Randall Degabriele’s
Randall’s photos all have the same style. They are all in colour to show the various coloured lights that people use to decorate their homes for Christmas. Minimal Editing has been done, mainly to bring out the shadows since all the photos are taken at night. All photos have some sort of thought behind them regarding the composition, whether it is framing, rule of thirds or symmetry.
The photo which I like the most is the one with the snowman because it is the simplest 
one. The snowman is behind the bars, which make it look more unfamiliar. Randall framed this shot to have symmetry and he placed the subject in the
middle. Also the snowman has different coloured lights which makes the photo much more interesting. In post, he added vignetting which isolates the snowman from the background.
This photo, in my opinion is not very pleasing to the eye, mainly because it is shot from further away than I would like. This results in a lot of unnecessary negative space. Half of the picture contains practically nothing. This could be solved by moving closer to the house and turn the camera around to take a vertical photo instead. He could also focus on specific areas such as the star, the lit balcony or the strip of led lights.
Even though this type of Christmas decoration is not unfamiliar to me, I like this photo a lot. As described in the first one, this one is very simple. He captured the window from right in front of it which shows what the decorator intended to show. There is framing, because the decorations are behind the window frame.
Emma Coleiro’s
The Unfamiliarity of Ageing
I like Emma’s choice of shooting her photos in film because they look very old. It brings out the unfamiliarity concept even more, and combine that with her ‘aging’ title it makes even more sense. At a glance I can see that she definitely thought of composition and angles.
Her first photo has quite interesting 
composition because the people are facing right and she placed them on the right side of the frame. Now this doesn’t follow the rule of thirds but I still like it a
lot since it created a negative space behind them. I think this works because it is a plain white wall and there is not a lot of clutter. I also like the fact that coincidentally they are looking at each other and the viewer can see the eyes of the woman who is sitting furthest away.
I think I like this one the most because of the leading line and the subjects are sitting in the bottom right corner, following the rule of thirds. The exposure is a bit off which created crushed blacks in certain places and since these were not captured by a digital camera, it is difficult to bring the detail back. luckily for her, the sky had nice clouds and it makes the photo more interesting instead of having a plain white sky.
This one is quite good as well. I would have placed the woman to the left a bit more to follow the rule of thirds but I like that she chose to place her in front of that bright light because she stands out more. The inclusion of the fish that she is selling is also a good decision, but the best thing in this photo in my opinion is that she waited for a customer to buy a fish and captured the photo in the right moment.
Some of her photos are under-exposed but other than that I think that she produced a good series of photos which bring out the unfamiliar environment aspect.
My Evaluation
I chose my subject, Newspapers in modern day times, because I never actually read a newspaper in my life, and when I look at someone reading a newspaper, I always say to myself ‘He/she could use the internet.. It is much simpler and faster that way’. In fact it is very hard to intentionally find people who are reading newspapers and photograph them, so I decided to photograph my friend although I tried to find people reading newspapers in Valletta anyways. Photographing my model was also a challenge since I had to stop shooting twice because of the weather conditions. I also had the limitation of newspapers. I had to shoot all the photos with the same newspaper but it didn’t see much of an issue there since the topic is unfamiliar environment. Another factor I sould have thought of more was the location. The black and white photos and the coloured one seem to be shot at the same place but in fact they were different places. I should have chosen another area, maybe like a busy area with a lot of people.
I wish I captured at least 3 more photos but at least the ones I have are good ones in my opinion. Due to inspiration from the moodboard, I tried to vary between black and white photos and coloured ones.
I used the techniques learnt from this unit as a benefit to take better pictures. They all have some type of interesting composition such as rule of thirds or symmetry.
In my opinion, this is the best photo I took. It follows the rule of thirds, very interesting natural lighting, the model is covering his face with the newspaper and the furniture is very old-looking. I also like that the model looks that he is of a young age although his face is not visible, and he is sitting on a very old sofa. This makes me think that he is trying a newspaper for the first time when I look at it.
This is also an interesting shot of someone walking with a newspaper under his arms. I like it mostly because it is a
closeup, which differs from the other shots I took.
When taking this photo, I kept ‘negative space’ in my mind because I wanted the subject 
to be small in the frame compared to the other
photos
Malcolm Camilleri 