what kinda work is it?

after reading through the handbook i saw that i would need to distinquish out of 3 kinds of styles of work and work out which description best fits my work. 

While my work has some conceptual aspects to it, the project i do feel im following more of a documentry approach. 

my work is 'to produce a body of work that informs on and describes something (and comunitcated it to an audience) in the form of a naturalistic, visually led narrative (all be it from a persoanl perspective), though the use of real-life material.'
which is a documentary approach to the work. While when ever thinking of documentry i think of street style candid photography in a sence my work is heavily documentry with the reserch into the locations behind it.

More socialnetworking reserch

After the popularity of my first lot of surveys Ive now created a second based around the idea of locations and there history. Ill be pimping out the link to see how many people i can get to do it. All the questions are based around the idea of feeling at locations, locations retaining memorys and haunted locations. Hopefully ill be able to get a great response like before. 

the link is locations suvey this maybe a great way for me to find more locations to shoot around leicester or my home locations.

holga 35mm pinhole with b/w film.

These are the first test shots taken with my pinhole holga 35mm. The film used was the iso 400 HPT film.

Here are the scanned in negs, here the negs have appeared very grainy, which on the negative they do not appear to be, so i feel it may be the way in which i scanned the negs, i used the flatbeds rather then the normal b/w neg scanner that i normally do. I also noticed that even with the grainyness (caused by the scanner) the images have a really interesting blur to the images. this i really as it adds atmsophere to the images. while it was an experiment in black and white, the images i want to create for my final peice i would like to be colour. 

Some of the images didnt come out completely. the images around the newarke houses had a very harsh light and obviously some of the images are over blown in alot of the images which i will have to keep in mind with using this camera.

On the images below, as u can see the top image shows the noise i said caused by the scanners. The images below that are edited in photoshop to blur out the noise and it highlights the use of the blur in the images.

more then anything i need to experiment taking images in different light and to get the technique down to an art really. the images are not as contrasted as i normally like but i do like my black/white images to be very contrasted which can also be adjusted in photoshop using the digital scanning method and in the manual printing method.

Pinhole holga experiment and Pentax Super ME

So yesterday my Pinhole 35mm holga arrived, today i took it, as well as my pentax super ME out. I used BW film in the holga as i  think for now i want to focus on using b.w as its cheaper and maybe progress to colour once im more confident with using the pinhole. It was weird not having a zoom, nor having a focus ring for the pinhole. I shot a 24 exposures at the Newarke house musesum as well as the guild hall, which are both on my list of places to photograph. The exposures i wrote down in my notebook as a reference and im going tomorrow to develope and scan in the film to see how this works. I experimented with a range of times from under a second up to 7 seconds to see how they turn out and im excited to see if they work. My Super-me camera that stopped production in the 1980's gives a great old fashioned look to the images. I used a colour film in it as its the only thing i had in, (i had one bw and one colour in) but new how to use it so chose this for the images. i then got them printed on the way home. (ill scan and add the photos tomorrow when i have access to the neg scanner) These photos came out interesting, the focusing gives it a very strange effect and while the prints maybe a little to dark (had them processed in boots) the  negs seem alright and im going to scan them digitially and see what i can do with them.  I do love the effect you get on film but until i get used to working on it again (it has been a while) im going to continue on BW film, as i can process it myself and its cheaper to buy. Which is best just for experimentation.

Cavendish house photoshoot 1

When i got to abbey park and saw Cavendish house i felt very calm and relaxed and it seemed easy to take photos. the natural lighting was pretty good, it was that sort of 'ice cold yet a cold sun' look and this was before the snow so the images are all very autuminal. The colours i like as the reds and browns reflect the idea that there was a fire there, and the lighting on some of the images is very interesting, with the light coming from the trees and casting random patterns. Some of the images are sihouetted, and i like this, and some of these would look just as good in black and white, but these images are far more atmopsheric then the images ive taken so far.  The idea that the house and ruins are in the middle of a popular is very interesting and shows a mixture of the past and present. And the change between past and present is what i wanted to look at in locations as well as capturing the atmosphere of the place. its very post card perfect and i like this cos it contradicts with the idea that during the civil war the house that stood grand on the grounds was burnt so badly to the ground, only 2 and abit walls remain all that was left. 
What i also like about alot of these images stick to the photographic rule of thirds. for example the bottom three of the examples below do and i really like the framing of these images. it would be interesting to photograph these images in my pinhole or film camera, so another visit will be in order to reshoot some of these images 

Cavendish house, abbey park

Cavendish House ceased to be a residence of any kind after 1645 as a result of the events surrounding the Battle of Naseby.

 

In 1645 the Civil War was going badly for Charles I. He only had effective control over Wales, the West Country and parts of south Midlands. By late spring, Parliamentary forces under Sir Thomas Fairfax were besieging Oxford, the Royalist capital. In an attempt to draw Fairfax from the seige of Oxford, the King’s army marched on Leicester.

 

Charles’ army arrived at Leicester on 30th May, and after only a two day siege took and sacked the town. Fairfax broke the siege and headed north to meet the King’s army. Having thus saved Oxford, the Royalist commanders did not know what to do. The Royalist army headed slowly south to meet Fairfax, only to find itself facing a far larger army with the advantage of the ground. On 14th June the King’s army was decisively defeated at Naseby. The remains of the Royalist army fled back to Leicester pursued by the Parliamentary army, and Fairfax re-took the town on 18th June.

 

How this sequence of events led to the destruction of Cavendish House is unclear. All we know for certain is that on arrival in Leicester, Charles lodged at Cavendish House, as a guest of the dowager countess, and that he stayed there until his army marched south on 4th June. By the time Fairfax had secured the town, however, Cavendish House had been severely damaged by fire. We do not know who set fire to the house or circumstances under which it happened. The only other certainty is that the Cavendish family decided that they had no need of a residence just outside Leicester, so the mansion was neither re-built nor demolished.

 

 

The abbey pumping station photoshoot 1

I did a photoshoot of the abbey pumping station on friday. The only problem i actually had is that its locked until febuary, however i managed to take some photos through the gates. The location is rather atmospheric, however the space center is just behind it so framing i had to be careful not to get that in (its a very futuristic looking building!) another thing is that going about midday the sun was behind the building which means that some of the images are very dark or sihouttted, i dont mind this but u loose alot of the detailing on the building. i will revisit on one of the days that i can get into the ground to explore abit more and experiment more. I deffo think that i dont want to continue to shoot on digital as its far to clean and crisp and i think that film will give a better atmosphere. 

I feel with these images i would be able to improve if i could get closer or without barriers in the way. I do like the first image as you can see the detailing of the house in all its glory and i think thats my fave image. the  second image is an example of what i took through the gates at the front. These are the images that came out rather dark as the building was backlit, so maybe revisiting at different time of day will create better lighting. Again these aint as atmospheric as i would of liked but overall theyre not to bad. Its interesting how the lighting has changed from the first image (rahter cold)  to the bottom image where the lighting is rather warm.