Hester's Way: Take Two

This year I am revisiting Hester's Way and looking at developing my project in order to involve the the community further. I made my first visit yesterday to Springbank Community Centre and once I had introduced myself and explained my project I went back out to photograph the surrounding environment.

This shot is a continuation from last years work.

On my next visit I will be taking model release forms so that I can start to capture the people that use the centre and its resources.

Woodlands, Visit One.

I don't know if I've mentioned this project before of not, however today myself and four others visited Woodlands Farm, Chedworth to start shooting for our group project based around Dairy Farming. I had an excellent time and learnt a lot whilst I was there, Nigel Finch is a very interesting man to listen to. We spent a good couple of hours at the farm and received an excellent tour of the facilities, giving us chance to start snapping.

Here are a selection of my images:

Lets start with this animal portrait, whilst I am a little gutted that I cut of the edge of the right ear I am pleased with the shot.

A crowd of University students crowding in to the shed was clearly of interest to the cows as they swarmed to the gate. I'm pleased with this shot and the numbers of cows that squashed in for me.

Then of course we need a cute shot of the calves, this shot I think is good for showing hints of the environment behind them without being the focus of the shot.

Whilst this shot came out darker than I would have liked when taking it I am pleased that it has as it just highlights the one cow who is standing with his peeping over the rest of the crowd.

And to finish...

A portrait of Nigel Finch himself, lit with natural light coming through a small window as he talked to us about his job.

More Snow Pictures

...Only these ones were taken at night, oooh!

Yeah, I headed out at night to photograph the snow, hoping this way I could make my shots more exciting. It's so hard to make snow look different and interesting. It's just a white blanket on everything.

We headed out and first came across some bike racks with only a couple of bikes locked to. I'm really pleased with how all of these photos turned out, especially the third one featured below. 

Then I found some pretty interesting patches of trees and plants to photograph snowy close ups of. I love these because they don't feature just a blanket of snow on something.

We then bumped in to some people playing and messing about in the snow, I love the guy hiding out in the tree. 

And we ended the night building our own snowman...

But only managed the head, so meet Boris. Boris the snowman's head. I love the portrait below.

But none of the photos above do I love as much as this one:

I absolutely adore this photo, the contrast between the red and the white. Never mind the way the light only highlights the small patch to being pure white. I love it, definite favourite.

White balance was definitely an issue shooting snow at night, especially with all the floodlights and street lamps that were on but I'm happy with how all the photos shown have come out. 

I Thought I'd Caught Up

Turns out I haven't.
Well I have, I've just missed a few snaps out. Some that I really like as well, quite proud of these ones.

I think this puts in to perspective just how foggy it was that morning.

Dewdrops

This one is my absolute favourite of the two crows sitting on the rugby posts. 

Only A Little Edit

I'm taking a break from doing my essay. I think I deserve it, I've written a full 88 words so far... yeah that's how long the title is. I hate essays. However after this post I am going to try my very bestest to do it.

First though, I've had a little play with Photoshop. Only a tiny tiny play with photoshop because I don't actually like photoshop (yes it was a distraction).

The original

The edited version

What do you think? I think I prefer the edited version but I'm not sure... The only real difference is a bit of desaturation in the grass, a small pushing of the blacks in levels and the tiniest of crops.

New Idea

Today has been a productive one, this morning I was out shooting in Pittville Park with the lovely Ellie Reed-Mumford on a Mamiya camera. I adore shooting film and we saw some really pretty shots, shame we were setting out to shoot portraits and not landscapes. I think we both got at least one landscape though… I shall scan in my shots one day next week and upload.

On another topic though I have decided to set myself a new documentary project, one to do in my spare times and weekends when I’m out and about in Birmingham.

My current project for uni is all about housing and how wealth determines your environment. That’s all outside. What’s inside? Even more interesting what goes on inside four walls when you’ve not long moved in to a new place with people you have never ever met before? Well, my story “Flat 47” should hopefully help me to show you.

I’ve decided to document James Phillips and his flatmates. I think they’ve gotten used to me being around now so they just have to get used to me having my camera glued to my face for a lot of the time. Something I started tonight.

It isn’t exactly a brilliant photo but it’s Black and White and that’s how I’m hoping to style this story. I quite like but not as much as I want to.

My photos should improve later on, as both sides get more used to the idea. The above image is also missing a person. Only four out of the five were in the flat earlier.

Just A Quick One

Don't get too excited there isn't particularly much content in this one.

I've been really busy the past few days with family visiting and shooting and conferencing up in Manchester, I've not had any spare time to do blogging. I took a few photos in Tewkesbury Abbey at the weekend, this one being my favourite...

It looks really misty inside from the incense had been burnt. It was a very pretty abbey and very interesting to walk around. 

Then I shot off to Manchester for Welfare Zone Conference where I didn't get many good pictures at all, apart from this one of a glass..

I only like this for the shallow depth of field it has. 

But after the conference as I headed in to the city centre I did see this very talented man and his dog playing some very good music in the street. Doing a bit of busking.

I loved his set-up keeping dry from the miserable weather, and the dog who was just chilling with him as he played his music. 

Today I have to take some work to the Darkroom in town to be printed for my lesson on monday and then I'm going to be heading up to Hesters Way to shoot some environment shots for my project. I'm hoping the weather will stay dry for me. So far it is. 

Mugshot

So we all know that a few weeks ago I went and photographed Tewkesbury Mop Fair, (if you didn't you should click here). Well there is a portrait from that night that I keep noticing. I didn't include it in my final edit because it's a little grainy, despite shooting 400 ISO, I'm not sure why this is but it can't be changed. Sadly. But anyway, it's this one:

I love it, I didn't even need a flash to light her face up. 

On another note I'm still having trouble with Redbrick, the student newspaper at Birmingham uni. They don't seem to want to give inabout crediting me. They've now got it in to there heads that because they posted the article online with another of my photos it's okay and that should be enough for me. Well they are wrong. (Oh yes, article available here). If printing my work was going to be such an issue for them they never should have - that's how I see it. Correct me if I'm getting this all wrong.

A Cheeky Edit

Photoshop is not my strong point and nor has it ever been. Today though I spent some time playing around on CS6. I spent most of the time stressing out because I couldn't get the image how I want it. It still isn't how I want it. However, I am still liking what I have managed to get.

As you can see, contrast has been whacked up to emphasise the shadows on the stones and some of the saturation has been taken out as well. Ideally, I'd like to be able to pump some of the yellow back in to the photo. 

I'm not usually a fan of hugely edited images (although, this isn't thaaaat huge), what are your thoughts?

To be able to get my head round this newer version of photoshop, I'm going to have to play around a lot more, so expect more posts like this one. Maybe. 

Pittville - Test Shots

A project I've recently started involves exposing Cheltenhams grotty side. Everybody thinks it's such a posh place and all lahh de dahh but I don't. I'm not sure if it's because of where I'm living in Pittville halls or if I'm just so used to the cute little village of Davenham it all seems so big and I've become aware of everything.

Anyway, to start my project off and help me to determine the style of images I want to use I headed out, round my campus to start taking photos. These are some of what I got.

This is my favourite shot from the shoot yesterday, I love the slight vignette around it. It took me ages to get and I probably looked like a bit of a fool sat on the floor by the smoking shelter/bike rack taking photos of the bottom of the bin. 

Look at this great dirty stain, this is what I can see out my window, just below the pigeon spikes. It looks even worse here on a close up photograph. 

How did that chair get up there? I would love to know. 

I'd prefer this image if I cropped the top a little, it's a bit too overexposed for me, that or a black line to mark where the image starts and ends if it was being printed. 

Spare scaffolding? I think that's what this is. I think this image is quite peaceful somehow, all the smooth lines with only a few rougher textures. 

This shoot went much better than I expected and I got a whole range of images from it. I don't think there is going to be a specific something I look for in my shoots, I'm just going to see what I find and shoot. Lots. 

Bedroom View

My view out of my window isn't dreadful but it could be a lot better. I think it's made worse by the spikes that are on all the windowsills to stop pigeons landing there. They aren't pretty. Although I much prefer them to pigeons (I hate pigeons). I just can't get used to looking out the window and seeing big metal spikes. 

This photo doesn't really show them to the full extent but it does a good enough job. 

On another note, I went to the archives at the university today looking for some books on the history of Cheltenham, or Gloucestershire as a whole. It could be a place I spend a lot of time.

Tewkesbury Mop Fair

So tonight I've been along to Tewkesbury Mop Fair. Unfortunately I've been ill all week in the build up to the event and so my heart hasn't been in it at all tonight. But here are some of my favourites anyway.

It struck me how young this lad was and yet he was running a stand at a very popular fair.

One mountain of tack ready for people to buy.

Everybody enjoys a good session on the dodgems, as you can see.

I love how mysterious this photo is as the woman walks in front of me, out of the focus.

One very happy stall holder.

These three lads are being very carefully watched by the stallholder.

This  shot is my absolute favourite out of all them. I just love it.

Another mysterious one as you can't see the people on the ride. 

People At Work

We were set a little task today in our lectures to photograph people at work. I headed out to the High Street and hit the Charity shops, I went to find people that were working to help others. These are the results I got, my favourite two images.

When I first went in to this shop - Oxfam (it was very well hidden) I wasn't entirely convinced I would be able to shoot. It turns out however, that this woman knows a lot about photography and so was able to tell us some stories about her own personal experiences - including one about a friend which had her in stitches, as you can see.

This lady was very lovely, and very softly spoken, to stereotype she's the type of lady I would expect to find in a charity shop, she was lovely to talk to as well, and very interested in what we were doing.

In order to keep these portraits as natural as possible, I had Ellie to talk to them and keep them distracted whilst I was taking photos, this way they payed less attention to the camera and became less selfconcious.