Moving on

I've been stuck on exercise 5 analyse an essay and it's holding me back quite badly. I've decided to move on with Part 2 Photography in Publishing 1 and revisit analysing an essay over the next few days. I know my deadline is flexible but I would like to keep up with it as much as possible.

I've worked in design for many years and really got a lot of satisfaction using Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark Xpress in previous occupations.  My present version of Photoshop is CS5 and I look forward to learning new tricks with the help section on the OCA Website resources section.  I subscribed to a design newsletter for a couple of years some time ago and it gave some exciting layouts and designs which I incorporated in the work I did then.  The shame was that it ceased publication which was so disappointing as I found it extremely useful.

Over my working life I have also been on several one-day/2-day design courses for publications and am interested in how magazine/newsletter design has changed since I first started.  I was always told that you MUST use a sans serif font (Arial or Comic Sans for example) for headlines and a serif font (Times New Roman) for body text as it makes the eye flow along the lines of text more easily.  When I look at newspapers and magazines now this accepted standard seems to have gone out the window and any font anywhere seems to be the rule of thumb.

Exercise 4 Research and Analyse

Picture 4: Afghan Girl 1984, Steve McCurry

Copied from website:

http://www.culturaitalia.it/opencms/en/contenuti/eventi/event_1788.html 
 

FIRST IMPRESSION – WHAT STRIKES THE EYE

This is a very strong image, very challenging with the subject looking directly at the lens.  I get the impression that this is a child/young woman from a very poor background going by the clothes she is wearing.  Steve McCurry has travelled the world making a living photographing the people he meets for the companies he works for, lucky man.  He is able to see a situation quickly through his years of experience, taking pictures as the scene changes and getting the strongest images.

THE GENRE

The genre would be either a simple portrait of the girl, whose name was Sharbat Gula which Steve discovered 17 years later when he returned to find her, or one with more of her living situation which could be used in photo journalism or a documentary.  This was part of a series of pictures documenting the area where she lived and the families in her village.  

  

See here for a comparison picture published in the National Geographic magazine in 2002, website address: 

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text

THE INTENDED USE

Steve McCurry takes pictures for a living as part of a documentary of people’s lives where ever he is.  He builds up a picture of the land and people for each assignment and, if possible, returns years later to document the changes that have happened to his previous stories.

IMMEDIATE SITUATION FACING THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Steve would have been faced with a wall of human misery and people begging for help as this picture was taken in a refugee camp near Peshawar, in Pakistan.  It must take a very strong person to keep taking photographs in the midst of all that misery.

UNPLANNED OR PLANNED

Steve works in a planned but unconscious way having made his living through photojournalism for many years.  His natural instincts would have allowed him to look around, talk to people and get the best of an unplanned situation.

TECHNICAL DETAILS, IF IMPORTANT

The most important thing with Steve would be to get the shot.  His many years of experience after graduating from a photography degree and working as a newspaper journalist in his home state was his freelance work overseas.  Experience counts for a lot in documentary work and getting the right settings for a decent image come as second nature after many years of experience.

STYLE OR MANNERISM

Researching Steve’s style of picture shows that he prefers the straight face to the camera portraits, similar to that of the Afghan girl that we’re discussing.  When I googled his name 1,400,000 images came up in 0.28 seconds so his name is well recognized through the world.  The portraits on the first page all see to be in the same style that of facing directly into the camera, well recognized as a very strong image in portrait taking circles.

PHOTOGRAPHER’S INTENT

Steve has spent his whole life documenting world situations and sending back photographs to major publications and agencies.  The pictures he took of the refugee camp on the borders of Pakistan would be to highlight the plight of the people who had had to leave their homes and flee to a safer environment. Refugees would have been subjected to harrowing journeys leaving most of their belongings behind and having to stay in large, possibly barren areas with little food.  Photojournalists like Steve would be sent to the camps to document the desperate situation that the refugees found themselves in with the hope that the civilized world would send aid to help them.

IS THERE SUFFICIENT INFORMATION AVAILABLE?

I think there is sufficient information about Steve, his picture and the general situation that he found himself in in 1985.  Much has been published about the conditions in the refugee camps over the following years for the general public to gain an idea of how bad conditions would have been.

SUCCESS

This picture is instantly recognizable as Steve’s work as it has been published around the world many times.  The fact that it was the first image brought up when I googled Steve’s name shows it is well recognized.

 

Life's little hitches

Talk about thwarted at every turn! I've just got my head back in gear, ready to get on with the remaining exercises in part one of this module and I got an email from Apple saying that my hard drive has been identified as liable to fail at any time.  I could input my serial number and they would confirm it.  Do you know where the serial number is on an iMac, under the foot! Do you know how big it is, miniscule? I had to upend the machine on my overcrowded desk, find the number, take a macro picture as it was far too small to read and then upload it to be able to read the number. What a fiasco. Then it turned out that my machine really was one of those identified as liable to fail.

I really thought this was a hoax, hoping it was as it meant taking my iMac to Exeter (30 miles away) to the nearest Apple dealer to have the hard drive replaced.  Not only have I had to back up everything on the current drive but it will take about 5-10 working days as they are so busy replacing everyone else's drives. You can't make an appointment and wait so I'll have to go back when it's ready to pick it up, another day wasted. Ohhh!!

So now I'll be without a machine for up to 10 working days, just when I was at my most creative for ages.

Made my choice of image

Well, I've decided which picture and photographer I'm going to feature in Exercise 4 Research and Analyse.  I had narrowed it down to either Shell Shocked Soldier, Hue, 1968 by Don McCullin or Afghan Girl, 1984, Steve McCurry.

I've decided to research the Afghan Girl image as I have more affinity with portraits and this one appeals to me more than the Don McCullin picture.  I'm sure my tutor would say that I should stretch myself by researching into either the street scene by Robert Frank or Pikes Peak Park by Robert Adams but I can't summon up any empathy with either of those images.

So Afghan Girl it is.

Procrastinating again!

I'm struggling to get started on Exercise 4, that of writing an analytical account of one of four images. It would be easier if there was only one picture to choose from, but four make it far more difficult.  I'm also struggling with having to write to Her Majesty's Customs and Excise over an unpaid tax bill back in 2010 which is affecting my mind set at the moment.

I must decide which picture to choose; I'm more drawn to people portraits than landscapes so can narrow it down to either the Don McCullin 'Shell Shocked Soldier'

 or Steve McCurry's 'Afghan Girl'

I can see the merit in both images but I have to research and analyse the background and that is making it difficult to decide.

I saw a Don McCullin exhibition at the Barbican,  in London, back in the mid 1990s and was shocked and disturbed by what images were on display.  It makes you wonder what seeing continued violence does to a person and how they keep going.

Exercise 3: Analyse a photograph

 For this exercise, choose one of your own photographs – one that you are happy with and which you believe achieves what you set out to do – and subject it to this kind of analysis.  Base your analysis on the 10 points below (adapted if necessary) and write around 500 words.

Did this detailed analysis alter your opinion of your chosen photograph?  How?  Make notes in your learning log.

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First Impression – what strikes the eye?

This picture shows the local church and churchyard the morning after a heavy frost. The sky was blue as it had been a frosty night.  The first thing your eye sees is the east window of the church but your eye then moves round the picture to the frost covered seat on the lower right hand side of the picture.  Eventually your eye moves on round the picture and follows the path which leads back to the church window.

The genre

The genre of this picture is a standard landscape picture that would be suitable for use in many ways. 

The intended use

This image could be used in various ways including tourist publications and brochures, local newspaper features, websites, etc.

The immediate situation facing the photographer

This image was taken in early December 2010 at 10.53 am.  The sun must have been fairly weak as I was able to still see the frost even though the sunrise would have been approximately 8.00 am.  I had to be fairly quick to take several pictures from different positions as the sun could warm up as the morning progressed and melt the frost or people could walk into the picture when didn’t want a human interest in it even though it would enable the eye to gauge the height of various items in the picture.

An unplanned or planned photograph

This was an unplanned picture taken when I realized that the heavy frost was still in evidence after sunrise.  I’m always looking for different views of Lyme Regis and to get some pictures with the frost would make them slightly different and have more appeal.

Technical details, if important

Camera: DSL Nikon D5000

Mode: RGB

Aperture and Speed: F11 @ 1/125

Focal length: 18mm

Metering: Centre weighted

White balance: Auto

Style or mannerism

I have a traditional style of photographing landscapes.  I tend to prefer the bog standard type rather than something funky.  The market for this type of image needs to be fairly standard as the market could well be restricted if any quirky views were produced.

The photographer’s intent

It was my intention to take the image showing the town/church with a slightly different approach.  Most of the visitors that come to Lyme come in the summer and would therefore miss the evocative views that come unexpectedly in the autumn and winter.

Is there sufficient information available?

I had to be careful with this picture, as it was very difficult to maintain upright verticals as the church is very old and leans to one side.  I used the Edit/Transform/Skew, after I had inserted a non-printing guide, to make sure the main corner of the front wall was vertical.  It’s okay to have other walls looking slight skewed but the area the eye focuses on first needs to be upright.  I had to ensure that I didn’t make the other walls to far out of upright as I used the skew, as it would look extremely odd.

I was also concerned that the top of the seat on the right hand side was lost in the dark mass against the far church wall but I thought that the line of hoar frost was sufficient to bring it out enough to distinguish it from the background.  

 I had taken another picture where I had stood upright and looked down on the seat and across to the church but the angle seemed wrong.  The eye line seemed much higher than with the photographer positioned lower than the seat even though the seat was defined better in this image and didn’t merge with the dark mass in the background.

I also had to lighten the church area as it came over rather dark in the original image, but I only needed to use the Levels palette to make the adjustments rather than Shadows\Highlights, which can be too extreme at times.

Success

I like this image very much; I think it succeeded in what I started out to do which was show a different view of the parish church at a time of year not always seen by visitors.

Exercise 1: Writing descriptively

Exercise 1: Describe a photograph

Describe fully any one of your own photographs.  Follow the timeline of the shooting, beginning with circumstances or background.  Take at least a few hundred words and don’t worry about being concise.  The aim is completeness, including factual information about the subject and the decisions you remember taking leading up to making the picture.

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John, the Winemaker (749 words)

Final Choice

 Well, here's the problem, how do I choose just one image? I finally decided on the picture above after thinking about all the thousands of pictures I have taken since moving to Lyme Regis in 2009.  They seem to be mainly of the beach and sea front but my all time love in picture taking is of informal portraits of people and children as they go about their daily lives.

When I was working on the module ‘People & Place’ assignment 5 I was asked to think up my own subject and after, an email discussion with my then tutor, we came up with the overall subject of portraits of characters who live in Lyme.  I could have taken all the town’s worthies, but I also wanted to get the everyday people who live here.  I see John and his wife often and we talk about his hobbies of wine making and collecting Victorian nude pictures (mostly postcards), which he displays in his shed, not that I realized that at the time of asking him to be one of my ‘characters’.  I discussed where would be the best place to photograph him and then I discovered he had what most men have or desire to have which was a shed in his garden. We agreed a date and time and I turned up on the designated date with my equipment.

The shed was small and cramped and full of wine demi-johns, bottles of ready to drink wine and books on wine making on the shelves.  What took me by surprise was the number of old pictures of nudes that were pinned up on the wooden walls.  I asked John some questions on wine making and how he had collected his postcards to get him to relax. I took stock of the whole situation as he talked.

As I said, the shed was very cramped, so much so that I had to work with the door open to get suitable pictures of the different areas.  The lighting was a fluorescent tube which buzzed and flickered at odd times so not much help there.  It helped that I was working with the door open as that enabled me to balance out the yellow/green tinge that you get with fluorescent lighting but I still needed to use my flashgun (not the on-camera flash as that was too bright and too directional).  I wanted to use the flash attachment as I could direct the light to bounce off the ceiling or walls and I had more control of the amount of light that it emitted. 

I decided to work my way round the shed taking pictures as I went with John holding various items which were relevant to the work of wine making and I got him to talk about it as I worked.  John is very loquacious and didn’t take much encouragement to talk about his hobbies and his life as he is now in his 70s.  He did offer to remove his hat but he didn’t seem the same person, as I have never seen him without it.

I felt the picture that I chose encompassed his main hobbies of wine making and collecting but showed him with a different expression on his face, that of an appreciation of his favourite tipple, a glass of his ‘hooch’.  When I had taken all the pictures I wanted he downed the drink in one swallow.

Technical problems

The problems I encountered:

·      Very small area to work in

·      Fluorescent lighting giving a bad cast to the pictures

·      Odd angles to walls due to cramped conditions

·      Owner wanting to ply me with drink

Post-production actions

The post-production work which needed correction:

·      Fluorescent cast to pictures partially eliminated by flash but I had to use colour balance palette to remove slight green effect

·      Skewed angles of walls – used the Edit/Transform to skew walls upright

·      Cropped to eliminate open door.  Tutor felt the open door added to the picture but I felt it distracted the eye from the subject

·      Lighting levels needed slight adjustment as combination of natural light through the door and flash over compensated some areas and left some, ie, corner behind subject, to dark.

Assignment One is off to my Tutor

Well, I've refined and resorted assignment one yet again but managed to posted it off to my tutor at last. It's a bit unnerving to start with a new tutor as you don't know how they will react to your style of work. Fingers crossed it will be okay and you can see what he says through my home page links, Jen Hollands' Home Page.

I want to crack on with this module as I have let this module slide during the summer months as there is always so much to do in Lyme, what with Lifeboat week, Carnival week, my photography club's summer exhibition and the ArtsFest over 10 days in September.  Then there is a profusion of exhibitions and workshops in and around the town to attend as well, so I need to knuckle down and get on.