Silver Line Productions

Photo Essay
By Ainsley Brooks

Analysis

For my photo essay project I decided to look at the city of Portsmouth showing the themes of 'alone', 'depression' and 'war'. I took these photos in the morning and late afternoon on a Canon EOS 450D with different ISO settings. I took these in photos in Portsmouth Harbour focusing on Gunwharf, the Gosport ferry and Southsea seafront keeping to the rules and regulations set out by the University and OFCOM.

I decided to set my project here because it is a busy city with a lot going on and the home of a navy base.

In research to this I looked at the work of 'Jeff Wall', I was influenced by the way he captured everyday life with no close ups which you can see inspired me to do the same.
The aim of this photo essay was to show men who have fought in the war for this country and how some people ignore what is happening and continue with their everyday life, because the war in Iraq isn't mentioned much.

Created with flickr slideshow.

Thus is one of the reasons I decided to take pictures of the union flag, an old man who could be an ex solider and a mother and child (without the father) looking at the ships in the Dockyard.

During the shot, I tried taking photos to show different examples, such as differing the depth of field (see photo 5) I also tried taking the same picture at different settings such as F2.8 and F15.

I decided to take most of my photos in 'medium shot' to show a sense of realism and not that they were not 'staged'. In picture eleven, I took a photo of a building that had been burnt down due to a fire caused by teenagers (which has now be demolished) this shows that the youths today have no respect for society, I took the next photo in the evening because it relates to the 'burning' building. In order to take this, I turned the ISO setting to 1200, I also changed the setting to 'sports' to see if it worked better, this brought out the colours more.

In picture 4, I was influenced by Dorothea Lange, I wanted to capture the same effect her work has, which generates sympathy from the audience because they can see that she is alone and the children don't have full support finically because of the lack of male presence.

The modes I was aiming for was the observational mode so everything looked natural and not staged and the reflexive mode in which I wanted to take photos of everyday situations to make a social comment that things are happening in the world, that people shouldn't ignore.

To enhance the photos I took; I edited them in Photoshop. For example, I edited the colours in the second image so the old man is in colour but the background is in black and white to show how he sees the world, this conveys a dark and depressing meaning. I changed the saturation and brightness in most of the photos, especially in the last photo so the people in front of the fire are present. This project has been beneficial; I have gained more knowledge on expressing myself through photography and editing photos on Photoshop which will be useful for our documentary next year.

NOTE: The photo gallery above is not in order, I added this in case the slideshow fails to play.

Raw Processing

Above is an example of one of my photos I have edited. The original photograph was underexposed and light/grey in areas. I edited the RAW file on Photoshop and in the basic effects menu I turned the colour temperature down. I changed the white balance on the drop list to 'daylight'. After this I selected 'fill light' to -6 and I turned down the brightness to -4. I think both photos work however my edited version is more realistic and brings out the colours more so it isn't so grey. I saved this as a JPEG file.

The 'Film Art' book says that RAW is a good choice when working in extreme brightness-range conditions or situations where your meter reading may be inaccurate. The JPEG option works fine under most normal conditions when the camera's controls, including exposure and white balance, are set correctly.

Release form

Attached is the release form I created and took with me during the shoot.

AinsReleaseForm.doc
Size : 102.5 Kb
Type : doc