Connecting Essay One

This is an image I found on the internet from a German photographer named Rut Blees Luxemburg. Her work normally consists of an Urban landscape theme, shot at night. This particular image is very ambiguous; the scene looks almost deserted but this idea is automatically dismissed as the viewer can clearly see the lights from the windows on the residential buildings in the background. This creates confusion in the viewer's mind and makes them wonder what this image is trying to say, engaging them and forcing them to pay attention to the rest of the photograph. The bright, blood red container shows connotations of danger and suggests that this is a dodgy area, with potentially, a lot of crimes. The fact that there is a chair and a cup of coffee in the container further highlights this and adds tension to this picture as the viewer is made aware that there is someone who is meant to be sitting there. Luxemburg has made good use of the lampposts and manipulated them in order to stop the viewer from focusing on irrelevant parts of the picture; the impression that the lights are too bright is given and so the viewer avoids focusing on that particular part of the picture. This technique is a really good one as the photographer can control where the viewer focuses and what they pay the most attention to.

This picture is one I took on my second shoot when I was experimenting with a tripod. Like the picture above, the aim was to make the scene look creepy and unsafe. The flares from either side of the picture guide the viewer and makes them focus on the alleyway more that the apartments on both sides. This shows repetition and some sort of pattern as there are more lights along the alley as it gets smaller - they act as an enhancer for the lines that are shown in this picture, helping guide the viewer through the alleyway from the bottom of the picture to the middle. The fact that the further point of this alley is in the middle of the picture makes it the centre of attention, forcing the viewer to focus on this and pay the most attention to this particular part of the picture. The aperture was adjusted so that the container is the brightest part of the picture, once again, forcing the viewer to immediately pay their attention to that particular part of the image.

Both pictures consist of the same content: a container and residential apartments in the background. The colour of both containers is very bright and bold compared to the rest of the photographs, allowing them to stand out and attract the viewer's attention straight away. Due to the fact that both pictures have been taken at night time, it gives them a similar effect and emphasises on the flares from the light sources, allowing them to take up a considerable amount of the photograph. Although the two pictures are very similar, they do consist of some differences; such as the angle in which each image was taken and the aperture used. For example, in the first picture, a wider aperture was used, round F4.5, in order to achieve a shallow depth of field, making the picture brighter than my one as a used a higher aperture, which was F20, giving my image a full depth of field. Moreover, the angle in my picture is not straight like the one used in the picture from the internet, it is clear that the photographer used a tripod as her picture is framed perfectly. I didn't use a tripod so that my image could look dodgy and dangerous.