I knew this project could take place anywhere in the city, expect for on campus. Therefore I made the decision of taking photos outside and using natural lights as my main sources of lighting.
I knew that I could go into shops and use the lighting in them to photograph strangers. However, I had 2 problems with doing that, 1 being that the shops would probably not provide interesting backgrounds, as I would either have to find a blank wall in the shop to use and provide total emphasis on the subject, or would have to use a shallow depth of field to blur out objects on shelves behind them etc. The second problem I had with this was that the subjects would either be shopping or working, meaning that they would be busy and possibly not want to be photographed.

On my first attempt, I went out and walked around the city for around an hour before asking a man taking Remembrance Day donations in the high-street if I could take his photo. The man agreed but appeared very awkward and self-concious whilst I was taking the photos. I realised that it was probably due to the street being so busy with foot traffic, that the man felt uncomfortable having his picture taken in front of an audience. This made the exchange rushed as I felt bad for him and so the quality of the pictures were poor.
This made me pursue strangers/ subjects in quiet locations so that they would hopefully be much more comfortable being photographed.
After 30 minutes of walking around near the cathedral, I eventually saw this man walking his dog. They both shared similar characteristics with the same steady walk and hunched back. I found this interesting so walked up to the man and asked if I could take a photograph of them both. Originally he smiled and stood their as I took photos from different angles. I felt the smiling made it look like a simple family photograph, so to get a reaction I said that I was just going to photograph the dog now. His happy expression instantly transitioned to the one in the photograph and I took a photo just at the right time to capture it.

The image itself is slightly blurry and under-exposed. However I found the expression, lighting, background and composition of the photograph as good enough reasons to use it for the project.

I further tried to continue taking pictures of dog owners/ walkers around the city for the project as I wanted the images to be linked. However, in the times I chose/ allowed myself to go out and take photographs, dog walkers were to my surprise quite short in supply. I managed to find the 2 below in the same outing. Unfortunately though, it had gotten late so I had to work with poor lighting for the photographs. The images also had bland or backgrounds with uninteresting/ appealing textures to them.

In this picture the man refrained from actually looking at the camera and appeared to want the focus to remain solely on his dog, since the eyes are possibly quite a key component of portraiture photography, I didn’t select the image.

Originally  I felt that I would get a good image from this stranger and his dog if I had long enough to experiment with it’s composition and my camera’s settings. The dog also sat calmly staring at the camera. Relatively soon on though, the dog suddenly began barking at me. I got this image before the man simply said that they should be going because the dog wouldn’t stop, which I agreed with. I felt I could possibly have had a better image from this if the lighting conditions were better and the man’s expression was clearer. It didn’t happen that way however, so I had to disregard the image as being a part of the project.

I have also realised recently that I have been working in the incorrect colour settings on Photoshop for web uploading. This has caused the majority of my images to lose saturation, exposure and to be uploaded in slightly awry colours from how I edited them. I have now fixed this, meaning that images from here on out should upload as I intended them to appear.