HW 1

http://matthewpillsbury.com/photographs/saint-patricks-day-parade-2013/

This photograph is called Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, by Matthew Pillsbury in 2013. The photograph consists of crowds of people walking through the streets of New York City during the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. The people in this photograph are not only limited to the lines of participants moving down the city road, but the crowds watching the parade from the sides, as well as police watching over the event. The intention of this photo was to capture the constant flow of people marching through the streets of the parade. Pillsbury shows this constant flow with the subjects in the moving crowd being blurred and faded out. The purpose of the image is to showcase the celebration of this holiday within the busy streets of New York City. The mood of the photograph is not only fast moving but somber as well, due to rainy conditions in the photograph.

Three of the formal photographic elements that are the most important in this photo are leading lines, diagonals, and patterns and repetition.  Leading lines can be seen from the painted white lines on the road. They direct the viewer’s attention towards the center of the image, where the crowd resides. These leading lines also double as diagonals. Pillsbury’s angle of the photo also gives the crowd itself a diagonal element. The diagonal element from the crowd of people shows the direction they are moving in. This photograph also displays many types of patterns and repetition scattered throughout. Patterns can be seen throughout the entire image, including the white paint on the road, the sides of the buildings, and even within the crowd of people. Repetition is also seen within these same areas of the photograph, with window designs repeating themselves across the sides of the buildings, the continuous strokes of paint across the street roads, and within the multiple waves of people walking through the city.