Storytelling in the street…the ‘what we see’ project 18/12/07

Jennifer #1 18/12/07

Jennifer #2 18/12/07

Jennifer #3 18/12/07

Chantel #1 18/12/07

Chantel #2 18/12/07

Chantel #3 18/12/07

Ann #1 18/12/07

This session just before the Christmas break up was aimed at shooting photographs in the Neighbouring s street. I’m teaching this course in both a hostel for street homeless women and a day centre for street homeless men and women. This week we had quite a big turn out for at the hostel so I decided to get out there with them and introduce the group to street photography, little dd I know that they’d be more accomplished a it than me! Fantastic! Anyway, the group has been following the principles of the ‘four elements’ as described below in previous posts. On of the problems of teaching a class that has a shifting or itinerant group is that ts hard to get everyone ‘up to speed’…however the difficulties are way outweighed by the multitude of positives when working with such a client group, eg. their willingness to learn, their resourcefulness, their Independence of mind and so on.

We set out to photograph the Kensington area of Liverpool, its where the hostel is situated and is pretty rough and ready, but the people are great in this neighbourhood so instantly we were able to start to shoot our documentaries without hassle. I went without a camera whilst the group had digital slr’s each that I’d lent them. We spent 1 hour shooting and then another hour editing and discussing the results. The aim of today’s exercise was to get the group to reveal something of their environment through the photographs they choose to take, rather than produce a continuum or series the idea was to produce a set of stand alone photographs. Although at a later stage in this project we will move onto immersing ourselves into photographic story telling/ narrative/ documentary photography/photo-essay with a specific set theme’s and continuum’s.

Listed above are photographs by Ann, Chantel and Jennifer. I’m really pleased with their work.

‘Controlling the light’..shooting in the winter sun/ The ‘What we see’ project 11/12/07

Ann #1 11/12/07

Ann #2 11/12/07

Ann #3 11/12/07

Ann #4 11/12/07

The week 10-16th Dec was a great week for experimenting with different types of winter light, shadows, very bright highlights, lots of potential exposure problems and so on. All the above photographs were taken by project participant Ann, she really controlled the light amazingly well and even manipulated the potential exposure difficulties to get a creative results. The idea in this week was to put into the practice the ’four elements’ we summarised as group, we all agreed that these 4 elements underlie the practice of photography namely; 1. light 2. aperture/ depth of field 3. shutter speed 4. ISO …all of which the group have grasped exceptionally well and furthermore have begun to synthesise these elements amazingly effectively. No shooting in ‘auto’ here!

Photographs and history : Slavery and photographs / The ‘what we see’ project week 17/12/07

Domestic slave with planter’s family

Modern day slavery

We decided as group this week that we’d visit a photographic exhibihtion, its coming up to Chistmas and we wanted to check something out instead of working solely on taking photographs…especially to learn a little about photographs as both evidence and witness. We ended up changing our plans for visiting the photographic exhibihtion and visited the great slavery exhibihtion at Liverpool’s Martime Museum www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/about.

It’s use of photography is exceptional. Many of the photographs are very disturbing. The photograph above is not taken from the exhibihtion but depicts a slave with a plantation family. The looks on the faces of the slaves really etched their way into my mind. We had some discussion afterwards around the the role of photography as witness, historical record and as a way of looking deep into the faces and perhaps emotions of the photographed slaves.

 See links:

http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/

http://www.amnestyusa.org/filmfest/seattle/2002/slavery.html

Controlling the light in practice…../The ‘WHAT we see’ project 10/12/07

Lena’s photograph #1 London road, Liverpool 10th December 2007

Lena’s photograph #2 (as above).

 It’s mid December and our ‘What we see’ project has reached the stage where we have developed a small archive and we can start to post up work and content online.

This session involved taking the practical skills we’ve been honing as a team in the classroom to the outside world. Combining our discussions and knowledge of of the four controlling elements of photography; light, shutter speed, aperture/ depth of field and ISO we set out to photograph a defined area of the city of Liverpool, a small open square area on London Road. The results were quite varied…tbc 

lemon and lime; inclusive, ‘participant led’ photographic learning for all.

Hi! This blog was set up to provide an ongoing record of all the ‘photographic based learning activities’ I’m involved with and to simultaneously provide a ’space’ in which the participants of these activities can showcase their work, this blog then is really about them ‘the participants’, ‘the photographers’ ….From a personal point of view, I dint want to post the photographic learning content to my own blog or website but rather I wanted something separate from my own internet based photographic activity as participants/ students is the central focus here.

This site is about exchanging ideas, creative partnerships, open and inclusive learning for all, experimenting with photography, listening to one another’s contributions. It’s not about traditional photographic learning, top down educational models, exclusivity, the arts scene or any other nonsense. The site is the culmination my many photographic based learning practices and I encourage anyone who has a contribution, idea etc.. to comment and post to this blog and Ill do my best to highlight your project ideas etc…Projects follow an ‘informal educational model’.

The idea is that participants can follow the progress of their project, upload and share their work, comment on work/the site and so on…    

The site is called ‘lemon and lime’, as this is the umbrella name for many photography based learning projects. Futhermore I wanted to distance the project from traditional photographic learning models and to encourage all participants to see themselves as photographers, to ‘believe’ in their eyes and what they see – so the name is deliberately non-photographic.

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