Alternative Images for Assignment 3

As I spent such a great deal of time agonising over the editing of the images for this assignment I decided to include some of my alternatives on my blog.

Lincoln Cathedral


























I love this photograph of the screen and organ and found it a very difficult decision to reject it for the assignment. I like the warm light on the screen and have included the chairs to demonstrate that the building is used for services and concerts. The organ shows that it is a place for music. I like the way that the warm colours in the foreground contrast with the cooler ones behind. I also find it interesting that the scaffolding upper right shows that constant maintenance is required.


























This is a shot of the cloister showing the beautifully carved roof. In the days of the cathedral being run by monks this was a covered area for exercise and quiet contemplation.


















A picture showing some of the beautiful archtecture in the upper tier of the nave. Again when the building was being designed and built it would have been a way of praising God.




















Beautiful fan vaulting in the Chapter House. The local limestone glows in the warm lighting.




















Another example of the wonderful soaring architecture, this time with the superb reflectived light from the stained glass.



















I took this shot underneath the central tower to show the wonderful roof. It is interesting to note that there is a circular trapdoor towards the top left. Beyond this is a pulley which would have been/is used to haul things up to the roof. I really like the colours in this shot.


This is a close up of some of the carving on the screen. Interestingly, at the bottom of the carving is a 'Green Man' with the carved foliage pouring out of his mouth. At one time this carving was richly painted and there are odd remnants of that paint.



















Beautiful Stained glass in the Bishop's Eye window.

















A snail's eye view of the soaring central tower on a wonderful summer's day.

























A shot of the West Front peeping over an ancient gateway.






















More rich reflected colours from the stained glass.























Another shot of the green man.










































I took this picture of the huge west towers whilst on a roof tour.




The central tower from the roof.























The Ropewalk, Barton upon Humber, North Lincs.


















I took this shot to show the narrow end of the old rope factory, now an arts centre. The building is a quarter of a mile long as it was designed and built for the manufacture of rope. Unfortunately the cars obscure the view down the length of the building.

Riad Moucharabieh, Marrakesh



The Riad or hotel/guesthouse in the medina in old Marrakesh is a cool haven of plants, tiles and running water. It is like stepping into the Arabian Nights. Here I have shown one of the screens dividing the ground floor into reception rooms, lounge and dining room. Beyond are old Moroccan cooking implements.
















A beautiful lantern.






















At night the Riad is lit with low electric lights and typical Moroccan candle lanterns which provide an exotic ambiance.






















The Menestralia Glass Factory, Mallorca


















There is a long history of glass-making in Mallorca and the Menestralia Glass works although looking rather like a castle was built expressly for that purpose with a workshop vented to allow the escape of heat and fumes and also a showroom.


I loved this wonderfully rich display of coloured glass in a window of the workshop.

Here I have shown one of the master glassblowers working on a red hot piece of molten glass. His assistant is busy next to him. I needed to use a slow shutter speed owing to the poor lighting but I like the fact that the motion blur hints that the operation has to be done relatively speedily before the glass cools.

Below are some colourful shots of the showroom.

The Floral Halls, People's Park, Grimsby

A shot of the outside of the greenhouse showing the construction of the building and the way it is set in attractive gardens.

Below are two internal shots of the cool house.

More Research

I regularly read and enjoy Paul Harris's column in Outdoor Photography each month. I notice that he currently has an exhibition in the Joe Cornish Gallery in Northallerton entitled Mother, Sister, Daughter.... The exhibition is in praise of women the world over and collates images based on 21 years of visiting remote, ethnic and tribal communities across the globe. Time and again Harris has found that woment have played a pivotal role in the organisation, success and enjoyment of his far-flung photographic trips and this timely exhibition, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, is a touching tribute to all the mothers, sisters and daughters out there.
Brought up in the tradition of Photojournalism, he continues his passion for story telling through his travel, adventure and documentary imagery, balancing the road less travelled with curiousity.
This evening I had a conversation with a neighbour and friend who has a passion for trees and we were discussing the disappearance of, in particular, local, indiginous apple breeds and the conversation broadened to the disappearance of ethnic cultures and the 'reduction in size' of the world. I feel that photographers such as Paul speak up for many of these small ethnic communities throughout the world and remind us that they are too valuable to be lost.
I love the whole travel and story telling aspect of Paul's work which, at the same time, contains wonderful portraits, architectural images and photographs of people interactining with the places he visits.

Exercise 23: Selective Processing and Prominence

I used the image below as the starting image for this exercise.

In order to alter the prominence of the figure in the photograph I first imported it into photoshop and then duplicated the layer so that I could work on the figure and the background separately. In order to make the figure more prominent as in the image below I reduced the saturation in the top layer but increaseed it slightly in the bottom layer. I then erased the figure in the top layed to reveal the more saturated image below.

For this image I reversed the process above. I decreased the saturation and brightness in the bottom layer and then slightly darkened the top layer. In each case I then flattened the image before resaving it as a JPEG.

Having looked at the images live on the block I may have been too heavy handed particularly with the less prominant image. More practice needed I think.

Exercise 22: Adjusting the Balance Between Person and Space

For this exercise I took photographs whilst on a ridge walk in Mallorca last October.




















This shot is taken from high on the ridge looking down at the town of Soller and Port de Soller. In this shot the landscape is the focus but the very small figure just off centre enhances enhances the picutre by providing scale and human interest.





















This is basically the same shot, neither myself nor my brother moved at all. I did however zoom in to a different focal length. Whilst still being a landscape picture the figure now takes on more prominance and it becomes more of a portrait as well - now he is clearly recognisable. I still made sure to frame the shot with the figure offset to one side and looking into the picture. I used the grid available in the camera viewfinder to place the figure on the 'golden section'.

Research for People Interacting with Place

Whilst researching on People Interacting with Place I came across the work of Tim Smith a freelance photographer based in Bradford, Yorkshire. He has always been interested in the different ethnic communities in Bradford and initially focused on photgraphing these communities within the city. Later he developed an interest in visiting the parts of the world where these communities came from and photographing them there. His latest body of work is Coal, Frankincense and Myrrh: Yemen and British Yemenis. The Yemeni community is Britain's oldest established Muslim community. This book and exhibition explores their stories of migration, settlement and development via photographs taken over the past 25 years in both Britain and Yemen. Tim's photographs illustrate the interaction between people and the places they inhabit. They range from close up portraits of Yeminis in their home country such as Abdul Ila in Melah, Yemen to a photograph of Yemini Cultural day in Sheffield.

Exercise 21: Making Figures Anonymous

In this first image I have included two figures who are key to the image but remain anonymous. The figure inside the ballon is so small that he is unrecognisable and the figure in the foreground is facing away from us.

Here the person in the picture is slightly obscured by the balloon rigging.

The three figures here are all anonymous, the two in the distance are very small and the nearer one has his back to us.

These people are all walking away from from me up the Calvary Steps on Pellenca, Mallorca. I waited to take the photograph until no one was facing me.

Here in St Pancras Eurostar terminal the figures are all unrecognisable through movement blur or are facing away from the camera.

In this picture taken inside a gallery in Tate Britain the figures are very small and therefore unrecognisable.

In the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern these figures are all very small. I am pleased with this images as I really like the shafts of light shining through the far window and it gives a very good impression of large space - ideal for huge installations.

Another shot of the Turbine Hall taken with a slow shutter speed in order to blur the figures.

In all of the images I have included the building or space is the principal subject but I feel that the people in the photographs enhance the picture by giving scale and demonstrating that the space is in use. In order to keep the space the main focus of the picture the people are all anonymous.

Exercise 20: Busy Traffic

I decided to take the photographs for this exercise when I knew that I was going to be able to visit London for the day and I thought that I would be able to use St Pancras Station for a busy place. I knew there would be crowds of people and envisaged straight shots of crowds as well as using the tripod and experimenting with slow shutter speed shots to show motion blur.


The first two shots above utilise motion blur to show busyness as well as there being large numbers of people. How slow the shutter speed is determines how blurred the subject will be - very in the first shot on the left and less so on the right.

I moved up to the top of one of the escalators to watch the crowds for a while. The first shot above on the left was taken with a relatively fast shutter speed to freeze the people whereas the one below left is the same view but with a slow shutter speed. I like the shot above right taken with a slow shutter and look straight down from the top of the escalator. Below right is a similar view but taken at a wider angle.

Later in the day we visited Tate Modern and I was able to photograph the crowds on the Millenium Bridge. As these had to be hand held shots I used a faster shutter speed so there is no motion blur.

Ecercise 19: A Single Figure Small

For this exercise I have used one shot from our Scotland holiday last summer, three taken in Mallorca in October last year and I have also included one taken in the Dolomites in Italy in 2008.



This picture was taken late one afternoon on a remote beach in North West Scotland last summer. The weather was rather poor so we had the beach to ourselves and I was able to take this shot of my wife walking towards me with noone else around. I deliberately made her small and unidentifiable and the fact that she is semi silhouetted enhances this effect. This is a big landscape of sky and beach and whilst small in the shot the figure contrasts with it and therefore plays a significant role.



This picture was taken in Mallorca in October last year. Whilst we were there I spent some time looking for opportunities for photographs for this exercise. I had seen this lady whilst we were down by the quayside ourselves and she remained sitting there as we walked up onto the clifftop to allow this shot. As with the last picture I framed the shot so that she was off centre, in fact on the junction of two 'third' lines. This time her white tee shirt is light against a darker background.

The two picutres below were also taken in Mallorca. The one on the left during a ridge walk in the mountains looking down to Soller and Port de Soller. The figure is again small in the frame and set to one side on a golden section. it is dark against the lighter mountainside in the background. The picture on the right was taken on a cliff top walk with the figure again offset and dark against the background of sea.

This image was taken on the Marmolada Glacier in the Dolomite Mountains of Italy. The figure is walking into the frame along the top of the ice wall and is in silhouette against the lighter background.

In all of the above cases the single figure is small against a much larger backdrop. Whilst the landscape dominates in each instance and the figure is largely anonymous it nonetheless plays a significant part in the image.