shoot 2

Urban Street Writing - Nicholas Goodden

Nicholas Goodden's Work:

Nicholas Goodden's work features many bright colours. In this example, it is a lot of red contrasted with the greys in the street. Because of this, the writing aspect of the photography is less explicit and it isn't the main focus, in this case.

The writing in his photographs is less explicit than it is in other photographers such as Nancy Hellebrand's work. The main features instead of the lettering in his work are the subjects and features, for example the telephone boxes.

There is usually a lot of other things in Goodden's photographs, he doesn't often leave any negative space around his subject. In this image, the writing is in colour, contrasting to Hellebrand's style of having exclusively black writing on white paper.

I wanted to research Goodden and his photography as it is a unique way to explore writing in photography. The urban feel is something i can recreate around Harlow or London, and the inspiration from his works will enable me to capture some good shots. I like that the writing is incorporated into the photo as a background or small feature as this gives the photo more detail and depth. The exploration of colours will enable me to complete some vibrant pieces, heavily differing from the Hellebrand inspired images.  

Key aspects of his work include:

• London signs
• Travel
• Urban
• Colour

Image bank of ideas by various artists:

These images reflect the same type of style as Goodden's work. They feature vibrant colours that stand out in the picture, as well as featuring the key aspect, writing, throughout them. The street signs in the images is where most of the writing is found, making these images similar to the ones I want to create. I like the moody lighting that gives a very urban vibe to images. These photos are slightly more zoomed out than i would like mine to be. Although the writing in these photographs is evident, I wish mine to be more explicit in my work.

My Contact Sheet:

Photos to Use:

I think that these are the best photos from this shoot. Due to the rainy weather, it was difficult to clearly capture different writing around London, but despite this, these photos are quite clear. The cloudy sky also provided me the moody lighting I wanted to capture for the urban feel. The constantly changing natural lighting made it hard to find the right camera settings such as the aperture. As this had to be regularly adjusted, some of my photos have not ended up the best quality they could have been. However, I believe that these four photos capture all of Goodden's aspects as well as having a pleasing aesthetic to them. The bold colours in some of the pictures is a key feature to the photo criteria I wanted to hit, as well as the slightly implicit writing in each image.

Photos that didn't turn out well:

These images didn't turn out how I anticipated due to the poor lighting situation, as well as framing issues. I attempted to use the flash, but as it was too dark it only produced unwanted shadows. There was also not much notable writing in these images that would relate to the theme. There wasn't the vibrant colours that i wanted to capture in these photos, and some of the images focused too much on one subject rather than including a variety of features in the image. If I were to re-shoot these images, I would try to adjust the aperture and shutter speed to make sure that the pictures I had were successful.

Edit Progression:

I edited all of these images to the same style, and followed the same steps when it came to each individual shot. Firstly, I cropped the image. This gets rid of any shadows or unwanted subjects and produces the best frame for the image.

After this, I slightly increased both the brightness and contrast. This was mainly to make the colours bolder, and because the natural lighting was quite gloomy. It also adds definition to the writing on the sign.

As previously mentioned, the lighting wasn't a huge advantage when it came to this shoot, as it was all natural. Because of this, it was hard to have the correct exposure for each shot as the lighting situation would change. Because of this, I have slightly changed the exposure to brighten the image.

A key aspect of Goodden's work is the vibrant colours. In order to recreate this theme, I increased the vibrancy of my images on photoshop as a final touch.

Final Edits:

Final Analysis:

Overall, I am happy with how this shoot ended up and would class it as successful. I believe that I have been able to reflect and recreate the themes from Nicholas Goodden's work and that they relate to the chosen theme of Writing. The colours in my work are vibrant, similarly to those in Goodden's work, and there are many subjects within one image. If I were to reconduct this shoot, I would consider being more precise with camera sertings such as the aperture, as I usually stuck to f//8, however this was not effective for some of my shoots. Whilst this shoot was interesting, I personally prefer the personal tones in Nancy Hellebrand's work more than the urban tones in these photographs. If I were to develop this shoot I could look into adding some portraiture into the urban themes in order to make the images more interesting.