Progress?
16/02/12 13:15
It’s fair to say that I’ve become a little lost in where I’m going with this project - when I started off it was maybe 5th choice or something in the list of things I wanted to do, but there was a bit of pressure and I folded far too easy. Having said that, I’ve enjoyed doing the work, and getting to know the area I live in, so lets be positive, even if the idea of street photography is proving difficult. The other thing that has troubled me is how it all works as a coherent whole, and I think I’ve finally found my hook to tie the strands together. I mentioned it in an earlier post, but I’ve been thinking on it some more.
Without a hook, the three threads do tend to stand a little isolated, held loosely together by location. What I hope to do now is show a relationship between the vibrancy (perhaps not the right word, and I’ve been stung by this before) of the rural life and landscape and the comparative void of the more urban spaces that are being taken over by commuters rather than being lived in by those that work the land. I fall into this latter category, so it will be interesting to see what I come up with.
So, what I’ll be looking at will be:
Rural – the festivals and such showing the way people do still come together in some form of celebration of the rural heritage – I don’t mean for these to be all smiling and fun, but to also include a degree of the dogged determination to enjoy this aspect of the area (hence why “vibrancy” will be the wrong word to use before). I’ve probably got this covered with the selection of images taken already but I will hit another show or two in the meantime.
Urban – looking more at the decline of the urban area as a “community” whilst becoming more a place for people to live away from the big cities. I think “a loss of purpose” is what’s feeding my thoughts at the moment. My original thought was for street photography, and yes there may still be elements of this in the more traditional, widely upheld sense – this will still be the more difficult to fathom, but I feel like I’m getting more of a direction now. I’ll be looking some more at Street Photography Now and a few other sources for further inspiration. This does mean that some of the images I have taken to date are pretty unusable though.
Landscape – this will be a mix of the more “natural” landscape (accepting that there is, in truth, very little natural landscape remaining) and also something with the more obvious encroachment of man, be it the building of houses in what would have been green belt until a few years ago. I think I’ll be breaking out the Robert Adams books again too, as this fits in very closely with his take on photography.
I’ll be looking at potential crossovers between the strands, such as the urban landscape in Clitheroe that I snapped with the Fuji (but retaken with more care), which would blur the boundary between the Landscape, the Rural and Urban.
I’ll be trying to pull together the next instalment of the submission over the coming weeks (certainly before the end of March), together with a trial book layout this time.
Without a hook, the three threads do tend to stand a little isolated, held loosely together by location. What I hope to do now is show a relationship between the vibrancy (perhaps not the right word, and I’ve been stung by this before) of the rural life and landscape and the comparative void of the more urban spaces that are being taken over by commuters rather than being lived in by those that work the land. I fall into this latter category, so it will be interesting to see what I come up with.
So, what I’ll be looking at will be:
Rural – the festivals and such showing the way people do still come together in some form of celebration of the rural heritage – I don’t mean for these to be all smiling and fun, but to also include a degree of the dogged determination to enjoy this aspect of the area (hence why “vibrancy” will be the wrong word to use before). I’ve probably got this covered with the selection of images taken already but I will hit another show or two in the meantime.
Urban – looking more at the decline of the urban area as a “community” whilst becoming more a place for people to live away from the big cities. I think “a loss of purpose” is what’s feeding my thoughts at the moment. My original thought was for street photography, and yes there may still be elements of this in the more traditional, widely upheld sense – this will still be the more difficult to fathom, but I feel like I’m getting more of a direction now. I’ll be looking some more at Street Photography Now and a few other sources for further inspiration. This does mean that some of the images I have taken to date are pretty unusable though.
Landscape – this will be a mix of the more “natural” landscape (accepting that there is, in truth, very little natural landscape remaining) and also something with the more obvious encroachment of man, be it the building of houses in what would have been green belt until a few years ago. I think I’ll be breaking out the Robert Adams books again too, as this fits in very closely with his take on photography.
I’ll be looking at potential crossovers between the strands, such as the urban landscape in Clitheroe that I snapped with the Fuji (but retaken with more care), which would blur the boundary between the Landscape, the Rural and Urban.
I’ll be trying to pull together the next instalment of the submission over the coming weeks (certainly before the end of March), together with a trial book layout this time.
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