Exercise 21: Making figures anonymous

Exercise 21 asks to take some photographs that include a person or people in a particular place, but deliberately make them unrecognisable and, as a result, less prominent.
The aim is to make between two and four photographs which use different techniques to achieve this. A successful image will be one that is primarily about the place, but in which one or more figures play a subsidiary role to show scale and give life — to show that it is in use.

The brief asks to consider the following techniques:

1. Facing away
The human face is such a powerful visual attractant that simply photographing someone from behind or with their head turned away from the camera alters their relationship to the rest of the image.

f 8, 1/180 sec, ISO 400, 43 mm  

2. In silhouette
Shooting from darkness towards a bright background, as in the example shown here, communicates ‘person’ but rarely ‘personality’.

f 3.5, 1/20 sec, ISO 1600, 18 mm 

3. Partly obscured
Figures and faces even partly hidden behind some other object are automatically reduced in visual importance.

f 4.5, 1/8 sec, ISO 200, 45 mm 

4. Motion blur
Useful if slightly mannered technique when you have a tripod and the light is sufficiently dim to use a slow exposure. Needs experience to judge the effect of length of exposure on the appearance of a moving figure. Light figure against dark background is always more noticeable than dark figure against light background.

f 5.6, 1/15 sec, ISO 400, 18 mm