Photojournalism

Generally, as you drive or walk through the area you find the evidence of the way things were in the past, and the way things are today. For example, the house with the washing outside and the fading paintwork and walls, then there's the very grand Victorian house which is boarded up and derelict - a sign of the kind of houses people built around the area, and the old bus station tower, empty and boarded as a development opportunity.
All these images were taken usng the nikon D80 with a 24 - 70mm telephoto lens. I altered all the images to black and white using Photoshop to add to the story.

The shops at the south end of Lord Street used to be bustling with people, but most are either shuttered or empty and to let, the only shop which had any life about it was the candy store, but still no customers.

Once again, I think that black and white adds to the sadness of the scene.

Photojournalism

What struck me about this image was the cast expanse of the beach, with nobody on it except these few children on donkey rides. You would expect to see donkey rides on crowded beaches with lots of people, but not here.

Photojournalism

Further along Southport's coastline, there used to be a night club called Toad Hall, probably named after the Natterjack toads which live in the sand dunes. The night club and associated holiday shacks were situated right on the beach next to the once popular Pontins holiday club. Now the places are boarded up and derelict. Pontins is closing down, and the best view from any of the shacks is of the skip and boarded up rubbish dump.

Photojournalism

My chosen subject is focused on the demise of Southport, which is a seaside town within the Metropolitan Borough of Southport, Merseyside.
Southport was founded in 1792, when a hotel was built at the end of Lord Street.
In the 19th century, Napoleon III of France lived here, and later fashioned the streets of Paris on the Southport Lord Street model of tree lined boulevards and shops in straight lines.
During Queen Victoria's reign Southport became a hugely popular tourist destination, with trains and trams and later buses ferrying thousand of holidaymakers to the resort.
In the image (right), I used the technique of taking the image through another subject to create the feeling that the subject is closed and behind bars. It adds to the sense of dereliction and detritus, and the central graffiti is framed thus drawing the eye.
Although, photojournalism may be images directly as they are captured, adjusting the contrast and desaturating to black and white work for this type of story in terms of journalistic effect.

Photojournalism

Composition is important to get your message across in photography. The image which I took (above) is the end of Lord Street, which was once the most grand part of the town, at the Lulworth Road end. This image is of the Victorian iron walkways that lined the street. because of the time of day, and the time of year, long shadows create leading lines that draw you into the picture, taking you along the scene past the boardings and fly posters to highlight the fact that the place has fallen into decay.
Throughout the work I used a Nikon D80 SLR, with a 24 - 70mm telephoto lens, as I needed to be able to respond quickly as opportunities presented themselves.






Below is the image of the wall that is starting to fall down at the start of Lulworth Road. Once again, this works from a compositional point of view, because the image is split broadly into 3 sections, the background, the wall and the pavement. This type of image in essence may not be valuable standing alone, but works in the context of the story being told.

The Lost Pictures of Eugene Smith

American photographer, Eugene Smith covered the 1950's general election for Life magazine, and produced some of the most powerful post war decade images ever seen, depicting the mining valleys of South Wales during Attlee's radical Labour government reign. Due to the opposition of the magazine to the government, the images were never seen publicly for decades. They depict a raw quality and dereliction. This type of image capture is seen in other works of Smiths, such as his views of New York. He often uses windows or framing, or a means of viewing the subject through something else which creates the impression that you are being allowed to see something that is hidden, and is a clever composition technique to capture the viewers eye.

Photojournalism

The Decisive Moment

Choosing exactly when to depress the camera's shutter has been at the heart of Photojournalism for decades. In terms of story telling, when the subject is in context to get across the message is critical. Is the subject in the frame, or just out of it? Is the message visible or not.

Henri Cartier Bresson created the phrase the decisive moment, when he took this picture (left) of a man stepping across a puddle. The image would not hold the context or message that the artist wanted to portray if not taken at exactly the right moment., for example, it would just have been a man stepping into or over a puddle.

Photojournalism

Emilio Morenatti

I like the idea of taking an image whilst on the move, as in the image by Emilio Morenatti (right). The technique sometimes called panning can add an extra dimension to the work, since it creates a full stop in time and the idea of time passing someone or something by. The Past Revealing the Present could work when taken using this method to illustrate how times have changed to reveal the state of things today. I am using this technique for my final images to reveal how a seaside town near my home has gone from a vibrant Victorian holiday hot spot to a virtual dump, with closed shops, derelict bus stations et al.

For more examples of Morenatti's work see his website on the following link:
http://www.emiliomorenatti.com/newfront.html

Morenati's work along with countless other examples of photojournalism past and present can be viewed on the website of the National Press Photographers Association, by following the link below.
http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/magazine/

I took my image of the derelict Divine Gift shop from a moving vehicle to get the sense of time passing and the insignificance of the place. The closure of the shop was the starting point for my story, which emerged when I was researching Southport in general. The shop made the newspapers in February 2010, when it closed leaving a note pinned to the window from the owners, thanking their loyal customers, and explaining that their closure was caused by the general lack of investment into the town, and the rise of the charity shops in recent years, leading to a disenfranchised public.

Although the image is out of focus, there is still the sense of the empty unit, and the charity shop almost making it look like it has become a charity case itself.

Photojournalism

The Problem with Digital Manipulation

As we see from these two images taken by American Photographer Allan Detrich in 2007, the problem with manipulating a moment in time, is that it fundamentally alters the truth, misleading the viewer.
Certainly in the case of the press, they have a moral duty to report the truth. Detrich's serial manipulation of the facts of his image, lead ultimately to his resignation from the Toledo Blade fro whom he worked. Detrich had previously won a Pulitzer Prize for his works.

Photojournalism

Ethics In Photojournalism

According to Carolynne Burkholder, from the website Journalism Ethics for the Global Citizen, in her article of Journalism Ethics, today, the photographers role has moved from one of simply taking images to record events, to capture a moment in time, "a reality". Today, she believes that "with photographic advancements, claims that photographs simply "mirror" events is no longer plausible, as we live in an age were images may be altered"
.
This in turn raises the question of ethics in photojournalism, and guidelines which she sets down in the article, such as the manipulation of photographs, the intrusion into people's privacy,
and the use of graphical or shocking imagery for effect.

She further goes on to quote the following:
"from the Canadian Association of Journalists Ethics Guidelines:

• Photojournalist are responsible for the integrity of their images. We will not alter images so that they mis lead the public.
• We will explain in the photo caption if a photograph has been staged.
• We will label altered images as photo illustrations.

She further adds codes of Ethics from the National Association of Press Photographers amongst others, which all serves as good grounding to any would be journalists out there.

Below is a link to her article in the online journal.

http://www.journalismethics.ca/online_journalism_ethics/photojournalism.htm

BLURB BOOKS

The Making of My Blurb Book

For a large part of this semesters work I used a web site called Blurb Books, which is an online website where you can upload your images in 240ppi jpg format ( so printable quality), and create a book, either using one of their templates for the whole book, individual pages, or create your own page layout. Once you are completely satisfied with your creation, you save it and then publish the book. You choose softback or hardback and the size, with or without a dust jacket,and you also choose whether or not to let the book go public, which means that blurb will offer it for sale and you then receive a cut of the proceeds. You can also choose to keep it private so that you are the only person who can purchase it. You can order anything from 1 copy to hundreds and the price reduces according to the order quantity. The book is shipped to you within 2 weeks.
The copyright to the content remains with the author, and the copyright to the layout and systems for its creation remains with blurb.
Other such sites include Bobs books, which I didn't use because the book sizes needed to be larger than I wanted fro this project.
You can go to the Blurb website by following the link below.
http://www.Blurb.co/Uk

PLACES - CONCLUSION

For this Assignment, we had 4 unit topics to cover. To summarise the work I have chosen to present as final pieces, I have to discuss my work as a split of Familiar Place, Wilderness/Countryside & Alien or Foreign Environment, and The City or Urban Sprawl, since I created a book for the first 3 sections as one, and looked at the last separate.
A Familiar Place that is significant or important to you.
The Wilderness or Countryside.
The "Alien" or "Foreign" environment.
For the first 3 units, I wanted to convey the beauty of Northern Cyprus where I spend a lot of time since I have a place there. I set out to produce a coffee table book illustrating some of the fantastic views from various points. Many of the images were taken fro either a low or a high vantage point which I think adds to the sense of scale. I have incorporated all three topics into this book, choosing aerial perspective images of the earth for the alien environment, and a series of tree pattern images for the wilderness or countryside depicting random tree patterns. I edited many of the images into black and white since I wanted to convey a sense of the emptiness of the place, and also because of the vantage point there was a lot of aerial perspective so this made the images sharper. I used a deep depth of field throughout to capture every detail, such as F22 or higher, adjusting the shutter speed accordingly to compensate the correct exposure, and used a Nikon D80 DSLR with a 18 - 55 mm short telephoto, and a 70 - 300mm for greater distances. I attached a polarising filter which has made a greater impact to the hues of the skies on the colour images.
The City or the Urban Sprawl.
For this unit I used a series of images of Liverpool both outside of, and inside of some of the iconic buildings which make up the material skyline and fabric of the city. I wanted to convey the sense of diversity from the classical buildings of the Liver Building to the inside of the Catholic Cathedral. I used both low vantage view points to convey a sense of the scale of some of the buildings, to intimate shots of light filtering through into buildings through stained glass windows. Lighting was difficult in some of the buildings, but a careful post production editing with Photoshop has helped with most of the images. The two images which i have printed as final images are the Liver Building which I think would work as a postcard or in a travel brochure, and the Catholic Cathedral from the steps, since this is also an icon of modern architecture. Depth of field was key to ensure all the details were retained. Throughout I used a Nikon D80 DSLR, with an 18 - 55 mm, or a 70 - 300mm lens since they were convenient through a range of different situations.

PLACES - The City or The Urban Sprawl

Above is the Atlantic Tower Hotel building, which is another iconic symbol of the Liverpool skyline. The tower is shaped to represent a liner. This was taken on ISO 100, 1/100th second and f14 using he Nikon D80 DSLR. The focal length was 30mm.

The image below is the Ferry Terminal at the Port. This building is in stark contrast to all the classical architecture which surrounds it. It is ultra modern in its design. Taken on 18mm focal length, 1/100th of a second and f14.

PLACES - The City or the Urban Sprawl

I really like these views of some of the iconic buildings around the City. The India port buildings are colossal in size, and recognised the world over as being the city port of Liverpool. The image of the Liver Bird Building is one which I have chosen as a final image since I like the composition, the white of the building against the blue sky, and the red city buses which creates a great composition overall. This was taken on ISO 400, 31mm focal length, 1/200th second and f20. The first image shows the views down from India buildings to St Georges Hall, The second shows the view from the steps of the Catholic cathedral down Hope Street to the Anglican Cathedral, the last image show the post office tower from the steps of the Anglican. These type of images could be used in travel promotions and public or community brochures or websites.

PLACES - The City or The Urban Sprawl

This series of images were taken inside the Anglican Cathedral and serve to highlight the complete differences between the two buildings. These were taken on 1/3 second at F/16 to gain a good depth of field. The Focal length of the lens was 18mm giving a wide angle of view.

PLACES - The City or Urban Sprawl

I was enchanted by the light within the Catholic Cathedral. It struck me that this was as much a feature on the inside as it is on the outside for the city. The second thing I realised was the total difference between the light from the Catholic Cathedral to that of the Anglican Cathedral, being of traditional stained glass themes. In order to gain enough exposure in dark places I needed to reduce the aperture since I needed to maintain a reasonable shutter speed to avoid camera shake, since a tripod was not permissible.

PLACES - The City or Urban Sprawl

China Town

This is the China town gate, which was donated to the city in the millennium year, and was shipped from China in 6 full containers by sea. There is a huge Chinese community in Liverpool. The other image is a massive Chinese bronze dog said to protect the community.
Both images were taken using the Nikon D80 SLR, 19mm focal length, 1/125th second shutter speed, and f18 to get a good depth of field. Post production, I have altered the Brightness/Contrast and added a fill light to bring out the detail and enhance the colours using Photo shop CS4.

PLACES - The City or Urban Sprawl

Here are some of Liverpool's' most defining landmark churches and cathedrals. All the images were taken using a Nikon D80, ISO 400 because the weather was changeable, and using an 18 - 55mm short telephoto lens in order that I didn't need to keep changing lenses for different circumstances. The far left photo of the Catholic Cathedral was taken at 55mm focal length, 1/125th second and f.16, and the small chapel on the same settings.

PLACES - The City or the Urban Sprawl Introduction

Introduction - The City or The Urban Sprawl

The city is defined by its building as much as by its people. Liverpool is where I have chosen to produce my images for this unit. Liverpool is steeped in maritime history, but also in its Cathedrals, being blessed with two, the Catholic and the Anglican at either end of Hope Street. Also famous for the Liver birds perched on top of the Port buildings. So I have concentrated on various images of the city both within and without, and sometimes on the light from within.

These images are of the Philharmonic Pub which is famous the world over, not least of all for its toilets!

Faye Godwins Images - Places

Faye Godwin's amazing use of shadows and highlights, light and dark, contrast and dramatic black and white creates moody atmospheric works of art.