FANZINE Assignment : Task 3, 4 & 5 : Develop Ideas and Experiment, Photographs, Videos



FANZINE Assignment : Task 2 : Proposal

For my Zine project I would like to create a magazine and a video zine on vintage style and fashion. I would like to go around the vintage shops in York and take photos and video footage to show what the shops are like. I may also like to try and do a feature about street style and stop people on the street and ask people what they're wearing. I intend to ask the owners/ people who work in the vintage shops various different questions such as why do they like vintage clothing, where do they get their pieces from etc. I would like to inform people with my magazine and video what type of vintage shops there are in York and tell the audience a little bit about them. I am going to produce a 2-3 minute video about vintage shopping and a 12 page magazine/booklet. I think I am going to base the style of my magazine on a magazine I used to get in York called One and Other. They were an artsy magazine that talked about fashion, art and things that were happening locally in York. The style of their magazine looked very much like a scrap book and I think this would be good for my magazine and would work well with the theme of Vintage. As for my video, I would like to take influence from beauty gurus on YouTube. I often watch their videos where they are out shopping and they have hand held videos of shops with a song over the top of the footage. I really like this style and would like to use this as inspiration for my video zine about vintage fashion. I am going to get the photographs and videos recorded as soon as possible so I can start editing them together and see if I need to get any more after that before the deadline on 1 Feb. I will need to start contacting these shops straight away so I can arrange a date with them that I can go and take photographs and videos. I will need my DSLR for photographs and since mine doesn't take video I will use my small compact camera for video. Since I am using low budget hand held video logs as inspiration it wont matter too much if my video camera isn't the highest quality.

ONE SQUARE MILE Assignment : Test shots : Favourites

I like how these three architectural images go together because they are shot in a similar way. They all involve lines and shapes which I always seem to be drawn to in architectural photography. I did a project before on shapes in architecture which involved taking photographs of architecture but aiming to emphasise the fact that it is made up of shapes. Since then I have always photographed like this and I really enjoy it.

Today we were asked to select our favourite images out of the ones we have taken in the square mile around college over the last couple of weeks. The above images are my favourite ones out of the ones I have taken. We were then asked to think of a narrative that could go with the images or if there is a pattern evolving within the images which creates a narrative. Unfortunately I don't think that my images have much connection other than the ones which were taken in the same style/place. This has made me realise that I need to think of a narrative before I do my own documentary project on one square mile. When I was taking these pictures, because I didn't have a narrative, I was just going round taking photographs of anything and anyone. This shows within my images because you can't see what I was trying to say about the one square mile around college.

ONE SQUARE MILE Assignment : Proposal

The square mile that I want to photograph is York City Centre. I would like to photograph the aspect of tourism as York is a hugely popular place for tourists and visitors. I could approach my project in different ways. One way would be to show how busy York is with tourists, photographing them (e.g. a group of chinese people with cameras), photographing the York City Sightseeing buses and how busy they are, photographing the people who work in the tourist offices etc. Since I am a York resident and have a YorkCard I have access to all the major attractions including the sightseeing buses for free so I could go into these places and photograph them from a tourists perspective. I could photograph tourists on the buses and photograph the city from the sightseeing tours too.

I could also approach it by photographing interesting characters around the city. There are lots of interesting characters around York, such as the Purple Man who sits on a bike all day, a man who advertises the ghost walk who is dressed up in costume, a man who stands outside the Jorvik Centre dressed up in costume, someone who stands outside the York Dungeons who's dressed in costume, and endless amounts of street artists positioning themselves in various places around the city.

I am going to shoot my project using a few different styles at first - I will use street photography and take pictures of tourists walking around York. I would also like to use landscape and architecture photography and take pictures of the area of York and the buildings etc to see what they look like in my set. If I take pictures of landscape and architecture these could set the scene of my project so people know where these interesting people dressed in costume are from rather than just a set of photographs of interesting people. I would also like to take some portraits of people using an external flash gun on a tripod. Once I have tested out a few of these different styles I will review them and see what is working and what isn't and take my project from there.

My first idea when I thought of the theme of tourism in York was to take pictures of the tourists and all the attractions and sightseeing buses, however, when I saw these images by James Mollison I came up with the idea of taking pictures of the interesting characters in York who are dressed in costume.

I have found a couple of images of the people in York who I want to photograph :

I like this photograph because it shows some of the background and gives the viewer a bit of information about where it has been taken. Since York has such beautiful architecture I think it would be good to include some of it in the background of my image then my audience has a better idea that my documentary project is about York rather than just people in costume.

This is the Purple Man in York. He is probably one of the most famous street artists. He usually is positioned down Stonegate sat on a purple bike with a purple dog in a purple basket. I have taken some photographs of him before on my phone and he is quite happy to have his photograph taken, so hopefully so will be a lot of the people in York.

I like Zed Nelsons style in how he mixes lots of different types of photography together such as studio, street photography, indoor, outdoor etc.

I think that I may begin shooting my project like this by taking lots of photographs in different styles. I will begin by taking photographs of York, it's architecture and tourist attractions. I will then focus on street photography and take pictures of tourists, show them queuing up to get into places, show them photographing the city, show them on guided walking tours around the city. Then I want to photograph some of the interesting characters. I will use documentary portraiture to get images of people who work in the tourist attractions. For this I think I will use an off camera flash gun on a tripod. I also would quite like to take pictures of the people who work in tourism but are not necessarily dressed up for a living such as people who work on the desk at the tourist information centre, and in the foyer's of the attractions themselves.

Martin Parr :

I would like to use these three images as inspiration for my tourism in York project. They all communicate a similar theme that I want to communicate with my One Square Mile project. The first image shows an interesting character in a normal place with normal people surrounding him. I would like to take photographs like this because there are lots of people dressed up in York who would look strange when surrounded by normal people in the background. The second image shows people looking into a shop window at what appears to be a souvenir shop. This is another thing that I want to capture about York - how there are lots of things that are aimed at tourist like souvenir shops. The third image doesn't really connect to my tourism in York but it is very obvious what it is communicating - British people celebrating the wedding of William and Kate. I would like people who see my set of images to be able to tell what it is about when they look at them.

Martin Amis :

I would like to use these three images as inspiration for my own project because they do a very good job of describing a place through a set of photographs. These images clearly show a seaside town in Britain. Amis could have photographed lots of aspects of the town but the viewer might not know that they had been taken in the same place. He has done a good job of choosing exactly what to photograph so that the viewer knows that all the images were taken in the same place. I would like to do this with my set of images for the One Square Mile project. I would like to be able to photograph lots of different aspects in York and my viewer will be able to still tell it is York no matter which picture they are looking at.

ONE SQUARE MILE Assignment : Street Photography

Researching photographers :

Martin Parr

Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer and photojournalist. He is most famous for his photographic projects that take a critical look on modern life, particularly in England. The photographs I have displayed here are just a random selection of his works. I like how every picture of his tells a story whether it is displayed in a set or not. I consider Martin Parr to be one of the true 'documentary photographers' as he literally seems to just snap things in the moment. I think this makes it seem closer to home for the viewer as it hasn't been set up or staged or used models, he just documents things as they are. He always seems to photograph really interesting things which may be a useful influence for my own One Square Mile project because I want to photograph tourism in York and all the quirky things that come with it such as people dressed in costume and the touristy things like souvenirs etc. 

Martin Amis

Martin Amis is a British documentary photographer. Unfortunately I couldn't find out much information about him, I could only find his photographs. I really like his style of photography and it links to this One Square Mile project really well because he does a very good job of documenting an area through a set of photographs. I think Amis' images look slightly more planned out and artistic than Martin Parr's but I still think they have been taken spontaneously - he has just taken a photograph of what he saw rather than staging an image. I can tell from these images that they are very British and shot at a seaside town. I think the images describe a lot about the place - I would like to try and achieve this with my images. I like how this set of images shows different aspects of the place - the people who live there, the holiday makers, the older generation, younger generation etc.

My test shots : 

I don't really like this shot because it is quite blurry around the mans head.

I like this image because of the composition. I like the way the man on the ladders is diagonally positioned away from the woman at the bus stop. I also like the lines and shapes in this image because it has been taken straight on. I like how the road creates a straight line which runs parallel to that of the roof of the bus stop. And the windows, ladders and doorway create vertical straight lines.

For the above 8 images I set my camera up in a particular place and waited for people to walk into the frame before I took their picture. I sat on the steps leading up to Leeds Town Hall and positioned my camera on my knees. This was to make it not look very obvious that I was taking pictures as people act differently if they think that they are on camera. 

Here are some pictures that I took of people in the streets of Leeds. I didn't enjoy this task because I felt like I was invading peoples privacy by taking pictures of them without their permission. I got a lot of dirty looks from people if they noticed that I was taking pictures of them and I didn't like this because I felt really bad and uncomfortable and didn't want to carry on taking pictures of other people.