Major Project Change Of Plans.

I'd originally planned to look at the village at night as a section in my Major Project but over the past week I've come to discover that I'm not happy with how my work on this subject is progressing and I'm now at a point where I'm questioning whether it's the right chose as a subject because I don't want to end up with a part of my project that brings down the hard work I've already put in. The problem that I discovered is that I couldn't come up with the variety that I found in my other sections, the images that I found work best were all along the similar idea of how buildings and areas of the village appear under the different light conditions you find at night. The best two being the images you see below.

Both are reasonable photos but everything else I tried just seemed to be repeating the same kind of views over and over and not really expanding on the subject. So after a short conversation with my tutor I've come to the decision that I'm going to scrape this idea and use a back up theme that I'd come up with in case this kind of problem arose. The changes I'm going to make are as follows-

1. The first section in My Major Project called By Day I'm now going to rename The Village and include what few images I've produced while trying to work on my Night section. I think this is the best option as it means that I haven't wasted my time on what work I've already produced and it'll expand my first section still further.
2. To replace my Night section I'll now be working on a section under the title of The River.

In this new section called The River I'll be looking at the River Swarbourne which runs right through the village and joins the river Trent near the southern boarder of the village. Its know great river but it still forms part of what makes the village what it is as it runs through both the urban and rural areas effecting them both in its own ways, plus with the lack of rain throughout the country of late (although as I write this its throwing it down outside) its running at a lower level then normal which again makes it an interesting and relevant subject matter at this time.

Hopefully these changes can only improve my Project at a time when I was beginning to be concerned about the route my work was taking. I'm feeling alot happy about the final sections now and can't feel and see the whole project coming together as I approach the final stages.

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Major Project Planning Part 5- At Night.

For the second to last part of my Major Project I wanted to look at how the village appears during the hours of darkness, when I first came up with this idea I felt it'd make a good contrast against the daytime images and would give a stronger feel for the area.Then I started thinking in more detail about what I'm actually going to do and I'm beginning to have a few creative problems because what else is there to look at other than how say an area or building is lit during this time. When you have a look about at what other people have created using a similar theme you find a lot of what I would call light trail images, these being long exposures capturing head/tail lights of vehicles as they pass by. Another thing you find a lot of is star trail views where some one has taken a particular scene where they can capture a large section of a clear night sky and then using again a long exposure    capture the movement of the sky this way. I like these kind of images a fancy having a crack at something similar but at the same time I'd like to think that I'll be able to create something original along with it. I'm starting to get the distinct feeling this is going to be the most challenging section to get my head into and be able to come up with work that is as good as I've already produced will really push me. This isn't a bad thing but I worry if I don't get it right it'll have an effect on how the whole project will appear.


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Whats Going On.

Something my tutor suggested to me was to give people a little more insight into Yoxall, so what I thought was I'd attempt to keep anyone reading this up to date on whats happening in the village at the minute. The idea behind this is that it'll give you more of an understanding on the place I hope. One of the main issues right now is the fact that the main road through the village has been closed for resurfacing work, now to anyone looking in from outside this might seem a very trivial matter but in a small community it brings big problems. First there the disruption to the people living here because it can make it near to impossible to even get home if the highways workers feel like being difficult and completely block your access to your road (hasn't happened to me yet but its only a matter of time). On the upside this means there's very little heavy traffic coming through namely the larger lorries that use the road as a short cut instead of using the A38 and A50 to get up to Ashbourne, nice for me living near to the main road but not so good for any of the local business that rely on the passing trade to keep themselves going so as you might imagine there's a little tension at the moment. On a lighter not saw a post in the Pub window yesterday advertising a Bungee jump taking place on the car park in the near future, should be a good laugh don't know whether to have a go myself or not but it should provide some good photo if nothing else. Other then that I don't think there's much else to report, spring seems like it could be just round the corner which is always good after the cold dark winter because the sudden burst of colour returning to the landscape is always something to look forward to.

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Dodge and Burn.

Because I'm going to be working in Black and White for my project I wanted to look at the Dodge and Burn tool in Photoshop a little closer as it can help me more then anything else with my work in this style. Luckily for me there's plenty of websites out there that can help me to understand how to get the best out of these tools and below are the ones I found most useful.

1. http://www.dpchallenge.com/tutorial.php?TUTORIAL_ID=30
2. http://www.photographyblackwhite.com/dodge-burn-overdoing/
3. http://www.ilfordphoto.com/aboutus/page.asp?n=121
4. http://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/dodging-and-burning-techniques-photoshop/

The majority of stuff you can read on these sites is pretty similar but still its good to have more then one source to refer to when trying out a tool that you haven't used alot before, you may disagree but this is how I find it best to work. When experimenting with the dodge/burn tool I found it quiet easy to get to grips with an in fact its more useful then you think especially with black and white images because it allows you to easily correct exposure issues you might have had trouble with at the time of shooting, for example with some of the images I tried it out on I could lighten or darken the shadows without effecting the rest of the shot. Great tool I definitely be using in the future.

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Fay Godwin.

Looking through Fay Godwin's work today for a bit of inspiration regarding my Major Project, she's one of them photographers that I find I can always turn to if I find myself a little stuck creatively. I think we all have peoples work that naturally makes us feel more comfortable with what we're doing or helps us to be more creative and move in a different direction and she just happens to be mine. When I first started flicking through her work I didn't think that I'd find alot that related back to what I'm doing with my major project but actually on a second look I might have been a bit quick to judge. For example look at these photos below.

These photos are just a small selection of the work I think that can help me with my own project because in each case they capture a part of life be it in a surreal manner or a more documentary approach but they all help in my mind to produce a picture of life during the late 70's early 80's (which is when she took them). Like all good black and white work there's a good tonal range and high levels of detail. She was describe as being Britain's answer to Ansel Adams her work was that well thought of, she did use her work in a similar way to him as well fighting for the right to open the countryside to the ramblers. Anyway I'm getting a bit off track here, how is her work helping me? Easy it's making me really look closely at my subject maybe more at the little things that make up the place instead of the grander landscape and how it sits in it.

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Street Photography.

Another thought that came to me today while pondering my Major Project (in particular how to approach the Daytime section) was the idea of Street Photography. This is a type of documentary photography where you show candid situations within public spaces, it can be quiet ironic at times but at the same time its possible to capture a familiar scene in a more personal way. Its also tends to be less intrusive on the subjects then other approaches giving it a very unique very on life. Of course it does have it's problems in today's modern world because of how peoples view on privacy have changed, issues of terrorism and the thought that if your near children with a camera it means your up to no good. These issues can hamper your pursuit of the perfect shot but in the right situations it's still a great use of photography.

Street Photography originated in America with greats such as Helen Levitt, Joel Meyerowitz, Lisette Model and Garry Winogrand setting the scene of American life in the early 40's in on into the 20th century but what I'm looking for is a more modern look at society. In my search I came across this site showing some of the winning entry's in the 2011 International Street Photography Awards below are a couple of my favourites.

 

 

The image above is one of the best, I love the fact that the women almost appears to be being avoided by everyone else and doesn't seem to be part of the surrounding yet the one bloke up in the right top corner is giving her a very strange look. What I like is the fact these kinds of images make you question what is really going on in them.


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Thoughts And Planning.

Today I've been thinking a little about Landscape photography as clearly my Major Project will be built up centrally around this kind of work. In my landscape work I want to give the viewer an impression of what kind of place Yoxall is so that they have a true feel for it even though there likely never to visit. So how am I going to achieve this, well that's a very good question and to try and find the answer the obvious thing to do I think is have a look at how other photographers have managed this feet in their own work.

To begin with I found this article which offers some interesting suggestions Urban Landscape Photography Tips . Although the focus is more on the urban side of life this doesn't mean I can't take some of the points made and use them to my advantage, for example it talks about capturing the old and the new together which is just as relevant in a more rural situation. Another useful site I found was How To Capture Stunning Fine Art Landscape Photography, on this site I particularly liked the idea of looking for relationships between older buildings and the environment around them, do they sit more comfortably in the landscape then there new alternatives? The only problem I might have with this idea is that the older and newer parts of the village don't really merge together so I'll have to put some serious thought into how to get round this problem.
Another thing I've found myself doing is looking on sites like Alamy at village shots in general just to get a feel for how other people might approach the subject. What I've taken from this is I don't want to fall into the trap of just capturing an image of say the local landmarks and presenting it like a guide say here's the church and the village Post office aren't they nice. What I'd like to do is maybe be a little abstract maybe even minimalist in my approach particularly in the section focused on the Daytime. I don't think this approach would work as well when it comes to the theme of the Abandoned village because for that I'd think a little more depth is need to get across the idea of how things have been left.

Tony Ray-Jones.

Tony Ray-Jones aim was to try and photograph British life before it became to 'Americanised', in the early 60's America and its influence had yet to fully take hold in this country and after studying in America at Yale and then returning to his home shore's Ray-Jones began to look for a subject for his work and eventually set on the idea of the English at Leisure as the starting point. You can find alot of surreal humour in his work but for me it's some of the contrast within society that he's captured that stand out, for example take the second photo here below a well dress couple having a picnic surrounded by cows and sheep. With my modern perspective this looks incredibly strange but its quiet a strong photo. I also really like the Eton school children in the final image seemingly avoiding there parents on a parent teacher day.

Images taken from Science and Society Picture Library.

Ray-Jones once said "Photography can be a mirror and reflect life as it is, but I also think that perhaps it is possible to walk like Alice, through a looking-glass, and find another kind of world with the camera". I like this idea and I think you can kind of see this in the photos above because they do feel a little like this. I really like his surreal approach to British life but I'm not quiet sure that's the kind of feel or approach I'm looking for with my Major Project, I'm beginning to wonder whether in my case a more serious documentary approach might be better to capture a village during changing and challenging economic times?

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Anna Fox- The Village.

When I put to my Tutor my plans for my major project one of the first things she recommended for me to take a closer look at was the work of Anna Fox and in particular her collection called The Village. This is a deeply satirical look at local events such as family weddings and fetes while also seeming to focus on women's life's in general in a small rural west Sussex village, she says that she was fascinated by the rituals that take place in the home and surrounding community. What she's trying to do is challenge the concept that villages are these sweet chocolate box place's that many people image them to be when in fact there quiet the opposite. Like myself she was brought up in a rural community so she understands clear the problems and constants that are associated with living in these areas. In a second collection called Back To the Village she found herself returning to similar themes but with different eyes as she'd spent a considerable amount of time living in towns and cities before returning to a more rural area. She became more aware of how events are more significant in these communities because of how they bring people together in social rituals such as Halloween parties and 5th November celebrations.

 

I find her work interesting because it give me some ideas for particularly the section in my major study on people because I'll be following similar ideas but I don't really find her photos crying out to me as something really special although in future generations you might look back on them as we do on photos from the early 20th century because they capture a part of english life that might not be around in another 100 years.

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A Little About Yoxall.

   For my major project I'm focusing on the village I live in Yoxall in Staffordshire so I thought it'd be a good idea just to give you a little over view of the place to give you the reader a better feel for it. Located near the River Trent it's what you might call a typical British farming community built up around the church and pubs that once made up the beating heart of the village while the farms once made up the majority of employment.
 Of course this isn't what you find today as like most other small communities its now made up of an ageing population that see's the local village school with smaller and smaller classes and many of the farms either going out of business or looking to diversify in order to survive in these testing economic times. It isn't all bad though we are now at the heart of the National Forest Scheme seeing much of the farmland that has been left unused being rented and plant to form a new forest in the centre of the country, for any love of the outdoor's and wildlife (as I am) can now find all kinds of interesting scenes right on my door step.

Architecturally the village is made up of a good combination of the old and the new, from the Tudor style beamed houses to the 1950's estate up to the large more modern house found on the out skirts. The layout is as you'd expect, around and along the main road (the a515 which runs up towards Ashbourne and into the Peak District) you find many of the oldest house, the school and the 18th century church.

Like anywhere it has it's issues and it's the perfect place to live by far but for me it's where I've always live and called home so I maybe have a unique view of how it's changing in this modern world, if I ask my parents there very quick to say that it isn't the place they grew up in any more but this just I think reflects the world as a whole just on a much smaller scale.


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More on Social Documentary

    Having look through magazine's and got an idea of the kind of photo's produced today I now want to look at a few individual photographer's who's work in this field stands out from quiet a packed photo journalistic crowd.

Bill Brandt. 

Widely regarded as one if not the most influential British Photographer of the 20th century Brandt captured British society at a turning point during the 1930's and through the Second World War, this kind of documentation wasn't common at the time and he made sure that he captured every aspect however small of all levels of society around this time. He would eventually move into more abstract work with his distorted nudes and landscapes but in this case I'm going to focus on his early work.

Window In Osborn Street.

Coal Searcher Going Home.

Evening In Kenwood.

These are just a quick example of the kind of scene captured by him but they show range of his work from the cluster of faces seen watching from a basement dwelling to the hunched Coal Searcher struggle his way home with a heavy load slug over the cross bar to finally the couples at ease and in love in the park. As ever the question is why does his work stand out? To start with I think its the period that he's working in because when we look back today and we see it as being a record of how society in this country has changed but there's more to his work then that. For example if you take the Coal Searcher which was taken during a period of high unemployment you see there's also some symbolism to the shot because its a representation of the struggle most of the middle to lower class people were facing at the time, while at the same time he was  capturing images of the upper class at there cocktail and garden parties.

Images taken from Masters of Photography.

Martin Parr.

Best known for his work focusing on modern life he found fame in the 80's with photo's mirroring the lifestyle of ordinary British people, reflecting the mood and attitude of society during the Thatcher era. Of his own work he said " With photography I like to create fiction out of reality. I try and do this by taking society's natural prejudice and giving this a twist"1. A good collection of his work can be found on the Magnum Photos site from these you can see his very unique approach to capturing modern society from the surreal to the damn right strange. I wouldn't class myself as a big fan of his work but what I do like is his different approach to the study of the world around us and how we fit into it.

1. Quote taken from Magnum Photos

Fay Godwin.

Possibly more renowned for her landscape work but I think that she deserves a mention for her social documentary collection also. Compared to the other two photographers I've looked at to me her style is very much understated, definitely it's less intrusive then Parr's style but just as effective in capturing the mood/feel of the scene.

Cricket at Sandwich.

Social Security Office.

Private Land.

She did create a great selection of photo's in this field but above are some of the shots that stand out most to me from capturing the simple activity of locating a lost ball, to a very sad and frankly moving image of a small child on the steps of a social office to finally the image of a private land sign relating to her work and views regarding the right to roam the countryside. She's up there as one of my favourite photographers mainly because of some similar views that we share but also because of the depth to the work she created but thats maybe to go more into another time.

Images taken from Fay Godwins site.

Although this was only a very quick study of a few photographers and there work I feel it's given me much more of an idea of the kind of shot's I'd like to produce myself when I reach the relevant section in my major project, as I've said before this is definitely the area of photography that I have the least practise and experience in so a little more experimentation will be needed until I can find a style that I feel comfortable working with but at least now I feel better about where I'm heading thanks to a little research. 

Social Documentary.

   Now that I've finished for now the second assignment in this course I want to start looking for inspiration for my Major Project and to look in particular at the area of Social Documentary which I need to gain a better understanding of. To begin with I simply wanted to find some good examples of this kind of work so the easiest   way to start with is by looking in magazines and newspapers that rely heavily on this kind of work. Some of the best examples I came across were in this months edition  National Geographic, there were two articles that stood out to me the first about Africa's Albertine Rift and the second on the Sami people's way of life in Scandinavia and how it's changing. In both cases what I found interesting about the images was that you almost didn't need to read the attached articles to understand the story they're trying to get across. In the case of the Albertine Rift story I found the work extremely powerful in that you could really understand the problems associated with trying to maintain a balance in these countries between protecting the wildlife and habitats while at the same time giving a growing population the space it need to thrive, there are good examples throughout of the photographers use of expression to get across the feelings of his subject while others depict daily life in a troubled land. This is one thing I do like about this type of photography, the way in which you can capture an everyday event and make it something special but at the same time tell an individuals story with a single image if caught in the right way.