One Square Mile

There are many ways to document a square mile and photographers can do it differently. Some photographers can document a square mile through still life, portraits, landscape photography and street photography. 

Photographers who do this are: 

Mark Power:

These images are taken from his series 'Sound of two songs'. These images were taken in Poland when Mark went in September 2004 as part of project by Magnum. The project was about the effects of EU membership. The photographs were taken over a period of 5 years where Mark Powers was accompanied by a Polish photographer called Konrad Pustola. Mark Power documented Poland by photographing the landscapes and people's portraits he met along the way, from his point of view as a foreigner.  

These are some photographs from his project of Poland's landscapes. Mark has a variety of angles which the photographs were taken from. The angles work well because its interesting to see different views of the scenery.

These photographs are of some of the people Mark Power's met during his time in Poland.  In the first photograph the man is dressed in neutral colours which match the background he is in as there are no vibrant colours only dull greys with a hint of yellow but that could be to draw your attention to the man stood in front of it. There is a lot of empty space above the man which adds tension to the photograph because it does look more interesting when you look at the image as a whole but it makes you wonder why it was included. 

In this photograph the vibrant colours of the people's clothes with the graffiti in the background as well as the green branch above them looks like Mark Power's waited a long time to take the photograph as he was waiting for the right subjects.

Also in this photograph the green jumpsuit the man is wearing could indicate he works in the building he is stood in front. This photograph is differently shot compared to the other two as there is a shallow DOF. 

I like Mark Power's images because he not only documented the scenery he documented people as well. 

Richard Avedon. 

Richard Avedon is best known for fashion and portraiture work especially when he was working for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue photographing the models with emotion in their facial expression instead of being emotionless.Richard Avedon also did documentary photography as he said "I've photographed just about everyone in the world, But what I hope to do is photograph people of accomplishment, not celebrities''. He documented projects such as 'New York Life', 'Civil Rights Movement' and 'Mental Institute'.

These photographs are from his project 'The American West' where Richard photographed people and got to know them by their occupation, age and where they lived. 

  

Robert Polidori.

 Robert Polidori documents the effects of destruction and isolation and travelled to many countries to document this. Some countries include India, Ukraine, USA, France and many others. Robert Polidori photographs the mark that humans leave on places and why people have fled. He uses a large format camera and slow shutter speeds for his work. One of his projects is the Chernobyl remains. In May 2001 he spent three days photographing Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and a town called Pripyat which is in the exclusion zone.  

This photograph is of the school cafeteria.

 This photograph is of the control room in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

 This photograph is of a hallway in the school.

 This photograph is of an operating room in the hospital.

 This photograph is of the waiting room at the hospital.

Here are my photographs:

Here I changed my white balance to see which setting would make the leaves on the grass look more saturated.

As I walked past college I saw litter all over the floor so I tried to capture that as I was walking.

At first I started to take pictures of anything as I didn't know what to do but as I kept taking more pictures I was interested in the architecture and the scenery around it so I photographed that.
My camera was set to 7.1 aperture and the shutter speed ranged from 30th of a second to 160th. I was working around the f number because I wanted my photographs to be detailed. I didn't use flash in my images because it was a foggy day and it was bright so flash would have been overpowering and overexposed the sky or unnoticeable on the objects I was photographing such as the buildings as they are large and I took them from far away. 
 I hardly had any people in my photographs which helped the content as I think they would cause a distraction from the buildings. 
Towards the end of taking my photographs I realised that my narrative was going to be about litter scattered over the floor. Whereas when I started my narrative was architecture and scenery. 
I didn't have a narrative but taking these photographs was interesting as I really like documentary photography.