Comission: Layout and Design

For the layout and design of our newspaper, i read through a few different examples, but mainly focused on The Guardian for our project. The newspaper is very consistant with its layouts.

 The text layout is set into 5 collumns, which continues through the paper, and images are placed onto the pages, with the text working around the images within these columns. Also, there are alot of page break lines used to seperate different stories on pages, as each page usually contains 2 or 3 stories.

In the design, the paper comes up with around 20 different page layouts, and then reuses them throughout the paper with different stories and images. Depending on the seriousness of the story, the size of the image changes. More important stories have more space allocated to them, between 3 and 4 collumns wide, where as smaller stories have images between 2-1 collumns. Even with the larger stories, there is usually a relating side story which is found in the side column.

Using this research, i started to come up with a rough idea for the layouts for our newspaper:

I came up with 6 different layout possibilities. These were just rough sketches, so i didnt stick to a certain number of collumns for text, but i think for our newspaper, 4 collumns will be enough. As we dont have a large number of stories to work with, there would be no need to put in small side stories around the photos, thus giving the oppertunity to print the images larger, and giving space for the more important stories we wish to feature.

After making these 6 designs, i decided to get a real idea of how these would look layed out in a news paper. To do this, i made a half scale newspaper, and started to plan out the layouts page by page. The scale model included the 15mm border around each of the pages, and started to give an idea of spacing between images and text, and how they would relate to eachother within a story.

These are some scans of the first 3 pages, showing the layout and positioning of texts.

Comission: Pinhole Experimentation

For the pinhole photography part of this project, i really wanted to experiment with the project on a big scale. Using a large piece of black card, i turned my bedroom into a pinhole camera, projecting the view of the building site across the way onto my walls upside down.

Im looking into ways that i can capture this image onto paper or film. I attempted to cover the entire wall in pieces of photographic paper to capture the mage, but my test images revealed that there was light leaks coming from somewhere in the room.

Comission: Final Shoot/Printing

After one failed attampt at a shoot (all of my images coming out very soft), I waited for a nice sunny day and went out to reshoot. As my aim from the start was for my images to be taken for a newspaper, i decided to shoot on 35mm. Photographers for news papers would usually use slr cameras or smaller compacts because they are easier to travel around with and easier to shoot on. As this project had to be shot on film, i felt 35mm would be the ideal substitute.

The first location i shot was a recycling point at the civic center in Strood. I chose this location as it featured the castle and cathedral in the background, which are both monuments that symbolise medway. Whilst taking the image, i wanted to feature the recycling signs, as well as the castle, so i positioned myself so that the sign actually framed the castle in the background.

When it came to printing, i created a test strip for this image at f/16, and worked out the ideal exposure time was 20s at grade 2.

I then started to add in some grade 5 to darken the shadows and add more contrast. I ended up with this print. The exposure times for this were 20s at Grade 2, and 10s at Grade 5.

This print was far to dark along the bottom half of the image, so i dodged around that area. I dodged during the Grade 2 exposure for around 10 seconds, and then again through the grade 5 exposure for about 3-5 seconds.








This was my final exposure (the scanner i used to scan these images made some adjustments whilst scanning, so the image doesnt look the same on paper)

For my second and third final image, i visited a Household Waste tip in Cuxton, just off the M2.They were kind enough to let me walk around and take photos of them working and of the machinary there.

I chose to take a picture of one of the recycling bins at the tip, with people bringing their recycling in the background. I felt it was impotant to emphasize that this was still in medway, so i tried to include the medway council logo in the image.

I started off making a test strip at 5, 10, 15, and 20 seconds. From this, i worked out the exposure time i need was 20seconds.

 

 I made a full print at this exposure to see what work needed to be done on it, but i was happy with that print so i kept it as my final.

For my third final image, i wanted to photograph one of the workers. I asked the site manager if he'd mind posing for a photograph, which he was fine with, so i positioned him next to an information board and next to a bin full of brooms.

Again, i made another test strip at 5 second intivals, although this time something went wrong, and my test strip came out nearly white all the way through.

I assume i must have nocked the aperture up at some point by accident, so i turned it down to f/8 and made another test strip.

20*

20 seconds didnt seem enough, so i tried a strip at 25 seconds, which came out perfectly exposed. Next, i added 10 seconds of grade 5, and made a full print to see if i needed to make any further adjustments.

This was far too dark in the bottom right hand corner, so i dodged this area for around 15 seconds to brighten it up a bit, and came up with this as my final print.

Comission: Ronnie Isreal

Whilst researching for this project, i stumbled across the work of Ronnie Isreal, a london based photographer who has documented the development around the thames and docklands area. Looking through his site, i found a series of images under the heading recycling. These images can be viewed on these webpages:

http://www.ronnieisrael.com/html/environ7.htm
http://www.ronnieisrael.com/html/environ8.htm

I liked the simplicity of them. They appear to be of a more photojournalistic style than some of his other images. As my initial thoughts for the publication of my work are for a newspaper, i want to try and recreate this style.

Comission: Location Hunting

Today i went location hunting, with a few areas i already had in mind. One of the places i went to was a recycling point in strood next to the Medway Civic Center. Unfortunatly, my digital camera had run out of battries by the time i got there, so i didnt have a chance to take a photo of the area. The reason i wanted to go there was the view it had. Rochester castle and the river could be seen from this point, and i thought it would be important to feature this in some of my final images.

By the time i had charged up my batteries, i only had time to go to one other location, although this was the main one i wanted to visit. It was a household recycling place in Cuxton, just of the M2. I spoke to the people working there, and they were more than happy to let me take some photographs around the area for my project. These were the general shots of the area.

Comission: Further Research

Today i talked with a man called Steve Baker, who is the head of Recycling and Waste Management for Medway Council. I spoke with him about my project, and he informed me that since the start of thie recycling programme, 47 "Bring Sites" have been installed around medway to help incourage people to recycle more and more, as well as places for household recycling. Looking through the website and at where these points are, i have a good idea of the ones i want to visit, and am going to go location hunting during this week. Also, i spoke about the possibility of me meeting with members of the council and works who deal with this project, and taking their pictures for my work. I now have his email address and intend to keep in contact with him about how my project is going to see if he can possibly find any use for this work within the council.

Comission: Edward Burtynsky

I have already looked at Burtynsky for other projects, but as his work is so relevant to the issues i am looking at in this project, i decided to revisit him. This time, i was looking into is work on Metal Recycling.

This set of images focus on the massive amount of metal recycling done in Ontario, Canada. The way he emphasises this is to fully fill the frame with these recycled parts in the image. The images are all taken in colour and inclued an enormous amount of detail, which leads me to believe that they were taken on large format. This is very similar to what i want to try and convey with my project. The only issue i face is that many companies aren't willing to let someone on site to photograph. Im going to try and find a new angle on the project that will allow me to photograph this idea of waste and recycling, without having to tresspass and break into places.

Comission: Initial Ideas

The idea that i want to look at for this project is the waste management around the Medway area. We are currently in the process of lowering our waste and landfil usage. In 2004, the medway area produced 141,000 tonnes of waste, and since then a plan has been put into action to reduce this number to 24,000 tonnes by 2020. I want to look at what actions are being taken to do this, and to photograph the people who have to deal with this waste on a day to day basis.

I intend to visit a landfill site on the nearby Isle of Sheppy, as well as visiting 3 local household waste and recycling centers in Cuxton, Gillingham and Chatham

information found through:
http://www.medway.gov.uk
http://www.medway.gov.uk/pdf/medway-waste-management.pdf

Comission: The Portrai Issue

The first of the three images I'm analysing is 'Changing Pace, David Weir' by Finlay Mackay. It comes from a set of images commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery and BT, called The Road to 2012, which contains various images of athletes training for the Olympics.

Throughout the set of images, including this one, the use of artificial light is prominent in lighting the subjects of the photo. It makes the subject jump out of the image, even though in this particular picture, he is a very small part of the overal scene. The photographer has taken the model away from the usual training ground of this sport, the track, and instead placed him on a country road surrounded by trees and grass. This could be an attempt to try and show off Englands natural beauty to people from other countries who would be coming to the event. A large depth of field has been used in the image to keep everything in focus. The model becomes the main focus of the image witht he use of a flash coming from the right of the image.

The second image is by Toby Glanville, part of a series of images called 'Actual Life'. The book is a collection of photographs taken around kent over the last 3 years. His style is completly different to Finlay Mackay.

The technical differences are fairly obvious. Glanville uses natural lighting and locations that relate to the models to represent this idea of everyday life. The colours in this image look fairly desaturated, and give the image th appearance of being shot on film (i couldnt find anywhere that stated wether it had or not). The style is more of a documentary style than the others. The other images in this book, and other work by Glanville all share this style, all using natural lighting and carefully chosen locations to show the models jobs. The depth of field is very small in these images, keeping the focus on the subject, whilst throwing the background into a blur.

 The third image is by german photographer Ulrich Gebert. This comes from a series of work showing a man, cutting back some garden hedges. The idea behind the series is to show mans confrontation with nature, and our need to be in control. The use of strong, highly saturated colours used in this image help to show what the model is doing. The bright red helmet tells us that there is an element of danger to the job.

This image is technically between both of the previous 2 images. There is use of flash to light the subject, yet it is much more intimate than the work of Mackay. A shallow depth of field is used, although the background is barely visible anyway due to the proximity of the model. I would say that a atandard or telephoto lens has been used to capture this image, as this would be a dangerous photo to take this close up if the model was actuall cutting the hedge.