Exercise 21: Making figures anonymous

This exercise asked me to take a number of photographs that include a person or people in a place and make them deliberately unrecognisable.

I could do this in a number of ways:

• By having the people small in and in numbers
• With the person facing away
• In silhouette
• Partly obscured
• By using motion blur

In the notes it states that a 'successful image will be one that is primarily about the place, but in which one of more figures play a subsidiary role to show scale and give life' or in other words to shoe that the place is in use.  

With this in mind I chose to shoot in London and keep my options open as I spent a day shooting the streets.  

Facing away

This image focuses on the London City skyline.  It was taken along the Thames riverside.  We can see the old and new high rise buildings.  However there is a couple of people facing away from the camera and looking at the buildings.  

When I look at this image I first see the high buildings and only when they have been taken in does the eye wander down to the couple.  They provide scale for the buildings and also a human presence.  

Small and many

Taken in the Tate which seems to be my favourite place to shoot at the moment.  Here was see people in the  Turbine Hall.  The figures are small, the building huge in comparison.  We can't identify the people they are too small and far away from us as viewers.  Our attention would be to the building first and the lighting and the we see the people.  They give a sense of the use of the building.  

Partly obscured

Again taken at the Tate, this image looks at the outside of the building and in particular the cafe.  Our attention is drawn to the words first.  However behind the glass we can see a number of people which are partly obscured by the glass but also by the lighting inside.  On the left hand side we can see a woman's head clearly but her body is the hidden by the frosted glass.  These people give meaning the building.  This is a place to eat.  

Obscured/silhouette

In this image of the basement of the Lloyds Building we can see the outlines of two people sitting at their desk.  Because these are faint outlines we only see them after we have scanned the building.  Looking back at this shot I believe I could have opted for a more interesting composition.  However, it does show that the building is in use.