22 rue Cuincampoix, cour (1912) is a photo of a street in some kind of yard or alleyway. The photo is framed by the two buildings on the side, creating a sense of balance along with the street running in the middle of the photo. The foreground is the street, whereas the background is more or less the buildings on the side and beyond the doorway. My eyes are directed towards the doorway because the buildings converge and the street seems to end there. The photograph is simple in that it does not have too many objects, but it makes me feel like I am there on the street.

Part 2:

When I walked around Oakland to find good streets to take my photos, I became increasingly aware of how difficult it was to find a place to photograph the extension of the street. Almost every street was full of parked cars blocking the view. It was very hard to find good vantage points that can showcase Pittsburgh's traditional culture without capturing a few automobiles in frame. Instead, I mostly walked into alleyways between buildings that are not necessarily streets. It made me really appreciate Atget's idea of preserving the old culture before modernization. The fact that the sky was completely cloudy with no sight of the sun also made choosing the right settings difficult. I had to play around with shutter speeds and apertures to find a good balance between exposure and detail. It was also not easy to emulate how Atget uses exposure time to create fine details; when I took photos at exposure time of more than 1 second, they tend to turn out blurry and overly bright. Overall, my photos are not as strikingly beautiful and serene as Atget's. I wish that I could spend more time on the streets looking for simple beauties that I might have passed by but Atget would pay attention to. I also wish that I would try out different points of view; most of the photos I took end up being very centered and balanced by the midline.