For many people who value art, Florence is a capital of Italian Renaissance and a world centre of history and culture. In this city were born and lived many writers, architects and artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dante, Boccaccio, Giotto The list can be very long. There are many historical places and museums that are worth visiting. Therefore, Florence is a touristic city and many globetrotters come here all over the year. The vibrant spirit of the city prevails each corner of the center. This is one of the reasons why I chose to visit Florence and share photos that I took during my travelling.
For me, Florence is a magical place where I felt like I have become part of its culture and art. Thought my photos, I would like to transfer the essence and the mood of people whom I have seen and captured with my phone for this assignment. Most of the photos are documentary as they face the real event and show the everyday life of the citizens. The objectives of documentary photography include the creation of a testament to the real events and sustain public attention. These photographs are rather subjective and often depict ideological and social evidence and phenomena (Open society foundations).
For this first photo, I adopted bird’s-eye method, which is an elevated view of objects from above (Rampal 16). In this case, I use oblique bird’s eye view because it was not possible to make a vertical shot. Moreover, for this photo, oblique is essential in order to show not only the drawing of a boy but the boy itself, who is posing for the artist. For the bird’s eye view, it is not necessary to climb the building, but simply shoot something that beneath the level. The weather was cloudy and the colours of the photo are not bright enough, nevertheless, the notion of the photo is not disturbed and the main object - album and the sketch of the picture is bright enough. The artist is exaggerates the features of boy’s face: he is drawing a caricature. I wanted to document exactly this moment because caricature artists are ubiquitous in Florence.
My second photo introduces two native girls talking during lunch in a pizza restaurant. I captured the moment of gesticulation that proves the emotionality of Italians in everyday talk. This is a documentary photo in a motion that tells a story about the girls. The photo is not confined by its frame and the audience can envision the conversation, guess the mood of the girls and imagine the savour of wine. The colours are vivid and what attracted my attention was the colour of wine in the glasses allegedly reduplicates the hair colour of the girl.
This photo portrays a street performer: an ordinary man who, probably, has been living in Florence all his life. There are passers-by on the background and the statues that once again remind about the glorious city. A worm's-eye view is a method opposite to bird’s eye view that is a view of an object from below. The angle is not sharp; from beneath we can see the street performer and his case with coins. Many photographers, however, widely use worm's-eye view to capture architecture and to adopt the rapid vertical expansion looking up from the ground. One of such photographers is Romain Jacquet-Lagreze, who captures building in Hong Kong by manipulating a perspective from the ground (Chan).
For many documentary photos, colour is an inalienable feature. In my opinion, the colours of the stripped orange blanket emphasises the varnished wooden colour of violin. Without the colours, the photo would look drab and insipid.
This image represents a documentary photography. There is a gypsy woman begging for money from a tourist. I chose to capture this moment to show that in the city of art and creativeness there are poor people too. I made the photography from this point to shot the patterns of the building behind. The background is a facade with windows repeated and I tried to use this pattern as a compositional photography device. It is not ideal pattern technology on the photo because I did not make patterns equidistant to the sensor in the camera. Jim Zuckerman, though, inspired me to try adopting pattern technique in the future.
On the sly, I took a picture of a worn-out cafe worker, who seems to be tired not only from his work but probably because he bears some kind of a burden on his shoulders. He did not notice that I’m taking picture of him with my phone because he was immersed in his thoughts. I made the photo from the angle to capture the counter, cakes and biscuits and to grasp the bottles behind. From this point of view the audience is able to see the deepness of the cafe. Inside, there was no natural light and I my Iphone automatically increase ISO (the level of sensitivity). It led to occurrence of grain at dark object of the photo, for instance, if we zoom in to the dark T-shirt of the cafe worker, we can notice grains.
Nocturnal type of photography is one of my favourite types. There is an opportunity to play with exposure and lights and to model the objects with light and shades. This photo shows two girls wandering night street of Florence. I switched off the flash on my iPhone to preserve proper shades; the movements of the girls are not blurred because, again, my phone used high ISO as it did on the premises. Because of that, the street light is bright. This photo of night Florence captured my attention like those images, which Ian Hughes took floodlit by artificial light at night (Radnor). Moreover, the bright light ahead effected the shades between crevices of brick wall, making bricks more distinguished.
The last photo is panoramic representation of the city that depicts a tourist looking at the Florence cathedral - Duomo. The girl is in focus, nevertheless, the building of the panorama is detailed enough because of the deep depth of field. That was my choice to capture everything in details to show the beautiful scenery. It is very important to choose a proper depth of field (Knight). As I was taking pictures with my phone, I did not have opportunity to choose a lens and to make experiences with F settings. However, I was able to choose a proper settings in my phone. I installed panoramic settings of my iPhone and my aim was to focus on the scenery and the tourist at once. On the other hand, whenever I want to make a model the main object in my picture, I would use portrait settings of my iPhone. These settings helps to take a photo of the person in sharp details and the phone makes background blurred.
Work cited
Chan K. Worm's Eye View Photographs Show Hong Kong Like You've Never Seen It Before — Or Maybe You Have. Retrieved from http://architizer.com/blog/hong-kong-rjl/
Knight C. Understanding and Utilising Deep Depth-of-Field. TutPlus. 16 Mar 2011. Retrieved from http://photography.tutsplus.com/articles/understanding-and-utilising-deep-depth-of-field-- photo-5794
Open society Foundations: Documentary Photography in an Open society. October 2013.
Radnor A. Pictures of the week: Around the floodlit grounds, by Ian Hughes. The Guardian. 15 Aug 2014
Rampal K. K., Handbook of Aerial Photography and Interpretation. Concept Publishing Company, 1999. Print
Zuckerman J. Jim Zuckerman on Composition: Patterns. The Photography and Filmmaking
Education Resource. 4 Sep 2009.
