Jessie Nie-  Loneliness in the city

Concept

I got the inspiration one day I was walking on the street with my friends, and the street was very crowded. Suddenly, inexplicable loneliness swept me, and I felt as though so many friends were with me, I was alone anyway.

So the first picture I took is at a low angle and there is a man who is riding a bike, and another man walking very fast. I made the shutter speed very slow, so the figure of the man is blurred. We can see from this picture that people are very busy and have no time to stop their steps. 

And for the second picture, I decided to take a picture and edit it to show this kind of loneliness in city life. I invited my friend to be the actor, and I took a picture of her walking in the crowds. I edited it, and I made the whole picture black and white except the actor. And I insert another picture of her taking a photo. I also let this picture be colorful. So it seems that it’s she who takes the picture of her walking in the crowds. I want to use this picture to show that in the crowded street, in the busy city, everyone is so busy to care about others, because the one who took the picture of the girl is herself, so you will feel lonely in the city from the two photos together.

And the relationship between the two photos is very close but it’s hard to tell the loneliness merely from one picture, only you put the two pictures together, you suddenly realize that it’s a story about a girl lonelily walking in the city street. Because the first picture shows that the city life is busy and indifferent, and the second edited photo shows that every individual is lonely and drowned in the busy city.

Process

When I was taking the first photo, I chose a night around 10 p.m in Lujiazui, because it’s the time some people finished a whole-day work and go back home very late. It was getting darker and darker, and the street was not that crowded but there were still some people hurrying. 

I lowered the ISO, but it cannot be very low since the outside environment was not that bright, and I adjusted the white balance to have a warm yellow tone. And then, I caught this moment and the photo was successfully taken. 

And for the second picture, I first made a filter to decrease the brightness of other colors and let the picture be black-and-white. Then I got a copy of the original picture and separated the girl (actor), and I put the girl in the colorful picture at the same place. So the picture was generally black-and-white but the girl was bright and colorful. Then, I cut her image of taking pictures from another photo, and I put that image of her at the bottom right corner. And I adjusted the color of those two bright images, and then it was done.

And in regard to the problems I encountered, I want to mention it’s hard to take a high-quality photo if the actor and photographer are both moving, so I just stopped moving and adjusted the focus. Only by this, I could take a photo of high quality.

Conclusion

If I have more time, I would like to make more variations of the second image, probably add some black cubes or some other images besides the existing ones to show the loneliness. 

And also if the quality can be better, it would be fantastic, though I think the quality of the photo now is better than the previous ones.

Image od Diptych