Events - Stow Fair Evauluation

The end of October we travelled to Stow on the Wold for our second event to photograph. It was a real eye opener into the world of photojournalism, having to ask the public and stall holders to photograph them but also the world of gypys and how they live their lives and their religions. As per he other event we shot, we had to have 4 final images and below are the ones that I chose to print;

This is my favourite image of the shoot because I feel like it really shows the gypsy culture and how they live and travel around. Even though this is just a show caravan and not actually in use, it still shows what the culture used to be like and how they used to live and travel. This was just a quick snapshot walking past but I'm so glad it came out as such a good image. Taken using an exposure of f/5 to let in as much of the gold detail on the caravan as possible and shutter speed of 1/100 because its just a quick snapshots. 

This man stopped us as a group and spoke to us about his religion and upbringing for a good hour or more, this is my favourite image I took of him because I feel like it shows how he was being so serious and taking about such an important subject to him. Yet also it shows how they dress and how they live. I'm also quite glad that the image came out with little background detail apart from the trees because it doesn't remove any attention from him and his hands. This image was taken using F/5 and a shutter speed of 1/50th so that it could be a snapshot of him talking.

This is a quick overview shot of the fair, still quite early in the morning so it was just starting out and wasn't busy. You can see all the stalls and vans all set up and the public walking around looking at the stalls and buying gifts, clothes and much more. I don't really like this image because it don't think it shows much of the culture but I think it does show an overview of what the fair was like and how it was. This image was taken using F/5 and then a very fast shutter speed (1/320) so that it could be a quick snapshot of what everything looked like.

This image was taken off the gentleman's fire in the above image. We just wanted to take some photos of the fire that he'd set up and he then came of his caravan and moved his kettle and cookery pots into the frame so that it would give us more of an understanding of how they were living. I really like this image because it shows how they would of just lit a fire and made their coffee and food on an open flame. I also like how the chairs in the background are still there just where he would of been sat using the fire. Taken using f/5 and a shutter speed of 1/80 so that there would be a little bit of motion in the flames of the fire.

Events - Tewkesbury Mop Fair Evaluation

Back in October, one of our event photoshoots we travelled to Tewkesbury Mop Fair for the evening to photograph the fairground rides, families and fun. As part of our assignment we had to have 4 final images from the this event and below are the ones I chose;

We arrived at the fair around 4 in the afternoon and photographing the bright lights at this time was very difficult, this image was taken stood holding the camera using a small exposure of F/5.6 to let in as much light as possible and the colours from the balloons on the ride. I like this image because you've got the colours of the balloons and the lights of the ride, but also the children riding it and the parents stood watching over. 

This image was taken stood just outside the waltzer ride as it was starting, the lad you can see on the right hand side was one the boys running the ride and was pushing the seats round so they spin faster. I really like how this image is a snapshot of the ride, with the seats and lights all snapped in actions. Taken using an exposure of f/5.6 and shutter speed of 1/15th second.

This image was taken stood in the queue for this ride, just as it was about to pass over our heads, because I knew I wanted to take a quick snap shot of the ride passing over I used the flash. The use of this has also light up the shoes and faces of some of the people on the ride, and illuminating the parts of the ride that the normal lights wouldn't. I like this image because you can see the lights in the middle of the smoke and how the shoes are light but still blurry because they're moving on the ride and excited about it. Taken using exposure of F/8 and shutter speed of 1/50th second.

This is my favourite image out of all 4 of them, and it was actually taken whist on the ride. I like this image the most because even though its very smoky, it shows the young boy working on the ride spinning the seats around, all the motion blur in the lights in the seats showing which way there moving but then the lights through the smoke from the other rides at the fair too. I feel like this image really summed up what the Fair is about in this generation. Taken using exposure F/8 and shutter speed of 1/20th second, using ISO 800 because of how dark it was.

Tales of Gloucestershire - Final shots and Evaluation

After shooting in just the few boys bedrooms I wanted to get more images of different rooms to get more of a comparison of how all the students have got their own individuality and how each one has made themselves feel at home.
To do this, I sent out a message over Facebook to the students in Pitville halls and asked if I could photograph the book selves in there rooms and set out with my camera and tripod going around different flats and blocks. After a couple of days of shooting I got images of 50 different bedrooms shelves which I had to get down to 6 to print and submit. Below are the 6 images I chose;

This image is taken using a tripod and the artificial light from the LED lights on both sides of our student rooms. Using a shutter speed of 1 second to let in as much light and detail from the shelves as possible.

Using a long shutter speed the same as before, I also used a exposure of F/20 to give as much detail of the books, photos and alcohol bottles in the images. This means that you can zoom into the images and its still perfectly focused and detailed.

As you can tell the I took the images around Christmas time, meaning some the students had decorated their rooms with tinsel and trees. I like how all the images are perfectly square and the bookshelves are square in the centre too.

When photographing in this room, Charlie moved the guard dog from the door on to his shelve because he wanted to include him in the picture as something he'd brought from home and made him feel settled when being here.

After looking at my images in more depth, I think if I was to do this shoot again a way I would improve the pictures is by using a fill in flash or speedlite to fill in all the gaps where the artificial light cant get to, and also to remove the shadows. 

Out of all my images I chose these 6 because I thought they showed the individuality of each student, from the alcohol bottles and books/folders of student life to the stuffed toys, fairy lights and pictures of family. Even though the bookshelves are the same in each room (whether they face left or right) are built the same and are the same colour. Overall I really enjoyed shooting this project because I got a small insight into how everyone is individual and getting to know everyone a little more, but also photographing the shelves and seeing the outcomes of each shoot and how different each one is even though the set up is exactly the same for each.

Tales of Gloucestershire - Test shots

As per my last post, I photographed some of the students bedrooms, and their bookshelves. Below are the image I got of the shelves, note they're all boys bedrooms.

After cropping these images I realised that the way I'd set up my tripod meant the were shot slightly to low which meant the when I cropped the images down to 10x8 the bottom corners of the bookshelf was cut off and not perfectly square.

Tales of Gloucestershire - Shannon Jenson, A Long Walk

After a class review of some of the images I had taken of my room, I came up with even more idea on how I could shoot and display this project. Below are a few of the test shots I did of my room:

When looking at these photos, a few of my class live in the same halls as me, Pitville, and said that photographing the bookshelves could be quite interesting because everyone has the same one but they way that they would of made decorated it would be different for everyone.
After some more research, I found a photographer called Shannon Jenson. She travelled to the South Sudan, in May to July 2012 she produced a 21 image series called 'A Long Walk'. The images are of the shoes that the refugees had worn to escape their homes and walked for day to get to somewhere 'safe'. Some of the photos in her series were shown as a grid of 12 images which were all shot using a north facing wall so that the exposure and lighting is the same for all images, they also then all have the same crop, and background which makes them very striking and emotional to look at. Below are those images from her series,

 The above image is of the shoes worn by those who had walked from the Blue Nite State to the South Sudan in May to June of 2012. Many had walked for days and days to get here and these were all they had to wear on their feet.

 These are the shoes of some of the children that were aged 10 or younger, one pair belonging to Musa Shep who was 2 years old, who travelled for 20 days with his family to get to the Sudan.

 An assortment of sandals worn by men and woman of all ages.

 Shoes of the men and woman over the age of 50. Jensen shows an assortment of different shoe and sandals worn, and walked for day in shoes.

'Incredible array of worn-down, ill-fitting, and jerry rigged shoes form a silent testimony to the arduous nature of their journey, as well as the persistence and ingenuity of the individuals who served it.'

http://shannon-jensen.com/#/1/

This gave me inspiration on how I could set out my images and shoot them. Using the bookshelves in our hall bedrooms, my idea is too shoot them all in the same lighting and the same crop so that it shows the individuality of each student, and I can print them using the same method as Jenson, as a grid.

Tales of Gloucstershire - Shizuka Yokomizo - 'Dear Stranger'

After talking to some of my friends and some Library research, I discovered Shizuka Yokomizo. A Japanese photographer, that now lives and works in London. Working in photography since the start of the 1990's, he has a very alternative look at photography, photographing everything in his own style, from nude models to into peoples home from the outside, I really enjoyed looking at his work.
The project that I looked into and gave me more ideas for my shoot/s, is about strangers and getting a small peak into their homes. Between 1998 and 2000, he photographed many different windows around London by sending out a letter with the details of what his plan was to photograph their living rooms. Below is the letter template he sent out to the home owners about photographing them

On his website he has chosen his favourite images from the series and after some researching around I found out that instead of names, they were labelled 'Stranger No....', each one having a different number from the next in the order he had obviously taken them and chosen which ones to exhibit e.c.t. Below are the images and labels from the series I found on his website. I hope to do shoo some of my photos for my stories in the same style, to at least experiment with the techniques and see what happens.

 Stranger No6, 1999

 Stranger No10, 1999

 Stranger No18, 2000

  Stranger No19, 2000

  Stranger No24, 2000

  Stranger No2, 1999

  Stranger No2,1998

  Stranger No5, 1999

  Stranger No7, 1999

  Stranger No13, 1999

  Stranger No9, 1999

 Stranger No21, 2000

'Street Seen' - Lisette Model (research activity - week 4)

I spent the day in the library researching different picture stories and new photographers to give me some more inspiration for my picture story around Gloucestershire. The first thing I picked up and looked at was a book called Street Seen, which is based on 6 different photographers that took photos in America from the 1940's to the late 1950's. The author and curator of the book is called Lisa Hostetler, and her aim was to get the readers to gain a new understanding/impression of war/post war.  Lisa put the book together to celebrate the artist vision of what America was like at the time but also to show how hard it was to be a creative photographer at the time. This is because there was a huge crossover of photographic medium at the time, such as personal/commercial photography, social realism and abstract painting was still important too.  Even though it was such a palaver at the time for the photographers because of the war and everything that was going on in America, the photographic work that got released was amazing. Each photographer that Lisa chose to use all had a different way of using the photographic medium but the work was 'fascinating and yet to be seen by many different audiences' even today.
One of the photographers in the book is called Lisette Model and she did some work using reflections of windows and taking images of 'running legs and feet'. Below are a few images from the series in the book:
(All of her images have copyright - The Lisette Model Foundation, Inc 1983)

 

The above image is called 'Window Reflections' taken in New York City in 1940, it was then exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York as well. This image was received as a gift from Lisette herself to Lisa for the book. 

The above image is called 'Running Legs' like many other in the book. New York was and still is a very busy place and no one had to time to walk or stroll around. Also taken in 1940, and is now owned by the International Centre of Photography, and has been since 1993. It was received as a gift from the Lisette Model Foundation in memory of Joseph G. Blum.

The above image is called '42nd Street from the Sixth Avenue Subway' in shot in New York again, if you couldn't tell by the name. The image taken at some point between 1940 to 1941, and is now held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The image was given as a gift from Marvin Breckinridge Patterson.