Is Anyone Taking Any Notice

Is anyone taking any notice? This is a question which I feel Don McCullin must have asked everyday throughout his career as a photojournalist making it quite fitting as the title of a book that takes you on a journey across the world encapsulating some of the most tragic scenes from the 20^th century.

Beginning in England this book throws the reader back and forth through time as McCullin explores the thoughts that go through his mind looking back upon his images. These thoughts have been presented as rather unusual pieces of text across the top and bottom of each page forcing the reader to slow down and take the time to make sense of what it being said. McCullin has rather intelligently controlled the tempo of the book using blank space. In parts of the book there can be entire pages left blank as if McCullin wants the reader to pause and consider the work on previous pages before continuing to more captivating images on the next page. This I found worked incredibly well and added a lot of value to the experience this book brings.

The book presents a kind of hierarchy within the pages making it clear which images are more important, for example certain images spread over the boundary of a page and spill onto the next. This technique allows the reader to better understand each narrative depicted across the pages. The book captures not only scenes of horror and mutilation but also the moments around that, the moments  in which you truly begin to develop an understanding.

This book is truly captivating and I find it is essential for any photographer to read if they want to develop their ability to capture a story within the confines of a photo book.

South west motorcycles

For my "person at work" brief i decided to pursue my love for motor sport photography as one of the 3 people,After having a look around online and asking the local people i found that there aren't actually any racetracks as such in the area that i can get to via the transport available and so i decided to try and find a different angle at which i could still capture motorcycles.West coast motorcycles is a garage in Penryn that specializes in motorcycles and so i contacted them.
The following monday i took my camera (Nikon D5500 with my 18-140mm kit lens) and began to build up a relationship with the two men working there,At first the whole scene was awkward and the younger mechanic was clearly uncomfortable with having the lens pointing in his direction.I find this happens a lot when i go to photograph events or business and so i began to talk to him and ask about various things that really are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things but it gave me the chance to get his guard down and that's when i could really begin to work. Some of the images i took where quite covert simply because i took those early and didn't want to get in his face too much.despite this i think some of the early photos are the most creative and dynamic. I took around 80 images as i wanted to make sure i captured every angle of the garage and its atmosphere as i feel that the atmosphere can tell as much of a story as the people can.

The lighting i found was tough to work with and i found my self working in relatively high ISO settings to allow me to keep the aperture wide enough to capture an aesthetically pleasing depth-of-field.

The Mechanic surrounded by his passion at south west motorcycles in Penryn ,Cornwall

The oil sodden hand of a mechanic grasps the tire of a clients motorcycle 

Younger mechanic working in the garage

Eden Chefs

On our recent visit to the Eden Project i stumbled across some chefs cooking in an open kitchen in the Mediterranean biome, I spent some time working around them capturing the many aspects of their job as they moved quickly around the kitchen doing 101 things. i tried to focus specifically on one chef and so these are the three photo i captured which i feel are most suitable for the person at work brief.

Eden Project Trip

I recently took a residential trip for 3 days to the Eden project,The purpose of this trip really was to get everyone shooting and to get to see somewhere amazing and to learn as well as giving everyone the chance to mingle as a course.
On this trip we were told to bring a macro lens and so that is what i did. I took a tamron 70-300mm lens with me which i found to not only work really well for the close up shots of the various plants and wildlife that i photographed but also helped me to create aesthetically pleasing portraits that had an almost high fashion vibe to them.
While on the trip i learnt a lot about my photography i found areas in which i can improve such as composition,captioning and manual focusing.
I captured a range of subjects on the trip from portraits,macro and architecture images i feel the time at eden with no agenda other than shooting allowed me to experiment with my work and really begin to find my own personal style or at least try styles of photography that i may not otherwise have given a thought to.

Life on the Road

Today was the day we were travelling to the eden project for a 3 day residential trip.I took the car there with 3 friends,or so that was the plan. On the way there we suddenly felt the car shake and rumble as we were travelling down the road.We blew a tyre and to top it off it was the spare tyre that we had blown,and so we were stuck at the side of the road in the middle of now where awaiting rescue.

After a few minutes it suddenly dawned on us that we were going to be stood here a while and so we locked up the car grabbed out cameras and set out on a quick adventure through a small woodland where we had pulled up.

Just over the other side of these woods we found a beautiful plot of land with a large pond and views across the Cornish landscape.Bored and feeling creative we decided to have a quick photo shoot as we awaited rescue.We put on a 300mm lens and began shooting portraits of one another. although it was only a bit of fun, i feel we produced some fantastic images with good use of the natural lighting and depth of field

   

Oxjam Music Festival

Last week i volunteered to photograph the Oxjam music festival in Falmouth. Having never photographed a band before i researched some photography and advice on how to successfully capture images at a concert.

I studied photographers such as Leo Matus, a photographer that captures up close,low saturated images of live musicians and DJ's in L.A i found his style of photography to have similar aesthetics to the style that i had envisioned my self producing.The use of shadows and slower shutter speeds in his images create both mood and motions,this i feel creates a more dynamic images with a well portrayed concept capturing the narrative behind the musician/band.

For this shoot i planned to capture the musicians setting up before the gig began as i wanted to capture the whole story rather than just the main show. My aim was to capture a wide shot that had the band,the crowd and any other key elements of the room,i also wanted to capture some portraits of the musicians as i feel these can capture alot of narrative.As we are only allowed three images per person at work i decided that the last type of image i would try to get is the action shots that would help portray the atmosphere.

At the end of the evening i felt confident that the images would be exactly what i needed,however , once i had arrived home and the images were on my laptop i realized that when i re-set my camera it had changed the format to JPEG!!! because of this i am un able to utilize these images for my person at work project.