When I look at travel publications I see endless vistas, beautiful mountain ranges and exotic looking people. The instructions said to choose a place which I know well so I chose my home town of Chester Le Street as the town centre is only a 10 minute walk from my house although, armed with a heavy kit bag and a tripod it often felt like a lot longer. Unfortunately there are no endless vistas or beautiful mountain ranges but there are plenty of interesting people, historic buildings and even a castle thrown in for good measure.
I took many walks to the town centre and surrounding areas in an attempt to capture the mood of the place and the people who live in and around the area. The town was once a very busy thriving market town. Now, with the current economic climate it is not so busy, businesses are closing frequently and a lot of the people seem very down trodden and depressed. I’ve tried to communicate this through some of the images I have chosen but I’m not quite sure how well I’ve managed it.
On the plus side though, on the outskirts of the town centre is a beautiful park along the banks of the River Wear which is overlooked by the medieval Lumley Castle and situated next door to Durham County Cricket ground. In the remaining images I have tried to show the attractive side of the town and the attempts at regeneration to attract visitors and revenue.
The time and bad weather often played a part in the images I made, shooting frequently had to be cut short because of heavy rain or fading light. A few times I had a vision in my head of the kind of image I wanted to capture and after standing around waiting patiently the light would be just about right the then a downpour would start so I would have to abandon my plans and try again another day.
Here is my selection of a dozen images from which to make my final choice.
I found it quite difficult to make my final selection as the subjects I chose all have well known, long standing community associations so trying to visually communicate the ‘essential character of the place’ through only six images was quite a task.
The brief for this assignment said ‘about’ six images though so in the end I opted for these eight.
There were a few photographs of places which I would have liked to include, for example, Durham County Cricket ground, St Mary’s and St Cuthbert’s church (the first resting place of St Cuthbert and the location of the first translation of the Lindisfarne Gospels) and Beamish Open Air Museum which is an interesting place for travellers. The cricket ground was a bit of a ghost town every time I visited, I got lots of photos of the stadium but all devoid of people and none of them gave any clue as to the character of the town. The church, although a very beautiful, historic building and an important part of the community just looked like a run of the mill church in the images I took so didn’t say much (apart from the obvious) about the people who attended the services. As Beamish Museum is a couple of mile away I decided to concentrate my efforts more on the town centre area as this demonstrated the character of the people and the town more effectively.
ASSIGNMENT FOUR - TUROR FEDDBACK
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assignment_four_-_tutor_feedback.doc |
ASSIGNMENT FOUR – POST FEEDBACK REFLECTION
I am at the moment reading a book by Richard Salkeld entitled ‘Reading Photographs’. In the introduction there is a quote from Walter Benjamin, writer and critic from ‘A Small History of Photography’ (1931), he states “The literacy of the future, someone has said, will be ignorance not of reading or writing but of photography. But must not the photographer who cannot read his own pictures be no less accounted an illiterate? Will not the caption become the most important part of the photograph?” This made me think about and question my ‘literacy’ as a reader of photographs.
A magazine I read a while back quoted David Bailey as saying “Everyone looks but it takes a long time to see”. It seems I will have to learn to look a little longer to enable me to see what others see in my images. I need to rake a more objective view and ask myself what my image will say to other people and not obsess too much over my idea of what it says to me.
My tutor also suggested that I return to a few of the locations I used for this assignment and try to retake some of the photographs. I have done this and I have tried to use images which demonstrate more effectively my original thoughts at the beginning of this assignment “The town was once a busy thriving market town. Now, with the current economic climate it is not so busy, businesses are closing frequently and a lot of people seem very down trodden and depressed”.
With that in mind here is my revised set of images for assignment four…….
The first image (F80A1361) will stay as it does demonstrate an accessible but non-the less forgotten town. The moving train and empty platform are a good introduction to a depressed community.
The second image (F80A1496) is replaced with this IMG F80A4429. A much closer view of the To Let signs which makes them much more prominent and the focus of attention.
“The busy marketplace” (IMG F80A1296) I will replace with this photograph of the not so busy marketplace where the few customers have a stooped posture and seem disinterested.
The cake shop lady is now a reject, I liked the concept of the image and it is quite interesting but I agree that not enough prominence is given to the lady’s face. It is replaced with this IMG F80A1298 of the marketplace where the grumpy expression of the man in the foreground is captured nicely
IMG F80A1521 of Clem’s will stay but I have cropped the left side as suggested and agree that this is an improvement as it focuses the attention on the shop and the activity in the foreground without the distraction.
Image 3751 is replaced with IMG F80A4467, another view of park life. The scene depicts the elderly gent feeding the birds with the family in the background walking the dog. It shows a little more activity than the previous image and also a wider variety of community members. The lonely figure feeding the birds while others walk by has a feeling of separation and ‘forgotten-ness’ about it which reflects the image of the town I am trying to portray.
The final two, IMG 3752 and IMG F80A1427 remain part of the set as I think they have a subdued feel about them which fits well with the overall theme.