Flaneur Project

Flaneur Project - Write Up

My final flaneur project consisted of only two locations. Overall, I probably shot in 6 different locations, however, the overall feel and vibe of the photographs only appealed to me from 2 places. The first was while hiking on the White Mountains. While I took the photographs, I kept in mind to capture the beauty of nature. At the top of the mountain, we saw ice and very little leaves. Thus, throughout the hike, I tried to highlight the greenery of the trees, or at least what was left of it. Most of the pictures from there include a lot of yellow, from when the leaves are changing colors this season. The intention of this shoot was to capture perspectives or subjects that we don't usually photograph. For example, a broken tree bark was photographed from above and another fallen tree from the side. While we see these occasionally, most photographs of trees are when they are healthy and standing tall. Moreover, another photograph was of a river streaming down on rocks shot with a long exposure. Although rivers are photographed often, we usually see them differently, for instance, with a short shutter and clear water, similar to how we would see them in real life. The second location I picked was on our university campus. I realised I walk through the streets of our campus daily but never really stop to see what is going on around me. Our campus exhibits great beauty that I wanted to capture, but also of the students who lighten up the campus. Both sets of photographs were closely followed to Gus Powell's street exercise of the traveler, where I picked a subject and followed them around.

Personally, I think the rule of thirds is something a photographer should pay attention to as it gives good composition to the picture, however, I have always enjoyed breaking this rule. For one, it does not look like a photo composed by majority. Many say that photographs that do not follow this rule will look amateur, but in my eyes, it offers something different. Whenever I break this rule, I tend to focus on something else, such as something within the photograph that will make the viewers eyes follow. Whether it be tree branches across the photograph or a building that intersects with the lines of a zebra cross. Sometimes, rules are meant to be broken in photography, and the admiration of the photograph will be different for each viewer and how they perceive the picture. Furthermore, for this project, I challenged myself not to use a tripod for any of my photographs. Although I did not do any night time shooting, some photographs, such as the river stream, would have usually required a support. The reason for this was nothing in specific, but just the idea that, as a traveler, you have to capture moments in the moment. There is no time to set up your tripod and look for the perfect angle and such. I figured that since this was the exercise I picked, I would try to be a real traveler as close as possible, and these were the photographs that were created.