Produce a small photo essay of 10 images that demonstrates your engagement with the lives, experiences and histories of your local community and its people.Decide on a single theme, topic or activity to focus on.Do this assignment with only one camera and one lens.
Provide a short commentary (200 words) explaining your ethos and rationale along with your images(Open College of the Ats, 2014:31).
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NICOLA SOUTH STUDENT NUMBER: 514516
PROVISIONING AND PROTECTING
COMMENTARY
This theme of this photo essay is of my family isolating at home during the “lock down” of Covid19. My choice of subject was driven by the lockdown necessitated by the world-wide pandemic and the adjustments that myself and my immediate family made as we became a physically isolated community. Though the images may appear straight forward they represent my personal response to the suddenly imposed conditions, and the threat of both the pandemic and the isolation to my family. My intention is to share how my attention was initially funnelled to providing what my community would need to survive in an uncertain situation and protecting us; provisioning and protecting.
My concept was to communicate the protection and adjustments that I built for my community but also the isolation and barriers that I was feeling. I was also suffering from being separated from the place that my soul calls home, my second home 220 miles away that I was forbidden to visit. My visual strategy developed from these personal reactions to the situation.
The windows of my house represent physical barriers between the world outside and inside, as well as emotional ones. The subjects photographed through my windows, though mundane, will be familiar to others who have lived through this time. I hope that viewers will connect to these images through their shared experience of the time, using their imagination and experiences to ascribe exact meanings for them, as they trigger their own responses to this shared situation.
Reference:
Open College of the Arts (2014) Photography 2: Documentary-Fact and Fiction (Course Manual). Barnsley: Open College of the Arts
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ARTIST STATEMENT
This work shares my experience of isolating at home with my family during Covid 19. The subjects on view are those that I fixated on initially in my personal battle to protect our community. This series is a response to my personal feelings of withdrawal for our protection and to the barriers imposed that separated me from my second home, causing an even stronger sense of nostalgic longing, hiraeth.
Having had an introductory video meeting with my tutor I am going to begin to record my thought process/reflections on the first assignment. This has all spurred me to get started with both the course and the first assignment.
We discussed that I should consider what I have access to and that it should be a “less is more” approach to try to cover a small topic in depth.
Living in two locations should give me plenty of options of communities to document, however I do need to consider carefully what I choose in terms of timing and location.
I immediately thought of the boat club, and in particular the committee there that I am a part of, however I may be able to use this subject another time. My next thought is the one of five pubs in my village that is my “local” and I am well integrated with the the owners, staff and customers; I shall leave this one in the melting pot.
INITIAL IDEAS:
I ran through possible ideas for the assignment. I have 2 locations that I engage with Tredreath Pembrokeshire and Old Basing Hampshire. I think I will concentrate on Tredreath as this is where I am probably most engaged at the moment:
The Boat Club Committee (Mancom – management committee) I’m a member– lots of scope, but I might I want to use later in documentary.
Rowing club – I’m a member but it’s the wrong time of year to capture activities at the club.
Coastal footpath walkers – I’m one
The Castle Pub – I’m a regular customer and know the owners and the staff well.
I began exploring my idea of the Newport Boat Club Management committee: A committee of 13 with monthly meetings and sub group meetings between also individual responsibilities. We had a committee meeting scheduled for 28.2.20 so I decided to document it as an opportunity experiment photograph the committee to see what it might bring. Before the shoot I sent the following to all members by email:
Dear all
For those of you who aren’t aware I am in the middle of a photography degree and am currently working on documentary photography. For my next assignment I have to produce a small photo essay to demonstrate my engagement with part of the my local community and its people – something that I’m a participant in.
The theme I’d like to explore is Mancom, so I hope it’s okay with you if I take the occasional snap at committee tonight. The project will take me a while to complete so I will probably appear with my camera some more over the next few weeks – though I only submit 10 photos I have to show that I’ve done a lot of experimenting!
This work will only be shared with my tutor and will not appear anywhere else, so I hope you’ll be able to indulge me and just pretend that my camera is not with me.
Thanks in advance
Niki
There were no members that objected.
I visited the room beforehand to check lighting levels and layouts.
1ST SHOOT:
During the meeting I took images of the committee in action from the time they entered to the time that they left; these were a combination of close ups and longer shots, though they were all shot with my prime efs 24mm lens.
These images are just to treat as sketches as I discovered that more lighting was required, especially as the evening wore on. I fitted a diffuser on my strobe so as not to disrupt the meeting however this reduced the lighting too much causing the images to be taken with longer exposures than I would have liked and culminating I movement within the shots – however they were enough to help me to decide on a way forward.
Committee meeting experiments:
Reflections from the 1st shoot:
Things that I took away from this:
That I want to capture the meeting from entering to leaving as this gives a narrative
Use the prime lens at different distances
Take more pictures at table level
There is something to say with the vacant seats of those who are absent
There is something to say with way the meeting is punctuated by members pooping down to the toilet.
Correspondingly there is a story showing with the full pints at the beginning of the meeting and the empty at the end.
I noticed details such as the variety of committee papers that people used or not – some bring nothing to the meeting,
Problems:
Lighting and people moving so need to increase ISO and use flash exposure compensation set higher
Only 7 of committee attended, next meeting 26th March so can’t finish project until then
To do: Improve on committee meeting photographs:
Arriving
Pre meetings
Whole committee from table level
Empty seat esp charles
Full glasses
Leaving
Afterwards
WHILST WAITING FOR THE NEXT COMMITTEE I EXPERIMENTED WITH VARIOUS PORTRAITS OF THE COMMITTEE:
Portrait experiments:
Laura/sailing and boating: Rowing boat – done
Amanda/facilities: Roof leaks – done
Retired commodores drinking in bar – done
Ema/Club manager: In office – done
Gaynor medals – done
Doug/Bar and social: behind bar or in kitchen -done
Tony/Commodore: flags/ensign- done
Liz/Rowing cox – not done
Secretary with archives – not done
Andrew – empty seat to represent with IT items as hes not attended this year? not done
Charles empty seat but with personal items – as he’s rarely there- not done
Charles empty seat but with personal items – as he’s rarely there
I thought I should consider whether these portraits are portrait or landscape orientation as the committee shots are, so I shot both & varied depth of fields.
This took me to the 15th of March when the impact of Covid19 began to have an effect on immediate social engagement. I had planned to return to Pembrokeshire for the next committee meeting 26th of March with a developed plan (conceptual, visual narrative) to finish the project. It quickly became evident that this would not be possible.
I shared my dilemma with the OCS Tutor led meeting 18th March “approaching an assignment” and my peers at the virtual Thames Valley OCA monthly meeting 21st March facilitated by OCA tutor Jayne Taylor, see posts:
Following these I have resolved to start again with a new idea for assignment 1, even though I’ve lost a lot of time and probably whilst I’m developing this begin working on part 2 and assignment 2 as I’m worried that if we have a “lockdown” opportunities will be even more limited.
Photography 2: Documentary 