This blog forms the learning log for my OCA photography degree module Photography 1: People and Place. My learning logs for other modules and my personal photo-a-day blog can be found through the tabs below.
Got the feedback from Assignment 4, and I’m pleased to say that it reflects my learning from Assignment 3. I’ve posted it elsewhere, but I felt the submission was a significantly more substantial piece of work than my previous attempts (second attempt at Assignment 3 excepted). As a result of setting out my initial aims more clearly I was much better able to assess what I had achieved, and was better placed to explain my choices of photos.
My tutor described my images as ‘dramatic and telling’ which is pleasing. He does point out that I have not “give(n) anything away in terms of the location so the reader would be relying on the text to indicate the town”. While I accept this point, I believe that my interpretation is legitimate as the brief only requires that I show the character of a specific location – not necessarily an identifiable one. In the context of this assignment I have interpreted this to mean that I should not try to illustrate small town Britain with a series of shots taken in different places. Since there is not suggestion that I need to re-shoot or add material to the set I’m hoping that this is not a major issue.
Overall I think I’m getting the hang of this now – although I guess the assessors are the ultimate judge of that.
Further reflection (06/06/12)
At my tutors suggestion I will be substituting this vertical crop for the original horizontal crop when it comes to my assessment submission:
Similarly I will also be going with his suggestion to swap my first and second choices for the cover photo – using this next one of the steps for the cover rather than the shot of the car park (also below).
An interesting assignment in which I have tried to capture a sense of small town Britain by night. I’ll probably be posting some of the also-rans here later – it was an interesting conundrum trying to decide whether to chose shots I liked or shots which worked well together. Went for the latter in the end as it fitted better with the ‘produce an article’ theme of the assignment- we shall see how it turns out.
If you are interested in the submission you can read it here and see the pictures – including those that didn’t make the final cut – here.
Ok – I’ve been wondering for sometime about the how to incorporate some of the stuff I do in parallel with the course into the course itself. I guess it wouldn’t matter except that I simply wouldn’t be shooting some of the stuff I’m currently doing if it hadn’t been for the course, and it seems a shame not to capture that in some way.
In particular the black and white night shots seem to be where my mind is at the moment, so why would I be thinking about something else for an assignment? The answer is that i don’t know. I’ve tried shooting for my original ideas about showing the two sides of Allonby – the tourism and the residents, but it simply isn’t coming together in my head – it feels like random shooting in the hope that I’ll be able to extract a theme, which is scarcely the point. On the other hand, I find myself leaving my photo-a-day project until the evening every day so that I’m ’forced’ to shoot in the dark if I want to do something interesting (or resort to indoor diary shooting)
With that in mind it seems wisest to shelve the Allonby plan for a while and concentrate on the night stuff – which actually interests me - while the evenings are still reasonably dark. Obviously it has to fit with the theme of shooting for an intelligent travel publication – whatever that may be.So I’m going to shoot a chapter on ‘Small Town Britain’ for an illustrated travel book called ‘Britain at Night’, and I’m going to concentrate on Maryport. This should put some of the ideas/techniques I’ve been working on to better use than my photo-a-day blog.
While I’m at it here are a few of the night shots In wont be able to use, because they aren’t Maryport – and there’s little point in cheating. Perhaps ironically they’re actually of Allonby. First up a couple linked by the constellation Orion:
And as Orion was visiting Jacks Surf bar in the second – here a shot of the bar as well:
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And – finally – a shot of The Square. The rather grand building is the old Bath House, which seems oddly out of place in a small cobbled street full of tiny cottages.
Have been reflecting for a while on what to do about Assignment 4 since concluding that covering the whole of the Solway Firth was too big an ask for a single project. As I mentioned in a comment to a previous post I think a single village is the way to go, so I’m going to make the nearby seaside village of Allonby my target. It’s worth recording here that this reflection has been going on for rather longer than the time suggested by these blog posts – I find there is some real challenge in keeping these notes consistent with my thought processes.
Allonby has an interesting mix of historic buildings, narrow cobbled streets, a wonderful location on the coast some small caravan parks and a number of small shops and cafes. In reasonable (and sometimes not so reasonable) weather, it is a bit of a honey-pot for local people walking their dogs or out for a stroll with their families, and attracts kite surfers, sailboarders and a range of other tourists. Taken together I feel their should be plenty of material to produce the required number of shots.
Lots of information on the village can be found on the Visit Cumbria and Solway Plains websites, although neither capture my perception of the village. I know the assignment instructions say I should write up how I see the essential character after I have done the photography, but for the record, and as a guide (not a strait-jacket) it seems helpful to think through what I hope to achieve first.
The village always seems a little ‘hunkered down’ against the westerlies that blow along the coast, and much of its charm is quite intimate and well hidden from the casual passer-by because the main road was diverted out of the narrow, and cobbled, village main street many years ago. There are a couple of key locations that need to be captured in one way or another to capture the essence of the village – these include Jack’s Surf Bar, Twentyman’s General Store (famous across the north of Cumbria for its ice cream) and perhaps The Codfather (chip shop),The Ship Hotel and the Bath House. There is also the contrast between the wide open grassy banks and the narrow lanes, and if the opportunity presents the windsurfers and their colourful sails as mentioned above.
This one’s not an assignment shot, but is included here for good measure.
I’m struggling with sorting out in my head what subjects I want to consider for my re-shoot of Assignment 3 and for the first (hopefully only) pass at Assignments 4. Part of the problem is I get attached to ideas – irrespective of how workable they are – and lead myself up blind alleys.
While I was waiting for feedback on A3 I worked my way through a few ideas for A4 – the trick I felt would be to avoid touristy material, as described in the assignment text. I jotted down a few broad thoughts, analysed the pros and cons (in my written log) and eventually settled on The Solway Coast for a sense of place. It has a lot going for it – it avoids the tourist traps of Keswick, Cockermouth and further into the Lakes, it is a reasonably defined area and it has – to my mind at least - a definable feel. And there’s the rub... for me the feel is about the absence of people – the solitude, the lack of really definable features, the wind and the sound of oystercatchers. In other words, very little to do with ‘the place and the people who live and work in it’.
I tried re-working the idea around a historic sites theme, and even did some recce photos at a couple of locations. Maybe it was the weather but it simply didn’t gel – the aim of the exercise is to produce a series of images for a travel publication and although these photos have a certain ‘atmosphere’ I can’t honestly see them being used in a consumer publication because of their general drabness.
Obviously I could wait until the weather improves, but I just beginning to re-establish some momentum on this module and I’m rather loathe to lose that. There is also another issue I had to face once I actually got out on the ground trying to take photos - the sheer size of the area I was planning to cover. So – time to reconsider.
Another trip into my archive – this time to practise some editing skills ahead of Assignment 4 – A Sense of Place.
I have thousands of photos of my hard-drive and one of the biggest sources is holiday photos – since 2004 I have seldom taken fewer than 500 photos in a one/two week break (these days it’s closer to 1000) and while they serve as a happy memory of those holidays I’ve never really tried to construct a meaningful mini-portfolio from any of them.
I sense that Assignments 4 and 5 will provide a large number of images and I thought it would be helpful to get a feel for the mental mechanics of assembling a ‘sense of place’ from a group of photos which were, often as not, an immediate reaction to my surroundings. The two sets I chose were of holidays in Ibiza and Fuerteventura – but what to say about them? – that’s the first question. They are both Spanish speaking/culture islands, in hot climates, with a lot of tourist activity, so how do I recall the differences?
In my memory Fuerteventura was very – and I mean very – hot. Some days with the breeze blowing it was like standing in a blast from a giant hairdryer. This was reflected in the landscape – lots of sand, barren rocks, limited vegetation and the occasional shadier village location providing fairly dramatic contrast to the general feel. Where we stayed there were also a number of fairly brash tourist strips.
Ibiza was also hot, but not as hot – there was more vegetation, the coastline was gentler and less barren, the colours richer. There were also more towns, and more people and busy market places. Although we travelled inland my lasting memories are of the coast and markets.
To me this is the key to the edit – starting with a clear idea of what I wanted to say about each place. This was especially important when it came to deciding whether or not to include my favourite holiday shots, because although they leap out at me as being worth including they aren’t about sense of place, they’re more about us as a family enjoying ourselves which is a different subject.
Initially I started with the formal first selects, second selects approach that we developed in DPP but as I had already culled the technical failures and the majority of duplicates and I found very rapidly that I could reduce the list to 20 or so shots from each collection which stood out as matching the ideas I outlined above.
I struggled for people shots from the Fuerteventura set, simply because I didn’t take many and I also struggled to capture some of the barrenness of the interior because again I hadn’t taken many shots of the areas that looked like the surface of the moon – it was so hot I simply couldn’t be bothered to leave the comfort of the air conditioning in the hire car. Had I specifically been tasked to take these shots this would, of course, have been a different issue.
In the end I settled for the following 12 of Fuerteventura. They seem to me at least capture the sense of heat and the emptiness of the landscape, while at the same time showing some of the marked contrasts provided by the odd patch of vegetation and tourist activity.
Ibiza provided a different challenge as we spent rather more time in towns – so shots including people were not an issue whereas shots of the countryside/coast were a bit more sparse. In the end I went with a series which I think captures warmth , colour and liveliness which is a bit different from my initial recollections but seems to represent the place fairly well.
Concluding thoughts
It’s clearly important – faced with a collection of several hundred photos – to have an idea of what you hope to portray at the end of the edit. Equally, you have to be sensitive to what the photos are telling you where that differs from your memory. In assignments 4/5 this should be less of an issue as the idea and the execution are much closer together
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