Location Health & Safety: Street Photography

Firstly, when taking pictures in an urban environment, you must be careful of moving cars and vehicles, especially when crossing roads or taking photos in places that may be dangerous. Secondly when asking strangers for permission to photograph them, only approach someone when you’re with another person. Also be polite and explain that it is for a college project and that they do not have to participate if they do not want to. Another point is that you should ask when taking photos in shops or cafes, as some places do not allow or want their shops to photographed or documented.

Useful SLR camera techniques for street photography

Firstly when photographing an urban environment, a small aperture is always good. An aperture from F22 and above will ensure that your image will have a very large depth of field, ensuring everything is in focus. Secondly, using fast shutter speeds ensures you can capture movement in a crisp clean way. However experimenting with slower shutter speeds can also be successful, when using a shutter speed of anything below 1/60 of a second use a tripod to remove the possibility of camera shake. When using a tripod you can try different techniques, simply by zooming from the widest focal length of your camera to the shortest photo length during the exposure of the image, can create some interesting effects. Finally when shooting portrait images, use a fast shutter speed, once again to avoid camera shake and ensure that the image you take is crisp and still. However, experiment with wide apertures so as to gain a shallow depth of field, helping the person looking at the image to focus on the subject and not the background.

Difference between Editorials and Advertorial

Firstly, an editorial is an article written by a member of staff from a newspaper or magazine. An editorial presents an opinion whereas an advertorial simply advertises something and are subject to bias and favouritism to therefore sell the product or place, e.g. Travel brochures.

Travel Advertorial Review

The advertorial I am looking at is about Singapore, this feature basis the article around the culture, most obviously around food due to the metaphor used as the title. The title is “Tantalise your senses with a taste of Singapore”. This suggests that Singapore has a rich culture, that Singapore has an atmosphere that excites all of your senses. This is reinforced by the images shown of firstly food, street markets and finally a wide shot of the city of Singapore at night. The images slowly lead down from the title, and the suggestion of incredible food and culture, to the image of the city which slowly opens the readers mind to more than just the senses inferred in the title. Furthermore the text in this article has been positioned on the left, the block of text is small enough too not seem too overbearing to the rest of the article. Another point about how the images flow with the text is how the text box flows into the background for some of the buildings in the cityscape image, helping your eye move easily from text to image and vice versa. In terms of colours, the background to the article gradually blends into a darker colour from the sky of cityscape image into a darker blue. The word “Singapore” is pale red which stands out from the background, ensuring that the article is both eye catching and obvious what the articles is about. Finally the overall layout and presentation is very clean, contemporary and rich in colours. This then reflects the city that is being advertised which helps sell the city to the people reading the article. Also the article doesn't give too much away, the article gives you the facts and entices you to read more and enquire further.

Here are my final Images for this street photography project.