Pastiche

For my Pastiche I am using Brassai's "Paris After Dark No.27"
Brassai's visual style is very much in the Film Noir styling, utilising night time shots and the man made lighting in order to create this idea of mystery within the lights and shadows.

It is a shot of an alleyway in the dead of night, with a few neon signs and lights creating the lighting on the street, with two silhouetted blurred figures in the background.
It is a very mysterious shot, with the motion blur on the two silhouetted figures, presumably male from the shape of their overcoats and fedora hats, we get  a scene of a crime maybe that has been committed? As we see these mysterious dark shapes fleeing this neon lit alleyway.

Find a street like this one will be quite difficult because there are not many streets like this at all in England, our alleyways are far thinner and our streets generally wider, with many many street lamps that would destroy the way the light falls in this shot.

This is my first attempt that I took digitally, on my Pentax K-x SLR camera with a 52mm lens.
When I do my film shoot I will pick a slightly wider angle lens to properly frame my street.
Choosing a different location is also very much a possibility, as I am glad with the way the shadows have fallen in the street, and I have replicated the tonal range and contrasts better than I expected particularly across the road. The road however is not the cobblestone road in Paris After Dark, and there are no signs like the neon Hotel sign that stands out so clearly in Brassai's.
There are also just too many street lamps, the road goes on too long and there are darted street lamps all along the road, particularly the one in the foreground, I tried to use it in replacement of the neon hotel sign, but it is simply too bright.





I returned to Rochester with a medium format Bronica in order to try and perfect my pastiche.

My first few shots where taken on the same road as my digital test, I did my best in framing to cut out cars and any other light sources, however after a few shots I found myself unsatisfied with my location, as it was far too bright and the road surface too plan. I chose to move on exploring alley ways in Rochester in the hopes of finding a better location which led me to a crooked alley in the high street.

This shot was taken on 400ISO Ilford Black and White Film, on a Broncia SQ-B, with an Aperture of F9 and a 12sec Shutter Speed.

Looking at the alleyway I found it perfect for my Pastiche as it had a cobblestone paving, with merely a few scant sources of light, the main of which being an old victorian style lamp. I found this location mimicked Brassai's 'Paris After Dark' quite effectively in framing, light sources and also in architecture, as it quite an enclosed alleyway, there is no real hint of a modern world in sight.