Environment: Reshoot

After failing this project, and given the chance to resubmit, i was able to expand my idea of destruction and disregard of the environment. Ive looked at the damaging effect that industry has on the environment. For this, i decided to go to the Isle of Sheppy, which is full of factories and businesses, large and small.

For my shoot, i used a Bronica with a 6x4 back. I chose to use this instead of using the square format because i pefered being able to choose wether my image was portrait or landscape, without having to crop in the darkroom. I used 1 roll of Fujifilm PRO 400h around the small town of Queenborough.

Out of these images, i chose the 3 that i felt worked well together, and also showed this idea of wastefulness and disregard of the environment.






The first image i took was of some fencing around an olf train repair yard. The fence interested me, as in the middle of it was a small tree that had been built into the supports of the fencing. It seemed interesting that this fence was reliant on the tree as support, yet the company had no regard for the environment. Also, the aliminium sheets that made up the fence reminded me of a city skyline.

I started off making a test strip to find the correct exposure:

From this, i worked out that a good exposure time would be inbetween 5 and 10 seconds (closer to 10) so i did another test strip for 8 seconds, and came up with this exposure.

To reduce the amount of blue in the image, i reduced both the yellow and magenta. I meant to reduce them both by 10, but i accidentally reduced them both to 50. Luckily, this turned out to be exactly what i wanted, and came out with this for my final print:

My second final image was taken right opposite this fence. I wanted to look at the amount of rubbish and waste that was just lying around. There was a recycling bin in the yard that i was standing in, but it looked completly unused, whilst stuff was all over the floor.

I made another test strip for the exposure. As both this and the first image were taken under similar light conditions, i guessed that the exposure would be the same, but i made the test strip to make sure.

10 seconds again seemed to be around the right exposure time, maybe just a little to dark, so i made another strip, this time at 9 seconds. I had chosen not to reset the colours back to their default settings in hope that i would achieve a similarly correct exposure.

I liked the colours that came out in this strip. They werent perfect, being a little to yellow/green. But i liked this slight offset as it emphasised the idea that this was a rather dirty place. I therefore decided to make a print with these settings.

The third image was of a riverbed that ran past one of the factories. All dried up, it was full with rubbish and industrial waste, including scrap metal and bricks.

Again, i left the colour settings as they were, and as i was running short on time, i decided to just make a print straight away and see how it went. I decided that this time 10 seconds needed darkening down just a tiny bit more, so i set the exposure for 11, and this was the result.

I was really happy with the result, and out of the three images, this one was my favourite. The sense of decay and disregard in this image is emphasized by the colour, especially the grass.