Aubrey Bourgault: B&W Critique 1: Enter at your own risk

     For starters, I shot this photo with my iphone (ios 7) Sydenham St in Philadelphia. I took this specific photo around 10 AM on an overcast day.  The lighting was not the greatest, but still managed to shine through the stairway exit. The difference in the clarity of my photos with this iphone from my previous phone (iphone 4) is definitely noticeable.  My photos come out much clearer.  I shot this originally in color and then edited it to turn it into a black and white.  All my editing was done in the application Afterlight which only cost me around two dollars to download. This application is extremely easy to navigate and there is so much you can do to change a single shot. For instance, you can change the clarity, brightness, contrast, exposure, saturation, filter, shape, and so much more on this application.  It is much more user friendly then most of the applications that I have worked with before so I decided to do all my editing using Afterlight.

After uploading the image the Afterlight the first thing I did was decrease the brightness and saturation to -95. This created more depth and allowed the stairway exit to stand out more, which is where I wanted to the viewers eye to go. I think decreased the exposure very slightly. For this image I chose to not use a filter which I am very happy with.  The reason why I decreased the exposure, saturation and brightness is to make sure there was a distinct contrast between the blacks of the hallway and the whites of the entrance/exit.

  I did not center the shot because I wanted to make sure part of the graffiti was visible to the viewer and it creates more of a mystery.  While, in some cases, centered shots are completely fine, I personally do not like taking photos directly in the center because I think things tend to get lost more easily.  I could have taken a photo of the entire building including this hallway, but I felt that this could easily stand alone.  I bent down and angled my camera slightly upward to take this shot which gave the entrance a much taller feeling than it actually was.  I wanted the viewer to feel small while looking at this picture... as if they are about to enter at their own risk.  My main purpose of this picture was to create a mystery and make those who look at it want to enter.