preoccupied with themselves, which is the icing on the cake really because they are all unaware of my presence so everybody is doing something and I don't exist...the complete opposite of the lady and teenager in the early Higgitt's shot.    

f8 @ 52mm  1/160s  ISO800

In conclusion, I feel I have achieved my objective of producing 10 images, not only in the style of street photography, but also bang on with my original idea of cafe culture...Northern style, that sit comfortably  together as a set. In looking at my printed off A3 size images, I was initially concerned that they may appear a little darker than they do on my laptop screen despite using the correct profiles as suggested and having had my screen calibrated, but I could remedy this before my next brief by simply ordering a test print first and then perhaps tweaking any brightness as required to ensure my printed images are the same as I see on screen. So all in all a successful day, which although remaining overcast it didn't actually rain, so as the day went on I just had to up the ISO on a few occasions to compensate for the low light and to help maintain a reasonable shutter speed. I feel on a few occasions I've also managed to include a couple of a touch of humour in honour of Elliott Erwitt, a sprinkling of grit to keep Chris Killip happy and above all a slight documentary style along the lines of Eugene Richards by managing to stick to my theme, cafe culture...Northern style.