Niki Feijen
'Dutch photographer Niki Feijen immortilizes an astonishingly intact glimpse into the past'. Niki focuses on photographing historic and/or abandoned places. His photos convey 'conflicting notions of beauty and decay'. He does not use any artificial lighting in his photos which can be problematic as shooting dark settings without extra lighting can cause some parts of the photo to be too over or under exposed. To deal with this problem, he uses the HDR technique (high dynamic range) to create the 'perfect' picture (though the HDR technique can cause some photos to look surreal as the photos would contain a much wider light spectrum than a regular photograph). This technique involves taking a an over and under exposed picture, and a balanced exposure picture, and editing them together on photoshop. Feijen has photographed the abandoned town of Chernobyl, among other abandoned places.
This photo shows an abandoned roller coaster being 'reclaimed by nature'. The coaster's tracks have turned rusty and are covered with dirt - the over grown tress and plants show how ling the ride as been out of use as it takes years for trees to grow, and they are hanging over the ride now. Feijen has taken this photo as he is interested in abandonment and the idea of things being left behind - I like the subject of this photo because it is of a ride at a fairground which is supposed to be fun, but the photo is kind of dark, in the sense that children and their happiness have simply abandoned it, and left it to nature.
This photo has been taken with a wide aperture, demonstrating a long depth of field. I can see this because neither the background or the foreground are blurry - the whole photo is in focus, which he achieved by using a wide aperture. I like how he chose to keep the whole image in focus as I like how you can see all of the details and textures in this photo. A fast shutter speed was likely used in this photo in order to keep the image sharp - if a slow shutter speed was used, Feijen may have captured the unwanted movement of the trees moving in the wind, therefore it is likely that a tripod was not used to capture this photo. The main focus of the photo, the front cart of the roller coaster, is placed slightly left from the center - this follows the rule of thirds as he has placed this from cart where the vertical left line would be on the 3x3 grid. I think the angle f the photo makes the subject look a lot more interesting - it enables you to see up-close details. The composition is a lot more interesting than just a regular landscape photo of the side of the ride. Skills/techniques/ideas to reuse? - The idea of abandoned places being taken over by nature - Wide apertures to capture all details - Think more carefully about composition |