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.