Location Documentary Assignment

My intention with my location work was to illustrate the lives of some people I had looked after in hospital (in my job as a nurse), and how age and illness has affected them. The people were Beryl, Les and their son Ian. I had looked after each of them over the years and knew bits and pieces about them but not a great deal. It was an interesting opportunity to take a look at how people with chronic illness live and struggle to survive let alone enjoy life. Whilst talking to Beryl and her family I learnt how hard their lives had been - they mostly worked in farm hand type jobs and the work didn't sound easy. Illness and injury have plagued their lives making it hard to survive on their meagre earnings. I really didn't know these people that well but they were very friendly and welcoming which made photographing them easier - although the house was usually very dark. I have their permission to tell you a little bit about them.

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The moss covered letter box and long grass is an indication of there being no able bodied person around.

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This is Les, a retired fireman, before that he was a farm hand and horseman. Amongst many other conditions Les has mild dementia.

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Les the day after he had a pacemaker inserted.

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Beryl was very proud of her new carpet.

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Ian is an ex farm hand and rodeo cowboy. He has a chronic lung condition and is on the oxygen frequently.

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Although ill herself Beryl does most of the house work.

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The kitchen draws looking a little worse for wear.

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Once upon a time the dream was that the caravan be moved to the coast as a holiday retreat.

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The exercise bike retired to the backyard.

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So what I hope I have portrayed here is how age and illness has made time somewhat stand still for these people. As they grow older and become more ill, their world shrinks and shrinks until even their own home will become too hard to manage; and then what will happen? Not once did it sound like they were complaining about anything - they were just telling me things that happened.

Final products

Being a manly man I decided I was going to do car products. Now initially when I thought about this I had visualized sexy car parts, like the posters you see in mechanics waiting rooms ( just without the girls), a little bit dark, cool and masculine - but having a look through the car parts shop most of the sexy car parts are chrome. So I ended up grabbing a few products that looked....nice. Yeah I guess most of the products looked quite similar, so the challenge became how to make them look different and exciting yet close enough in style so they didn't look out of place along side each other.

Each of the shots did include some form extra lighting effect where I tried to enhance the feel and purpose of that particular product.

• Coolant - I placed the coolant in a tray of water and froze it. I then sat it face up on a glass vase and sprayed water onto it. I shot with my camera directly over the top of it with a soft box immediately behind me. The room was dark and I used a long exposure to add my light effects underneath and around the ice with a small LED light. If I was to do this again I would concentrate more on exposing the product correctly rather than mucking around with the LED. Light meter for Christmas please Santa.

• Nulon - The idea was to give this product some "speed' movement. Initially and embarrassingly during a long exposure I was dragging the product on a piece of cardboard until Julian suggest I slide the arm on the dolly - duh. During the exposure I shone a small LED light onto the label to give it more punch. Two large soft boxes were used to try and catch the edge of the product to give it shape. The streaks came up well, but the label was then streaky and hard to read - I was given the all clear to combine two images - a streaky and a non streaky - to create the final image.

• Spark plug - The background is an old bikie jacket. The 'spark' was added during the long exposure with my trusty little LED light. One soft box was on the left with a reflector on the right. Shooting very close up on this small product on a long exposure seemed to create a lot of blurring due to movement in the shots - not detected on the camera LED at the time so I ended up shooting this product three different occasions. Getting a 'spark' that looked right and lined up with the plug was difficult too.

• Car Wax - the background was a large length of material with a tungsten light shining up through it (at a safe distance). The product was then placed onto some nice, shiny glass. To give the car some extra zing and shine I placed some LED lights in the box where the headlights are and used a long exposure. I used one large soft box and a gold reflector.

• XLD Oil - Large cloth background with a tungsten light shining down behind it. The same cloth is what the product is sitting on - I would definitely change that now, maybe to a nice manly piece of metal instead. I used - you guessed it - a LED light to do the light streak but this time in an old mosaic candle holder to give that nice 'golden oil' look.

• Polyglaze - I took the wheel of my care and gave it a bit of a spruce up - with the product (It didn't work that well) and placed it in front of a large dark sheet of material. I placed a sheet of glass in front of this and then my product on that. I used a large soft box to the left and a reflector on the right. I think what i should of done was to light the product from the rear as well, to give it some more definition against the background - next time. Of course I then did a light swirl which looked ok in the reflection - but maybe I should have done a yellow swirl to match the products swirl. I just said swirl a lot.

Oh well -tried my best and learnt a lot. I'm sure i could do a lot better now, but for a beginner they turned out ok?

Charlie at the park

"school photos" getting me down so I took my camera and charlie to the park:

Presentation Methods

The final composition - I hope

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The photograph

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The note on the table
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Intention & Rationale

The scene is designed to be a quirky home environment that includes the picture taken for the short story Skin Holes - a story about mutilation and being controlled. The choice of frame is to help create a "home" feel and its normality is to provide a juxtaposition to the disturbing photograph, the same applies to the lamp and table. The wall paper was chosen for its quirky look, and the red seemed a nice contrast to the dark picture. The intention of the note left on the table, is to provide text to help the viewer establish some context, and to add a personal human element to the scene.

Product shots part 2

I don't think my photos are working for a number of reasons, mainly that they don't seem to tie together as a series, so i think i'm going to start from scratch. Meh.