Hoppé Portraits - Society, Studio & Street

Well, this week I finally made it to the exhibition - on a Thursday evening during one of the National Portrait Gallery's "Late Shift". Before talking about the exhibition, I would just like to mention the concept of the "Late Shift".  This is the most innovative idea I have come across for a long time.  On Thursday and Friday evenings, the Gallery is open until 9pm, with a bar in the main foyer, a DJ playing some great music (on the day I went) and a variety of other activities.  There is a lovely relaxed atmosphere which really helps in viewing the exhibitions.

The first thing which struck me about the exhibition was how prolific Hoppé was - I imagine that the photographs which were on display were only a part of the main collection.  Some of the photographs were original vintage photographs and some were modern reprints - however this did not detract from the pleasure of viewing them.

So what were my impressions.  Hoppé captured the spirit of the subject, whether the androgynous look of Vaslav Nijinsky (1914) image here, the confidence of a young Margot Fonteyn (1935) see image, taken after her first major performance at the age of 16, or the thoughtfulness of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1912) see image here. With regard to much of his early work, there is a soft quality in the vintage prints which just could not be reproduced in digital.  This is not just due to the very wide apertures used by Hoppe, but also the materials of the period, such as the gelatin silver prints.

One of the most exciting series of prints in this exhibition, was "street" which was Hoppe's venture into street photography, sometimes using cameras which were hidden inside brown bags with a hole for the lens!  It is, however, a great insight into English and in particular, London, life.  Here were some of my favourite photographs:

British Museum Underground Station (1937) see image here, for me the curves of the tunnel, the positioning of the man looking at the advert and the light pouring in from the end of the tunnel come together just so well that I am constantly drawn to it.

Sandwich Board Man (1945)  see image here  There is a tremendous dignity of the Indian person who was carrying the advertising boards.  Clearly he is on a the street, but the use of the wide aperture and the low positioning of the camera, give the man such great importance.

Assignment 2: Planning and execution

Well, I have at last arrived at the point where all the exercises and projects which lead up to the assignment have been completed and its time to get going with the assignment.  I have been working up to this in the background and have set myself the task of completing this assignment within the grounds and in the barns, garden, grounds of Cressing Temple as well as some of the activities going on in there.  I feel that doing it this way and basing it around a pretty small area, will be quite challenging and will provide some photo-journalistic feel to the assignment.

Exercise: Rhythms and patterns

Following on from the preceding commentary, is an exercise where the brief asks for at least 2 photographs; to convey rhythm and to show pattern.  I have taken several photographs in my quest to demonstrate this and have chosen two of each as representative.

Rhythm

Barn wall:  ISO 200  105mm f14 1/125

 I have given this image a tight horizontal crop as I feel that this works well and accentuates the design so that the viewer's eye can move from point to point in a rythmical way.  To make this work, I have taken this at a slight angle and compressed the perspective using a telephoto lens setting.  By using f14 as the aperture, I provided sufficient sharpness across the image.  The eye movement is from black post to black post and some lingering with the brickwork framed by the posts.

Mongol bows:  ISO 400  84mm f4  1/60

A pretty "neutral" arrangement of the bows arranged in a tent at a medieval fair.  The angle / curvature of the bows is such that the eye is led across the frame from left to right.  I used the widest aperture available to me on that lens as I wanted to reduce and remove distractions from the background, however this was not entirely successful.  Again, I have used a tight crop to match the flow.

Patterns

Arrows:  ISO 200  65mm  f4  1/1000

 The photograph of the arrows standing vertically in a container has created a significant pattern.  I used a shallow deoth of field to try and add to the abstract quality of this pattern.  A tight crop gives the suggestion that there is more to this pattern than can be seen immediately.  This certainly works for me!

Leather bags:  ISO 200  35mm f5.6  1/125

 This time the pattern is made up of clearly visible and identifiable objects.  They are suspended on a grid and by cropping, the suggestion is that there are more bags to be seen and that the pattern extends beyond the present boundary which I have imposed.  In my view the pattern works with a limited number of objects and the viewer can try to organise them into shapes.

A bit of both?

Footpath:  ISO 200  24mm f16  1/80

Within the walled garden in Cressing Temple, the footpaths are made of this brick, herringbone design.  When I took this shot, the sky had clouded over, so I enhanced this slightly in Lightroom, giving an extra 1/2 stop exposure and moving the left hand side of the histogram until black clipping just occurs.  The effect has been to give greater clarity to the design.

The question is whether this shows rhythm or whether it is a pattern.  I shot this initialy with pattern in mind, however, looking at it on the screen there seems to be more than just a suggestion of flow across the frame, in both directions.  Therefore should this be classified as rhythm?

Project: Rhythm and pattern

Rhythm has been defined in our text as dynamic repetition and pattern as spatial repetition.  What does this mean?  When we want to have the viewer's eye move across the frame or photograph we need to establish a sequence across the photograph which conveys movement.  An example of this from some of my previous photographs could be:

Beach Huts: ISO 200  160mm  f16  1/250

 In the photograph above, I have reproduced it cropped to emphasize the rhythm or movement across the frame.  Even though these are static objects, the differences in colour create a flow across the frame.  This was shot at an optimum aperture to ensure sharpness and good depth of field, whilst still providing a good shutter speed to ensure lack of camera shake.

Pattern is very much static and not neccessarily ordered.  There is no flow so the eye takes in the whole.  Ideally patterns would fit the frame to ensure there is no distraction.  Patterns would also have large numbers of individual items, whether actual items, shapes or patches of colour.

Peacock:  IS0 200  80mm  f5.6  1/125

In the photograph above I have used an old image of a peacock which I have given a tighter crop to emphasize the pattern and to contrast it with the photograph which shows rhythm.  The tight frame also suggests that there is more of the pattern available.

Project: Circles

The text says that circles are less easy to find and they are dependent on real objects.  They are a powerful boundary and carry greater weight of importance compared to other design features.

Ring:  ISO 800 100mm f5.6 1/500

 In the photograph above, despite there being an implicit triangle in the design, whose boundaries are the tree branches, the Gunnera plant on the left and the lake edge, it is the lifebelt which leaps out of the photograph.  I saw this image in precisely that way - unfortunately in my haste I did not consider the camera setting which I had used - an ISO of 800 was unnecessary here.

Red Cabbage Tree:  ISO 200  105mm  f8  1/200

The cabbage on this vegetable stallattracted my attention - even though we have the strong, white core of the cabbage pointing inwards - diagonals - the main design feature to me are the concentric rings provided by the cabbage's own structure.  The shallow depth of field, created by the close up and use of a telephoto setting adds to ensuring that the focus of the viewer's attention is the heart of the cabbage.

Door decorations:  ISO 200  28mm  f9  1/80

I consider this to be an example of an implicit circle which has been created by the "ring" of metal "flowers" arranged on this door.  The eye is not distracted by the shape to the right, it is always led to the centre by virtue of strength of this circular arrangement.  I used a square framing to this image as I felt this was the most appropriate way to present it.  Somehow, circles work well in a square, perhaps because they have, in common, a regularity and tightness of shape.

Project: Rectangles

Rectangles to me are solid frames within which there may be something else.  They reflect the "frame" of a "negative" and are strong at providing structure and order to the image.

To us, frames are typically doors and windows, so there may be a suggestion of something else within.  Use of rectangles and the more specialised form of rectangle, the square, are a design device of splitting the overall frame into parts, the most classic of these being the Golden Section. As a consequence, because this organisation is no longer implicit, rectangles need to be positioned carefully in order to have a well designed image.

Red Door:  ISO 400  35mm  f10  1/125

 The door and window is an architectural rectangle which successfully further sub-divides the frame into into sections.  Here the door is balanced by the white window which is located nearer to the centre of the frame.

Shop in a church:  ISO 2500  90mm f5  1/50

 This rather curious juxtaposition of a goldsmith's shop in the front facade of St Mary's Church at Moorfields caught my eye because it all seems to be contradictory.  However from the design perspective, it is full of rectangles so a useful illustration here.  The top third is a rectangle in itself, bounded by the frame, but also contains the two frescoes which themselves split that rectangle into two parts.  The shop front is split into three main parts - the sign and then the window and the much darker area of the doorway.  The sale signs and other advertising are all in rectangular format as well, though I consider these to be more points of interest rather than part of the main design.

Boxes:  ISO 2500  55mm  f5  1/80

 The streets are full of rectangular shapes - you just cannot get away from them.  Here my eye was caught by the black telephone box which was conveniently bounded by the rectangular pillars.  The background is yet more rectangles - the metal screening and then the building with its windows.  I placed this telephone box centrally to exagerate the mass suggested by the black colour.  It almost seems to act as a pivot for the two stone pillars on either side.

Shopping Mall:  ISO 2500  105mm  f5  1/40

This shopping mall has a concentric rectangular design.  It feels much more enclosing, than if it was rounded, the regularity, almost bellows-like, providing for a very stable structure.  This photograph, and the next one, provide examples of the rectangle as a frame within a frame.  The outer frame of photograph providing the boundary and telling the viewer that there is something within and theen in the case of the mall above, a concentric series of frames leading the viewer through to the end-point.

Palma street:  ISO 640  105mm  f4  1/125

 Hear I framed the side street by using the archway created by the building and the road / pavement in the forground.  A picture within a picture - the outer structure provides a framing for the woman walking past - herself creating a triangular shape, and then the eye being drwn in to the lighter part, through a series of rectangles created by the buildings.

Home decorations:  ISO 800  24mm f5.6  1/25

Here the rectangles are in fact the edges of box shapes which house various shells and other materials to be used in decorating a room.  The edges provide order to the more random shapes contained within.  This is one of the functional design devices, where rectangles provide a sense of order to their contents.

Project: Shapes - Triangles - other examples

I thought at this point to add some more examples of implicit triangles.  It was fun looking for these and the results I wanted to share here.

Triangle 1:  ISO 200  300mm  f16  1/125

 An opportunist photograph above with the children unwittingly creating an implicit triangle.  The rill flowing from a higher lake to the formal lake was stepped enabling them to be at different levels.  The long focal length has flattened the perspective creating a very obvious triangle.

Medieval cloth:  ISO 3200 35mm  f4  1/50

 At this moment, as the seller was organising her rolls of medieval cloth in one of the barns in Cressing Temple two triangles were formed.  A smaller triangle with her head as the apex and the base being the roll of cloth which she is holding and the much large triangle extending from there down to the base of the photograph itself.  The larger triangle being caused through perspective and the use of the wide-angle lens.  The location was at the back of the barn with very little natural light.  I used Auto WB here and have since considered altering this, but did not like the effect of additional blue and the warm colour was much closer to the feeling I had when there.
 

Preparing Onions:  ISO 200  310mm  f5.6  1/2500

 Here the implicit triangle is formed through the arms leading to a point in the onion on the chopping board.  This device helps to focus the viewers attention on the subject which is the action of slicing an onion.  I focused carefully on the fingers and had the aperture fully open in order to have as shallow DOF as possible.