Narrative and Photography - Evaluation

Dance To My Beat

Narratives are all around us every day, from what we see on the TV and in movies to our lives unfolding in front of us. Every person we come across has a history and a future after such a moment. When it is presented by a photographer it is purely from their perspective and as such has to be done with a level of integrity and honesty to be credible.

Media agencies manipulation of images, favorable angles and very secular views of a subject matter can shape a narrative in both positive and negative ends. These are rife in our world, so much so we barely question them anymore. Simply take information with caution and try as best we can to make an informed decision if it seems legitimate to us from our own perspective.  That’s the heavy end we are bombarded with every day. It will always have its place but really it is of little interest to me.

I am a people watcher and have always been fascinated by culture and habit. When we were given the narrative assignment I was genuinely excited to be able to explore looking a lot deeper than I have ever done before. It’s been quite a journey through the revision, looking into some truly remarkable photographers and artists work. I feel inspired by their work in a way I haven’t before so far at CCAD.

Initial discussions seemed to be heading towards the thinking that it had to be dark and mysterious if it was going to be interesting. I never really bought into that, there is enough of that elsewhere to get bogged down with without us adding to it. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated James Nachtwey (for his commitment to try and make change) and Nan Goldin’s gritty kitchen sink coverage of life during the aids outbreak.  Both are exceptional looks into their lives. They are just so far removed from mine I wanted something that touched me personally and positively.

For both parts I chose the setting of House music events in the north east. It’s something ive been involved with many years so felt I would be able to connect with the environment. Aiming to show it in a positive way with interesting candid shots you wouldn't associate with traditional event photography.

My Narrative is called “Dance To My Beat”, named after a famous house music accapella. The lyrics seemed best to fit as text during the presentation. It’s a positive look into the nights out of ordinary people who just want to escape from the mundane every day and dance with each other to loud music. The drugs and alcohol probably help for energy levels and to loosen inhibitions. Unlike BUZZ CLUB I wasn’t really trying to focus on this and it’s more of an undertone represented by cans of Redstripe and Bottles of Budwieser beer.

I split my efforts across two different venues in Teesside to experiment as much as possible with techniques.

 The low light and often smoke filled rooms dictated using mostly off camera flash with usually a wide aperture. This can be difficult to then focus with such a shallow depth of field. As a result of this I had to take a relatively high amount of shots (1800) in order to achieve the shots I wanted. All the images were shot in RAW and then processed through Lightroom with no manipulation in Photoshop.

Making the cut

Ive got 40 images from the 3 shoots(around 1800 shots in total before editing). I like them all and feel together they tell the story of this aspect of life im involved with within the north east of England. Thats obviously far too many to use for a presentation so I have had them all printed out on small 6x4 inch prints from a local photography firm.

Now the easy bit and get it down to between 16-20 for the slideshow...

Unapologetic out of focus HTC One image of prints

Shoot 3 - RiffRaff Back in the Dungeon

This is the 3rd and final shoot that I will be taking images from for my final Narrative selection. I've already pretty much covered the set up for this location in the shoot 1 blog,and will be doing a full run down in the evaluation. Only extra thing worth mentioning is that I had hoped to get some voice recordings in the smoking area on this night but alas it didn't work out the way I had hoped. The music from the bar area was too loud on the terrace speakers and spirits were a little too high to hold a decent conversation other than small talk. I still think it would be interesting to cover a narrative in this way,maybe ill try it in a more forgiving environment instead like the Duck Rabbit video about sandcastles we watched. It has great potential to be used to add extra context to images and can add so much when executed well.

So here are the images that made up the final cut from RiffRaff presents Crag Richards.

Some of these can be seen in full size Flickr gloriousness HERE

Group work review and feedback

So we had a little session where we had a look at everyone's work so far and gave our thoughts on which way we could see it developing and any ideas we had on each others finished pieces.

Everyone seemed to understand my narrative which is good and can give me confidence to keep going in the same direction. Also probably not really surprising was that nearly all said it would be good to accompany my images with either some vocal narrative or music.

Still undecided if its the right way to go to add either of these,must decide soon!

Adobe Premiere

For presentation of our narrative images I have chosen to use Adobe's premiere as ive got a cloud subscription and am not keen on Apple products it seems like the obvious choice. Having never used it before and still undecided as to what will accompany the images, I took on a job to make a short basic promotional video for a nightclub that is opening up in Teesside in a few weeks. The presentation is solely film without any photography but the principle in making a time line are the same, so im pretty confidant ill be able to do my hand in justice which ever way it goes.

Its very similar to Ableton music making software in that you just add the parts you want to a timeline with markers set to either just time,or in time with chosen music then apply layers on top for graphics and tittles. A seemingly endless amount of effects can be added with filters and special fx between the transitions or it can be just straight forward for a set time changing hard between your set of clips/images.

Premiere Layout

The finished promo video is here -------------------> HIT ME