Course reflection and evaluation.

Course reflection and evaluation.

At the outset of this course I had little idea what I was getting into.  Up until that time my idea of a landscape was what my eye could see rather that what the painter or photographer saw when the image was formed.   Not only was I missing what he saw but also the message behind what he intended me to see when viewing the image. 

An Old Master landscape hanging in an ancestral pile now reveals itself as a declaration of power as well as wealth.  The paintings of Yosemite and the photographs of the railway opening up the American West are now seen as depicting both man's dominance over the wild country and as adverts to others to, “Come out West," and help open up the new territories.  

The essays in The Mind’s Eye by Henri Cartier Bresson, On Photography by Susan Sontag and Between the Eyes by David Levi Strauss have shown me how powerful images can be and how images can be composed and presented to get across a message.  Whilst I already realised how political images could be I feel I now have an understanding as to what makes a powerful image and how I can take and present them for myself.  

Fay Godwin’s pictures in Our Forbidden Land,  which often contain ironic messages and contrary notes, have led me to look the for the anomalous and ironic.  I used such an image in my Self Directed Project where I showed a view of monolithic and blank faced tower block and a partly demolished slum area surrounded by white hoardings on which the council had written “Welcome to Dover.”  This style is one I may take through to the final part of the course.  

What I take from the course is the wish to see more in a landscape than just its scenic beauty: to try and capture the sense of the scene and not the scene itself.

Assignment six. Transitions.

Assignment six: Transitions.

When I set out on this Assignment I had four projects running.  One was to photograph the churchyard at St. Georges in Deal, showing it through a year.  Three involved the cliffs and foreshore at Kingsdown near Walmer.  

The three Kingsdown projects were:
1. To show the foreshore area, known as The Butts, through the year and portray the changing colours of the plants and their growth and subsequent decay.
2. To take pictures of the sea itself north towards Deal along the length of the sea defences showing the effect of tide and wind.
3. To take pictures looking south towards Dover showing how the weather and tide changed the view.

I ran all four for about three months but realised the St. Georges set was going nowhere and abandoned it.

I ran all the Kingsdown projects for about eight months but then made a decision to drop two.  I ran into a period of poor health at that eight month mark and it was during that period that that I dropped two of the projects and concentrated on number three, the view south.

The plan was to show how a landscape either changes, or at least appears to change, over the period of a year.  Because the under cliff and the cliff are near devoid of vegetation the only changes are the tide, the weather, and the state of the sea.  There are occasional algae growths on the rocks but they are soon scoured off by the actions of waves and stones.

I tried to take all the images from the same spot but at times the weather, and especially the wind made this too dangerous.  One of the images, the first in the presentation, was the only image I took that day, clearly shows how atrocious the weather could be at this exposed spot.  I usually stayed for about an hour and would take in excess of fifty shots.  I used the same set up each time, an Olympus E3 with a 7-14 lens mounted on a Manfrotto tripod.  The time of the day was pretty random but I did try and catch the tide at either it's highest or lowest.  I made one night visit but it was too dangerous to attempt to reach my vantage point.

During my visits I also photographed the wildlife, and especially orchids, found there.   The name The Butts derives from the time when this area was a Royal Marine Rifle range.   There is a wealth of graffiti dating from that time engraved in the cliff face and I have started to make a record of it.   The area is still owned by the military and every so often they visit and turf everyone off.  It is also an SSSI.












                                         








        Early Spider Orchid.                                                                           Pyramidal Orchid.
                                      

 

        Heart cut in chalk with initials.

                                                                                               
                                                                                                          Initials dated 1920.
I set out to show how the seasons affected the cliffs but in the end I demonstrated that they  are immutable.

Did I succeed in my project?  I think I did but not in the way I expected.  I thought the cliffs would reflect more of the elements than thy did.  Only one image, the first,  gives any hint as to how rough the weather could be or reflect how bitterly cold it was on early morning visits.  In his book Chasing the Light  Ibarionex Perello  makes the point that it is important to get the image, as the chance to take it in more favourable circumstances may not arrive.

Perello, Ibarionex. 2011. Chasing the Light: Improving Your Photography with Available Light.  New Riders. 

On Tuesday 20th. May 2015 I returned to Kingsdown to photograph Early Spider Orchids for The National History Museum and found George Rowlett painting the very scene I had been photographing for this assignment.  To watch him work was a delight.  I add a photograph of him at work.  

The Images.

Assignment five. Self-directed project.

Assignment 5. Self-directed project.

When I planned this assignment I knew roughly what I wanted to portray and that was the less seemly side of Kent, the side of Kent that the tourist will not be seeking out but may have to confront.  The images are presented in mono as I feel the addition of colour would soften the impact.

With the exception of the beach and litter images, which are by nature temporary, all the other images are of objects that were either designed to look they do or have been left in the their current state for a long time.  I have added further comments to the images.

As I said at 4.5 in my outline for this assignment I was impressed by the work of Keith Arnett and Fay Godwin and the way they used black and white images.  I took the shots in RAW colour, manipulated them and produced these final images.

Have I succeeded?  Yes I think I have.  It was not as easy as I thought it would be as there is little in the way of fly-tipping, graffiti, or car dumping which I hoped would provide me with plenty of images.  As I said above, most of the pictures are of objects that look the way they do by design or decay.  They are both avoidable and preventable.  I will be displaying some of these images in the community centre where I work and which is often visited by local politicians. 

1. This is a picture of what is left of Snowdown Colliery and shows just two of the many buildings that have been left to fester and rot since the closing of the mine in 1987.   

2. This is all that remains of Richbough Power Station which closed in 1996.  The cooling towers and the chimney be demolished in 2012 but this eyesore has been left.  

3. Dungeness Power Station should need no introduction.  Built out on the end of the shingle  peninsular it can been seen from as far away  as Dover.  To some it may have a brutal beauty but the area would look a whole lot better without it and its attendant pylons.

4. For these there can be no excuse.  Ugly, intrusive, expensive, and largely useless.  

5. From 1952 until 2010 Pfizer UK had built a vast complex at Sandwich with both research and manufacturing capacity.  In 2010 Pfizers up and left, leaving acres of unusable buildings.  Many have been demolished but this mothballed and silent chemical plant remains.  

6.  Gas holder in Deal.  It is not the gas holder that is the eyesore; it is the scrubby unloved area around it.    

7. I now come to Dover which must be one of my least favourite places.   My main reason for not liking it is that it is a town of lost opportunities.  On paper it has so much going for it with Dover Castle, the White Cliffs, the ferry port and its proximity to France.   The image below is not what most people would think of when the name Dover is mentioned but it is the reality for most of the housing stock. 

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8. "Welcome to Dover".   This mess is not some temporary site waiting for new and imminent construction but a scene that has prevailed for years.  What do first time visitors to Dover make of it?

9.  This one is unforgivable.  Dover's sea front consists largely of elegant Georgian houses and hotels which add  a degree of grandeur to the area.  Following damage to parts of the fronts houses new buildings were erected to replace them.  This is what the planners came up with.  The sublime of the Castle ruined by the hideousness of an edifice that would not look out of place in the old Rumania.  What were they thinking?

10. Margate.  Margate may have the Turner Gallery and a bright new harbour area but it also has the remnants of the old Dreamland Fun Fair.  Since its closure in 2003 various schemes have been put forward to develop the site but as the wooden roller coaster is a listed structure none have been successful.  Since I took the pictures of the site a mysterious fire has caused the roller coaster to collapse.  The site is a blot on a recovering town. 

11. A grim block of flats viewed through the above mentioned roller coaster.  When the Thanet Regeneration Board wrote the slogan, "Margate, the original seaside", they had not had a good look round.  

12. I have produced this image in colour as it highlights the quantity and variety of rubbish on the beach under the White Cliffs.  Most of it appears to be plastic containers brought down the coast from Dover and its ferries.  No attempt is being made to tidy up this area.

13. The variety of rubbish on the foreshore knows no bounds as the presence of this piece of car shows.  

14. Fly tipping isn't generally a problem in the area but I found this pile of broken pallets off The Ancient Highway between Deal and Sandwich.  Thoughtless and deliberate.

15. This is a discarded or lost crab pot washed up on the beach at Kingsdown.