Own work Tourism

Amsterdam and Berlin; Tourism

From my trips to Amsterdam and Berlin I attempted to capture images of tourists. Like discussed in the previous post, as appose to capturing images of the famous landmarks themselves, I was inspired by Martin Parr to capture images of tourists taking photographs of these landmarks. I took the majority of the images here on my phone. The first reason I did this is because this concept of taking images of tourists is something I've been treating as a concept to generate other ideas. I felt comfortable and at ease using my phone to capture the images and the use of a small device such as my phone allowed me to get close to the subjects in the images without them noticing. 

I don't particularly see these images as strong images however I enjoyed exploring this concept and reflecting on the work of Martin Parr I had seen. The reason I don't really see the images as strong is because there isn't much going on in them. If I compare these images to the work of Parr I think his work so well because of the frantic and crazy feel within the images. The bright and brash colours also seem to really pay off in Parr's work, especially when capturing this concept of consumerism and tourism in todays society. 

I feel my images in this mini project seem to create more of a focus on the link between phones/iphones and tourism? Every image seems to include or really focus upon people with phones. I suppose this is quite a good and interesting thing as it shows people who are meant to be at a tourist sight are more engrossed in there phones more so than anything else. Some even appear oblivious to whats going on around them. In my documentary photography I often try to address todays society in a way if I can, so I guess these images do this to some extent.

I feel the image above is the most successful image out of all of these I have presented here. I feel the colours are more bold which makes the image look more successful and I really like the fact I managed to capture the German flag in the image as the subject takes a photograph of a famous Berlin landmark. 

After researching the work of Tony Ray Jones and Martin Parr where they photographed events and I compared that work to my own of Durham miners gala, Ive felt that direction is the direction I am best heading in for my Major project- finding more interesting and busy events to photograph as appose to more everyday situations. This mini project has helped me decide that capturing images at events is probably what is going to work best for myself. However I do still aim to keep photographing every day situations too, for my own personal work as I do enjoy and feel I have an ability when it comes to capturing street / documentary style images.