Preparation for Assignment Three

Although still early days for planning Assignment Three - I have an idea that I want to explore.  The idea stemmed from seeing Justin Minns' photograph Sweeping - Sea Defences, Felixstowe at the LPOTY exhibition in December 2013 and realising that this is not a scene that I recollect from the time I spent in Felixstowe as a child.

While I was growing up in North London I spent many childhood holidays in Felixstowe, Suffolk where my grandparents lived.  I think I would have been about 16 maybe the last time I went to Felixstowe, but the bulk of my memories span from the ages of about 4-14. 

Assignment Three requires a series of  5-10 photographs on a theme or subject in Monochrome (I like the idea of 9 - this makes a nice 3 x 3 panel).  I would like to explore whether I can reproduce my memories from my childhood holidays with my grandparents, aunts, parents and sister, and also a friend at a later age, as a series of monochrome images.   This idea is also borne from arguments I've heard that taking photographs destroys memories, because you eventually remember your photographs and not the experience.  In this case it is the reverse.  I have memories intact, albeit idyllic and in the eyes of a child,  but what I am now trying to do is to see if I can recreate them, and to see if during that process, forgotten memories resurface and expand my collection.

Typically, I associate long exposure landscapes with escapism, solitude and tranquility, which aren't really the emotions I want to recreate here, so although I was originally inspired by Minns' image for this exercise, I'm not sure that this is relevant as a technique here.  Although I will probably try anyway and then perhaps save it for Assignment Five!  But, this said, might be relevant perhaps for one image trying to reflect the memories of walking on a beach extending into the distance?

Monochrome is an ideal medium for this subject as it will help with the times gone by aspect, and also will stop me taking my usual seaside route of creating gaudy "in-your-face" type photographs that I usually do by the sea!  Shooting with mono in mind will force me to focus on shape and form and I hopefully I'll be able to achieve some images evocative of idyllic memories.  I've seen in other photos, or in film sequences, that high key imagery is used to denote flashbacks or step backs from present to past.  Although my memories are obviously not in black and white, I do want the output to have an antiquated feel. 

The things I remember are (in no particular order):

• Two houses that my grandparents lived in: first 30 Leopold Road, and then 43 Brook Lane.  The former seemed huge (but I was much smaller), and the latter seemed smaller.  Both walking distance from the beach, which as  I child growing up in Barnet was the ultimate way to live! (I think it still might be, although I have now chosen to live near mountains...)
• I remember a house very near 43 Brook Lane, which had a front garden big enough to keep a horse in - I thought that that would be where I would live when I grew up
• The Pier, which as a younger child I remember had a giant inflatable whale on it, which blew away one day in a storm.  I remember playing in the arcade also - the coin falls, and hockey game in particular.  Apparently the old pier has been rebuilt now
• The fairground (I was older then - about 14) - going on the dodgems at different ages - slightly younger with my sister and slightly older with a friend
• Hours walking along the beach with my grandfather looking for stones that he would polish and make into jewellery
• Playing on the beach with my family, digging sandcastles etc
• Beach huts
• The "Prom"
• Ice cream
• The Spa Pavilion where I saw the two characters from "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" played by Windsor Davies and Don Estelle in a show with my aunt
• The terraced garden in front of the Spa Pavillion
• Jacob's Ladder in the sandy part of the beach (north end)
• The Chinese restaurant "The Mayflower" in Hamilton Road - in those days going out for a Chinese meal was a real treat.  Not something you did mid-week because you can't be bothered to cook!
• My aunt's flat and her friend Angie
• The Marks and Spencer in the High Street (why do I remember this in particular....?)
• The cold north sea
• Very pebbly beach with concrete breakwaters
• Rock pools and sea creatures living in them
• Completing my I-Spy At the Seaside Book
• People on the beach with brightly coloured windshields
• Martello towers
• The shop that sold dried sea urchin shells and other sea creature animal artefacts
• People playing bowls
• The railings on the prom by the ice cream hut

There are risks too though with this exercise (apart from the obvious rubbish weather on the day): these are mainly that the new images and memories will replace my old ones, effectively destroying them,  and secondly that the things that I remember won't be there anymore.  I did check the address of the Chinese above, but decided not to check anymore, it would be better to find out on the day, as the objective of the exercise will be to see if memories can be recreated.

Thinking about denotation and connotation (which I am currently reading about), the denotation will be the structure of the photographs, what you see in the images will be what exists today, but the connotation will be the perspective of a child and happy holidays, if that is possible?

I'm also thinking about personal voice a lot at the moment, I don't know at the moment what direction my work is going in overall; it changes on a daily basis, so whether this exercise helps or not, remains to be seen.  Perhaps if I get some good street photography along the way then may be!

This will probably take several trips, so my planning might evolve after the first trip, which will    hopefully take place sometime in March!

In talking to people about this idea (including my tutor, the LIP Crossing Lines group, and Gill Golding), I was given a number of pointers to reference materials to consider, some relevant, some not so:

• http://www.abbothall.org.uk/coffee-house-exhibitions
• http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dear-Photograph-Taylor-Jones/dp/0062131699 - I did check this book out on Amazon, but didn't seem relevant - I would not be using old photographs, and I didn't think I'd be on an emotional roller coaster either
• Try researching photographers and how they show time and maybe the work of the Re-Photographic Survey Project - this I found interesting but my purpose was not re-photography - it is new photography of old familiarity
• http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/chino-otsuka-imagine-finding-me - this was a very interesting piece of work, but I would not be in these photographs
• Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Post-memory by Marianne Hirsch - I read this book, and although relevant to the subject matter, my pictures will not be of people but of locations.  Write-up saved for another occasion when it is relevant to the work!
• Modern Nature: The Journals of Derek Jarman by Derek Jarman - a very interesting piece of work - and relevant from the point of view of look back into the past - but Jarman's life was very different to mine and his purpose was not to discover old memories, but to link the past with the present during the time of his seropositivity.
• Dolores Hayden - who writes about landscape, memory, place - I read sections of The Power of Place.  Definitely a text to consider for Landscape module.  In respect of this exercise, pages 46-48 were relevant to my experiment.
• Jo Spence - Putting myself in the frame (not reviewed - I was not going to be in the frame and I wasn't trying to dispel taboos and myths)
• Annette Kuhn - Remembrance the child I never was (not reviewed - I was a child and this experiment was about recapturing happy memories)
• Rosy Martin - family photos, memory, archiving, worked with Jo Spence in relation to photo therapy (again - this was not about family photographs or photo therapy)
• Val Williams - Who's looking at the family
• Tate Catalogue - Louise Bourjois
• Royal Institute of Photography
• See CL blog (someone mentioned something about Freud?)
• Richard Billingham - Ray's a laugh

The Crossing Lines group also gave me the following thoughts:

• Old memories are robust
• I may not connect the old memories with the new ones I will create / new ones will be disjointed
• Places change and my response to location as an adult will not be the same as it was a child; the ambiance/atmosphere will also be different
• I will find aspects of life that I haven't occupied for a while/aspects of my childhood
• I will find out that some of my present choices are related to childhood experiences
• Think about how honest I'm being with this work and what I'm leaving out (this is possible a bit too deep - it's ultimately a landscape/documentary exercise?)
• It might help to collect some artifacts from the time (think this is going to be hard)
• It might help to write an account of the original memories (see bullets above)

Managing tone

Although the exercise required adjustment to RAW and JPEG, my NX2 software (the one I use most often) does nothing in JPEG worth doing.  I also don't shoot in JPEG, only RAW.  I only shoot JPEG when I think I may want to upload on the go e.g. to Facebook, and not do any processing at all.  So for this exercise, I proceeded with Raw instructions.

Image requiring adjustment - this is a very flat image (despite the subject matter) (taken in Iceland on 2 January 2014 of Snæfellsjökull).  I completed the exercise using Nikon Capture referring to the Nikon Support website as I haven't learnt how to use this yet!

Original image

Set Black point successful:

Set White point (not successful - snow too close in colour to the sky):

So I reversed this and adjusted the white using the quick fix curve (tone curve):

I then adjusted the curve a little more to create more brightness:

What I needed now was brighter snow, without making the sky too bright, and more apricot in the sky.  I managed to adjust the colour hue in the sky using the colour sliders, but it didn't look right:

So I reverted to my previous version, clicked Auto levels, and then added back some red:

And saved as a JPEG

Raw

The exercise required processing pairs of images, both JPEG and RAW taken in the following conditions:

• Daylight
• Artificial
• High dynamic range (presume they mean high contrast - not three blended images)

I mostly use NX2 for basic processing, and then if I want to do anything funky, I save a JPEG and then work in Elements (to a limited extent).  I also have Nikon Capture, but I don't know how to use it yet.  I have been meaning to learn for 2 years, I don't find the processing part very interesting and I only want to make basic corrections.

Daylight

Originals taken at Highgate Cemetery on 9 February 2014:

One thing I noticed, that I hadn't appreciated before, the RAW photo had better contrast than the JPEG.  Is this because of the compression?

JPEG

RAW

This pair of images are quite dull, with a dark feature.  The exposure though is bang on at one stop under.  The images lack colour and vibrancy, although you could argue that this is befitting for a gravestone picture, but I think Malcom Mclaren would want something more lively!

I began by processing the JPEG.  The white balance was set in camera to Auto, and the picture control to Standard, so I was stuck with those options.  All I could do was to enhance contrast a little bit and increase colour saturation slightly to bring out the green.

JPEG processed

I then processed the RAW file.  I started by working through the white balance - but it was quite obvious that the auto setting was the best one.  I changed the picture control to Landscape, which made the grass greener and the tombstone bluer, and increased the contrast slightly.

RAW processed

I then had a look in Elements to see what I could do with the image.  The first job was to clear up the graffiti above the top right M using the spot healing tool.  I then applied "autofix" on the lighten and darken and the brightness and contrast but it didn't make a noticeable difference.  I added a vignette, which helped anchor the picture, and also brought out the bright patch behind.  I then adjusted the hue to slightly more green and saturated the colour a bit more.

Final processing in Elements

Artificial lighting

Originals taken in Reykjavik on 31 December 2013:

My artificial lighting photographs were taken of Reykjavik Cathedral.  This pair have many faults (blurring, not straight, composition), but I like the dynamic range, and I like the impression of aliens walking into a space craft.

JPEG

RAW

Starting with the JPEG processing, cropped and added contrast.  Otherwise, there was not much I could do with this.  I couldn't straighten the tower as that put the flat base at the bottom on an angle (it was freezing when I took this, and I was crouched hand held waiting for cars/people to move, shivering!).

JPEG processed.

For the RAW file, I performed the same as above, plus I recovered highlights and so reduced the burnt patch, and also increased colour.  I also changed the Picture Control to "vivid".  I think though in this case, the JPEG actually looks better without the colour changes.

RAW processed

I then opened in Elements to see if there was any fun to be had!  I tried LOMO followed by Orton effect to give this surreal looking image.  I quite like the b&w version also -surreal looking!

Elements processed 1

Elements processed 2

 High Dynamic Range

 Originals taken in Highgate Cemetary on 9 February 2014:

JPEG

RAW

Another scene from Highgate Cemetary.  This one doesn't have a lot going for it.  The composition is wrong, there is a sunglare green hexagon, and the dark patches are too dark.  The only bit I like is the comical subject matter and the starburst sun effect (from narrow aperture).

What I could do with the JPEG was very limited.  I cropped to square to try to improve the composition, increased brightness to rescue the dark, but made the bright brighter, which has a kind of ethereal effect, and that is essentially it!  You can see that the right side of the curve is now really bright.

JPEG processed

With the raw file, I cropped to square again, applied some shadow protection, which brought back some of the dark, recovered lost highlights to the max, changed the white balance to "cloudy" which had a warming effect, boosted colour and contrast and sharpened very slightly.  I also "unstraightened" the image to add a bit of drama. 

RAW processed

I then converted to JPEG and opened in Elements for playtime.  Unfortunately, I couldn't work out how to get rid of the glare, but I know the polyagonal lasso tool would have done were I more proficient.   Weird photo....

Elements processed

Martin Hartley

I had the pleasure to meet Martin Hartley yesterday at the Telegraph Outdoor Show.  Hartley is amongst other things, an Expedition photographer, so with the Artctic and Antarctic on my "bucket list", I was very interested to see his images.  Hartley worked on the  Catlin Arctic Survey as the expedition photographer, which during his talk got me thinking about how I can make the transition from office worker to being able to make a living from photography.  Hartley's advice was to create a portfolio and get it seen by people that I would like it to work with, be prepared to make sacrifices, be disciplined but above all get your work seen.  He also works commercially to pay the bills, so I presume he has to compromise somewhere on balance between personal interests and functional work.

And thinking of personal voice?  Drama.  Action.  Exposure (to the elements).  See Spindrift, Polynia, Flirting Dogs and Solo.

Before They Pass Away - Jimmy Nelson

On 4 February 2014, I attended the Jimmy Nelson event at the Royal Geographical Society Before They Pass Away.  This was an evening in which Nelson presented his project (and book) to document disappearing tribes.  His approach was different to other photographers - these pictures are posed portraits - the people have put their "Sunday best" on and are photographed in their natural setting but in a way that is captivating, beautiful - showing them quite literally at their best.  In terms of photography - this is not really my cup of tea (I prefer unposed candid shots)- although I very much enjoyed the evening.  The benefit I got from this was another insight into how personal voice in photography can be achieved.  In this case the voice, the reason for the photography and the unique style was very clear.  Nelson had something to say, something he is passionate about, and was able to put the photographs together in a manner that was aesthetically pleasing and meaningful to a wide audience.

Wish someone would sponsor me 4 years off work to put a project together like this! 

Thinking about personal voice

Here are some details of research into what Personal Voice means (suggested by my tutor) - following feedback from my TAOP assessment that I need to progress in finding Personal Voice.

4 Tips to Finding Your Photography Voice - guest post

http://clickitupanotch.com/2013/06/4-tips-to-finding-your-photography-voice/ accessed on 16 February 2014

This article talks initially about the copy and inspiration phases (also mentioned below), which is where I'm at.  Then focus on what is happening to you in your life and connect through that to photography.  And don't look for outside validation (this is why I stopped going to a camera club) - break the rules - do what suits you.  Enjoy the process - enjoy what you're shooting.

Finding Your Photographic Voice - interview with Edward Burtynsky
 
http://bigthink.com/videos/finding-your-photographic-voice accessed on 16 February 2014:

The message in this article is quite simple - use other people's images as inspiration (print - stick on the wall), and then use your responses to develop your own autobiography - create a narrative - make a meaningful group of images.

10 Questions That Will Help Your Find Your Voice

http://www.accidentalcreative.com/creating/10-questions-that-will-help-you-find-your-voice/ accessed on 16 February 2014:


I found this a very helpful article.  It begins by making the point that imitation is part of the learning process, which I think is where I am at at the moment: trying techniques I see other photographers have mastered in order to learn.  But eventually, a photographer has to find personal voice.  This is a deliberate process (not accidental) - and be prepared to dislike or be uncomfortable with what you find!

So here are the questions and my thoughts:

1. What angers you? Animal poaching, cruelty and illegal trafficking.   Animals kept in captivity in cruel conditions (like whales/dolphins in aquaria).  The recent incidence of the young giraffe Marius being put to sleep by the Copenhagen Zoo.
2. What makes you cry?  Baby elephants (why?) and stories of people overcoming the odds, like the tale of Owen Howkins and his dog.
3. What have you mastered?  Don't know...my work is still quite hit and miss across a variety of subjects...nothing yet....
4. What gives you hope?  Plans - having travel plans give me hope.
5. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?  Police officer or vet.  I am neither.
6. If you had all the time and money in the world, what would you do?  Stop working in an office and get outside.  Travel.  Visit animal sanctuaries around the world.
7. What would blow your mind?   Seeing a blue whale.  Visiting Antarctica - maybe trekking across Antarctica.  Seeing a convecting lava lake.  Climbing Everest.  Seeing a snow leopard in the wild.  Bathing with Japanese snow monkeys.  Hmmm...this looks like a bucket list....Ah... the article asks for 40 things, here goes (in no particular order): 7 Mexico - giant crystals; 8 China - panda sanctuary; 9 Japan - Climb Mt Fuji; 10 Arizona/Utah - walk in the canyons; 11 South Africa; 12 Climb Mt Kilimanjaro; 13 Arctic Trek to North Pole; 14 Arctic Safari (walruses); 15 Having my own exhibition; 16 Winning a major photography award e.g. LPOTY; 17 Running London Marathon; 18 Trail running; 19 Having a book published; 20 Selling a photograph to a stranger; 21 Being published by a magazine; 22 Photographing an erupting volcano; 23 Joining In Public; 24 Being part of a photography collaboration; 25 Photographing Northern Lights over Jokusarlon; 26 Workshop with Maciej Dakowicz; 27 Producing a monograph work similar to Cardiff After Dark; 28 Seeing gorillas in the Virungas; 29 Revisiting Moscow; 30 Circumnavigating the planet by public transport; 31 China - walk the Great Wall of; 32 Volunteering in a large cat sanctuary; 33 Making that final mortgage payment; 34 Galapagos; 35 Namibia; 36 Complete my BA Hons Photography; 37 North Korea; 38 Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia; 39 Street Photography in New York; 40 Street Photography in Hong Kong
8. What platform do you own? Internet, oh and I work for Thomson Reuters.
9. What change would you like to see in the world?  No more animal cruelty, more even distribution of wealth.
10. If you had one day left, how would you spend it?  At home with my husband, cats and dogs, and a bottle of champagne.  

And then use these thoughts to resolve to engage!