Shoot two

When planning for this shoot, it was difficult to know how many people exactly that I would be shooting, as it was possible that many people would reject having their photograph taken when I asked them. I planned to go to a small street of shops in Hove called George Street, as it had lots of possible shops/shop assistants that I could ask, and it isn't often very busy so it is more likely that I would get the shots that I wanted.

At first I began to approach shops that didn't have any customers in, so that the shop assistant wouldn't be distracted by something else, or concerned about how long it would take etc. As I approached each sales assistant I explained that I was a student taking photographs for an environmental portraiture project, however, many people that I approached didn't want to be photographed so I had to begin to ask other shops that were slightly busier. Those that agreed to have their photograph taken seemed a little nervous, but from my previous experience of taking photographs with strangers, I knew that I had to take control of the situation and I asked them to stand behind the counter with their hands infront of them. Most of my subjects began to smile at first, so I took a photograph of this then kindly asked if they would pull a blank expression for another photograph. For each person, I took around 4/5 photos to ensure that I had at least one where the subject wasn't blinking/smiling/looking away etc.

Contact sheet

This is my contact sheet from my second shoot which I created in photoshop by going to File - Automate - Contact sheet II - then chose the folder of images that I wanted to include. It has allowed me to view all of my photographs together and choose which ones I feel are the strongest and most suitable for possible final prints. I have chosen below a photograph from each shop/shop assistant that I feel was the strongest and I will later edit them on photoshop to adjust the levels, curves and channel mixer to make the images black and white.

Berts Homestore

Bakery

Samaritans charity shop

The lighting in each shop was reasonable, it seems inevitable that the lights were going to be quite bright to make the shop appear cleaner and more appealing to customers, so I didn't have to worry too much about using flash. I feel that if I did use flash at each location, it may have 'invaded' the space and connection between myself and the subject, as I had only just met them and didn't want to be too 'forward'; however, I like the realness about the images without using flash. As I discovered with many artists work, many of them do not use flash as it creates something 'artificial' in the image, and they only use ambient lighting, which is what I did with my photographs.