Cropped Pictures for Final Selection

These are my final selection of six pictures, edited and cropped to the shape I want them at. They are presented above in the order they will appear in my portfolio as well as in the context of the article.

The reasons for my choices are a mixture of wanting the best looking pictures in a photographic sense and also that most suit my criteria of, mostly, young people who continue to be interested in vinyl records as a medium for listening to music and visiting record shops/fairs for the purpose of purchasing them.

Lexington Record Fair Camden 7th May

For this final shoot, at the Lexington Record Fair in Camden, I used my Canon 5D mk1 with a Minolta 4000 AF shoe mount flash that was aimed direct at my subject. Consistently with my previous shots, I used an aperture of 2.5. However on this shoot, I forgot about obtaining a 28mm lens and instead used my 50mm 1.8.

After it was suggested in a critiquing session, I have decided to crop all my final images into square to reflect the shape of the records. This is also compatible with my idea of creating the pictures for a digital medium such as a website, which often use pictures cropped to untypical rectangles or square - particularly when it is in a long column of a table, sandwiched between text, in the layout. (See above for example from here.)

Rough Trade East on Record Store Day 21st April

 

For this shoot I was unable to borrow a Canon Speedlite Flash from the university and therefore instead I used one of their Nikon D200s with an 18-35mm lens and a compatible speedlight. I chose the widest possible aperture, f3.5, to achieve a similar depth of field to my previous pictures.

I struggled a lot with this unfamiliar equipment, particularly with the autofocus - which ruined several of my shots before I noticed it was set inappropriately and reverted to manual. Inside the shop framing was made difficult by the density, as in amount, of the people there. I also left a little too much space above the subjects heads, which would require a little cropping in post production.

the Stereo Lab - a mock online publication for my portfolio

Through discussion in lectures I have determined that my pictures would be best suited to an article for an online music publication in the style of Pitchfork or similar. It will not only contain my pictures but also text, writing on the fact that records are refusing to die out entirely and - if anything - have made a comeback, and audio, both examples of the music my subjects have bought as well as some snippets of interviews I now hope to conduct with any more of them. 

The first person I interviewed was the person I photographed at Spitalfields Record Fair on the 30th of March. I will upload the audio to this blog when I can think of a suitable site to host it on. EDIT http://kiwi6.com/file/pi53peit8c

Below is a screenshot of the dummy music website that I have constructed using basic html coding. The article will go in the broader column on the left, which currently contains youtube videos.

Spitalfields Market Record Fair 30th March

  

 

For this shoot I stuck with the aperture of 2.5 that I had utilised in my last, I plan to use it consistently for all my pictures from now on. Whilst I am mostly happy with the picture, my framing was a little unfortunate. Firstly, despite moving them so I thought the would not be in the way, my microphone and its case are visible on the table. I will probably manipulate this out of the image using Photoshop. Secondly, the subject is slightly closer to the camera, causing their head to be higher in the frame than my previous images. I will try to shoot consistently like this from now on and crop in any of my other pictures that I plan to use.

Kensington Olympia 2 Record Fair 24th March

As with my previous shoot, these pictures were taken using my Canon 5D mk1 with a Canon Speedlite Flash  which I aimed so that it bounced off the ceiling. However, learning from my previous mistakes, I used a wider aperture of 2.5 for these pictures as well as photographing them holding purchases, something which I feel adds a little more identity to the subject.

This fair was in a much rather room than the first day of shooting. Olympia 2, the basement of the Olympia building, in Kensington. I am hoping that by the end of this project, having visited fairs in several locations, I will have enough interesting pictures of record buyers at different fairs with their own distinctive backgrounds.

During a review of my pictures thus far in a lecture it was pointed out that the second picture of my edit from this shoot, the record is being held further forward and the subject's presentation of it is far less casual. This, combined with her eyes being closed, I feel are reasons it is unlikely to be included in the final portfolio.

Uxbridge Record Fair 17th March

This was my first shoot, I approached this couple after briefly talking to them on the way in. The location of the fair was in a small, classroom sized, room. This left me little room to manoeuvre round the tables and left me with the corner as my only background. I had hoped to use a wide aperture to create a shallow depth of field with which to draw focus onto the subjects. The lack of distance behind them and the wall combined with 5.6 as my choice of aperture did not have desired effect.

I had originally intended to photograph all my subjects with their purchases. However for these pictures I decided to take them without any records as props, and was going to pair each picture with seperate photographs of  records they had bought. In retrospect this was a bad idea, as it removes a distinctive visual element from the original idea of my pictures. From now on I will revert back to that original plan.

Presentation of Initial Idea

 

My initial idea for my portfolio for this project was to document the goings on of a student radio station using a mixture of environmental portraiture and fly on the wall style images. Thus hoping to make a record the different styles of presenting and with the proposed copy to be consisting of interviews with the subjects on the variety of reasons that lead them to student radio and what they enjoyed most about it.

However my idea evolved during the presentation - in which, incidentally, I did not end up showing the above Powerpoint file - and is now focused on environmental portraits of record collectors at fairs and shops, either holding their purchase or with it scanned in and paired up with the picture of them. The aim being to show that record purchase is not limited to middle aged and older men with bald patches, scarves and money to burn.

Research: W. Eugene Smith

W. Eugene Smith was an American photojournalist who shot for Life Magazine before parting from them in the early 1950s and later joined Magnum. He is known for, amongst other things, his pictures of WWII. Smith's set of 'Country Doctor' pictures from 1948 for Life is one of the magazine's most famous individual photo-essays. Pictures found using Google Image Search.

I also, here, found scans of Smith's 'Country Doctor' pictures as they were printed in the article. Unfortunately they  very small, but are still capable of giving an idea of the way Life Magazine handled its layouts at the time.

Research: Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark is an American photographer known for her portraiture and photojournalism. The first and last of the above examples are from her 1993 book 'Indian Circus'. Between 1989 and 1990, Mark travelled across India taking pictures with 18 different circuses. The second and third pictures are from 'Ward 81' published in 1979. "Ward 81 was a women's security ward of the Oregon State Mental Institution, the only locked ward for women in the state." Images and quote from photographer's website.

Research: Alec Soth

 

Alec Soth is an American photographer from Minneapolis. The three pictures in this post are all from his self-printed book 'Sleeping By The Mississippi', published in 2004, which consists of images he made using an 8x10 view camera whilst travelling around the Mississippi River. I am not sure I can quite explain what it is I like about Soth's photography. It is probably to do with the choice of subject matter and the composition. I also like the often very muted colours and detail that he captures. Pictures from Soth's website.

Research: Rineke Dijkstra

 

Dutch photographer Rineke Dikstra's 'Beach Portraits', as well as being her most well known series, are also a great example of her work. Her most iconic images tend to be her single portraits, however there are several double and group ones in her oeuvre. The subjects in her images are often standing and facing front. The 'Beach Portraits' are all of adolescents and shot from a low angle. This is possibly to present them as people rather than specifically children, which a higher angle might render them. What I particularly like about her pictures of people, particular these early teenagers, is that they show them without a media influenced way of presenting themselves. So that their own awkwardness and uncertainty shines through. This gives them more depth and makes it easier for them to be viewed as pictures of realy people rather then pictures featuring people. Pictures found using Google Image Search.

Research: Martin Parr

 

Martin Parr looks at modern life with a critical eye, exposing humour in the everyday and the unusual in the usual. He travels worldwide to do so, although his pictures of Britain - especially its seaside towns - are particularly well known. The introduction by Thomas Weski on Parr's website lists 'leisure, consumption and comunication' as his particular points of analysis of our 'cultural peculiarities'. The bright colours in his style, as well as his way of choosing sometimes inexplicably funny images is something I hope I could bring to my work. Pictures found using Google Image Search.

Research: Paul Graham

 

Paul Graham is an English photographer/artist, the above pictures are all from his series 'A1 - The Great North Road'. Over the course of 1981 and '82 he travelled up and down the length of the A1 shooting with a large format camera. Though made with artistic intentions they make a great document, not only of his journey, but also of the road and the people of it at that particular point in time. Pictures from Graham's own website.