final project: people watching

Wide angle shot showing the reflection of the trees on the water and the figure small in the back. 

For my final project I have been taking a series of photographs throughout the term, focusing on the theme of street photography and candids. The project has been altered a little since I first proposed it. Originally I had planned to create a photo book with all of the images I took. However, it being winter it was almost always gray out and I wasn't satisfied with enough of the photos to create a full photo book with. Instead, I created some inkjet prints of my favorites. I went through all my images, picked out which ones I thought were the best, edited them in Photoshop, and printed them out on the inkjet printer. 

Couple caught in a genuine, intimate moment holding hands on a walk.

Going out for walks and photographing things that would catch my eye was quite therapeutic: the sting of the cold, the click of the shutter, and watching other people going about their lives. I uploaded Flickr albums when I went out to take images. Here is my most recent Flickr album. 

Someone out by themselves on a bench.

I contemplated making my images black and white, a stereotypical look of street photography. However, even though the lighting wasn't ideal, there are little pops of color and brightness that would be missed out on if I made the photos black and white. Also, in some ways I actually like the grayness of the images. It's calm and peaceful in a sense, and isn't too drastic or extreme. It illustrates the quiet and cold of the winter and snow; something fairly new to me, since I'm from California. 

Skateboarder in motion.

I really enjoyed working on this project and get to work more with photography. I've had a passion for photography for a while now, so it was great to get to create my final project around it. Also experimenting in a new style of photography for me. I tend to move towards landscape and nature pictures, so this was something different for me which was fun to experience. I liked capturing people not posed. With the birth and growth of social media, we see less and less of the "real" these days, and more posed and heavily edited photos posted. With these images I wanted to show the truth, the real emotional humanity behind social media. 

Out for a walk with their dog.

Connecting this to Baudrillard, my images are aimed at being a reflection of a basic reality. However even through the minor edits and crops on Photoshop, the images could be considered as masking or perverting a basic reality. Photography in general always has the bias of the photographer, the image shows what they want you to see. I really did make very minimal edits though, so it is at least close to being a reflection of a basic reality, but maybe photography never can be a full reflection of reality. Photography in itself is a reproduction which becomes part of the hyperreal. "The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction...The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is already reproduced: That is, the hyperreal...which is entirely in simulation." 

In conclusion, I think no matter how much you try to reflect the real, photography is a reproduction and can only get so close to reflecting that basic reality. It is part of the hyperreal, and thus becomes simulation.