For my first article named armistice in Tavistock I choose to cover an event on remembrance day for this project “the revolution will not be televised” as it relates to its meaning. The fact many people from lots of communities leave their homes and come together to show an act of support for the people who served our country. The world comes together to leave their homes for one united reason. What made me decide to go with this as a topic was because I found out that it had been one hundred years exactly from when the WW1 ended.
I researched many articles and made a survey to gather information on how the public feel towards this topic. However, due to the amount of time my organisation skills slowed me down and although I completed the survey, I didn’t have any time to analyse any responses. Next time I need to give myself plenty of time to gather this information. My time managing skills need to be improved.
The “True Colours” article relates to the previous article in a sense where a smaller group also joined together in time of need and a similar reason of hardships and suffering. People that have been and are currently in service also have been known to suffer from mental health issues. The topics are about awareness and I felt inspired by the fact that more people feel that both the armistice day, where the younger generations will be reminded about the sacrifices and hard ships that were made. Furthermore, the charity bringing mental health public for others to recognise, care and not feel as alone in times of their own struggles.
Within this project I had many creative ideas which would have taken a lot of time and expenses to set up. One of these included a large poppies placed in front of the memorial statue in Plymouth. Each poppy defining one soldier marked on the statue. Due to funds and time I decided to go for a simpler option and chose capturing the remembrance day in Tavistock town centre.
After printing my first article, a teacher proof read it and was able to point out grammar and english mistakes. From there I corrected them and continued to proof read the first and second article as I went along.
I have been working on new technical skills for example when I did the layout for the design I used indesign with my partner. This was very new to me, so I learnt whilst creating our zine. Using the help from the teachers and the one other person in my group I feel more confident using this editing app. I made sure I was taking a large amount of photographs at all the events that I had attended so that I had a large enough collection to choose from. I also made contact sheets of all the images from each topic and screen shots of indesign to show my article layout as progress went on.
The thing I liked the most, besides the images I was able to capture, was the two pull quotes – which I spontaneously thought whilst working on finishing touches on both articles: the Fray poem [unknown author] and the powerpoint slide from the charity event, ‘talking is stronger than silence’.
Looking back on my photo shoots I had hoped for better angles. Remembrance day was very crowded so I found it hard to position a good eye on the ceremony. During the charity event, there were many good angles that I didn’t use to my own advantage, which I could have taken. I believe I need to build up my confidence and try and not be so caught up with the goings on around me and more in tune with my camera and concentrate the point that I’m at certain events for taking photographs and to become less self-conscious.
I had done contact sheets before in community college for a BTEC photography course but hadn’t for about four years, a teacher was able to remind me how to do it and now feel at ease knowing again.
What I’ve gathered from doing this end of term project is that its built my character on quite a lot of massive levels within a short amount of weeks. By putting myself in situations where I took the photos also gave me a realisation that I wasn’t getting the best angles due to the lack of conference and being over respectful to personal space of others. For example I felt like I may get in the way as of people’s performance’s at the charity event and I got caught up thinking that others thought I was disrespectful taking photographs of remembrance day. From this I’ve leaned not to care what others may think and keep in mind the actual reason why I am there to begin with and just be at one with my camera. If I was able to re-do both shoots I would have gotten to the armistice day exactly an hour earlier, before 11. To get better angles also I would have asked a person who was apart of the ceremony how close I would be aloud, to get better views of the goings on and so the crowd wasn’t blocking my line of sight. I would of done the same with the charity event, would of actually been easier to ask about better angles and getting as close as possible because I know some of the people who helped organise the event. When starting the project my first idea was to do a topic based around music because my friend Owen is in a two man band, where he dose the vocals, electrical guitar and the other member is a drummer. I couldn’t go through with it because my partner said it didn’t relate to street photography our overall theme, so I decided to find other topics but have my musical idea kept for safe keeps later in future projects.
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