Final Piece

The final piece is now complete for sending in.

The topic has remained the Fife defences, concentrating on those from WWI and WWII. These are coastal remains that fascinate me, as they are so rarely visited except by the local graffiti artists, and were so important in the defence of Britain.

I ended using a mix of monochrome and colour to show the feelings they evoked in me. Many were taken in poor weather, a few in bright sunshine. Most were taken using a Panasonic Lumix G1.The images were taken in RAW, processed via Lightroom 3, and the pages put together in Photoshop Elements 8. The font for all the pages except the title page is Ariel.

Title Page.

This shows the tank blocks that were made in their thousands and lined the coast. They are hardly visible today in most places, and many have been moved. Monochrome was used to emphasise the graphic nature of the cubes. The font is 'Day Poster Black', which was then outlined with a white stoke in Elements.

Page 1.

The castles along the seacoast make dramatic images, especially when seen on a stormy day. I choose to concentrate on the skies to show the often threatening nature of the weather in Scotland in winter. This was emphasised further in monochrome.

Page 2

The later defences are much less dramatic, and often much less visible. Here the lower image shows how the bunkers sits on the hill, and uses the hill as protection, unlike the castles which stand above the landscape. The colour detail image shows the overgrowth of ivy and closed over window.

Page 3.

The colour images here show the scale of the massive gun emplacements, and how desolate they are.

Page 4.

The use of colour shows how different the bunkers look in different seasons, but they are still overwhelmed by the new (relative to the age of the bunkers) tree growth.

Page 5.

This page uses a combination of detail (above) and landscape of the same building. The lower image is taken from where one would stand if operating the gun.

Page 6.

The graffiti, from inside the last bunker in the line, was taken with a slow speed rather than using flash, as the flash distorted the colours and made it look too 'new'. An alternative would have been to use flash and alter the colours in Lightroom.

Page 7.

The landscape image shows a line of blocks looking over the coast, here the alien nature of the blocks is emphasised by the grey against the blue, but in most cases the blocks are being slowly broken down by the elements and lichen.

Page 8.

Colour was chosen here to show the deserted, rust streaked, nature of the hangers. A similar image in monochrome also worked well but did not fit so well in the sequence when looking from the previous page (7) to this one.

Page 9.

Here the defences stand out from the landscape of the nature reserve, and are being slowly destroyed by nature.

Page 10.

I returned to monochrome for the final image to show my emotion when faced with the lack of care given to these monuments of war. This image also has the only human figure, a hardly visible person  sitting waiting in army dress.

The hardest part of this project was to cut down the number of image used from hundreds of possible ones. Initially I had several more on some of the pages, but the pages looked cluttered, and the additional images did not add anything to the story.  I also tried using all monochrome and all colour, but in the end decided a mixture told the story better and was more interesting to look at. I also tried a variety of fonts for the text, but they made reading it more difficult and proved an unnecessary complication.

Final Piece

The final piece for TAOP has to be in the form of a magazine article telling a photographic story. I have decided to show the WWI and WWII defences that circle the coast of Fife, most of which are in very poor repair and can only be found if you are actively looking for them, they are certainly not signposted like most historic monuments, although they probably should be.

1. Title page - concrete blocks
2. Coastal shot
3. Castles
4. Rosyth 1
5. Rosyth 2
6. Braefoot
7. Charles Point
8. Leven Airfield
9. Concrete blocks
10. Tentsmuir 1 - bunkers
11. Tentsmuir 2 - sentry post and gun supports

Decisions to be made:

1. colour or monochrome - or a mixture
2. typeface
3. amount of explanation

Exercise - Evidence of Action

This exercise is to show that something has happened, something broken or emptied or finished.

Shattered Mirror - ISO 200, f/4.0, 32mm efl, 1/30 sec

I did not deliberately break this mirror, but heard a tremendous crash one night in a storm and it had fallen away from the wall and shattered. This illustrates broken as a concept.

Only one image was needed - but the house opposite is having its roof replaced before winter and another crash drew me outside to find this, the concept her is rubbish, thrown away or old and worn out.

Welsh Slate - ISO 320, f/9.0, 90mm efl, 1/60 sec.

Other concepts that are shown in magazines and on TV are: 

• wealth, poverty
• taste - food or clothing
• safety
• space (or lack of space)
• happiness

None of these are easy to photograph directly - so symbols are required. Some come so familiar that the symbol is enough to bring the concept to mind ,  a- castle = protection.  Some symbols give mixed messages and understanding depends on the context. Fire can mean warmth or danger, very different meanings, almost opposite in nature.

Exercise - Rain

In this exercise the idea was to show, in one image, rain. This sounds simple - but it isn't. The photo also needs to be original, and a 'good' photograph. I have tried several goes at it and am not yet entirely satisfied.

Attempt 1.

Walking in the Rain. - ISO 100, f/5.6, 24mm efl, 1/60 sec

This was taken in Edinburgh at Holyrood Palace while we were waiting for a break in the torrential rain. RAW edited in Lightroom 3, mono conversion in Silver Efex Pro, and some minor work in PSE8 (mostly removing a TV aerial).

Attempt 2.

Raindrops - ISO 250, f/5.6, 90mm efl, 1/125 sec

This was an attempt to show the raindrops bouncing up from the pavement. It was less than successful, although the paving certainly looks wet!

Attempt 3.

After the Rain - ISO 80, f/2.7, 47mm efl, 1/500 sec

This was after a very heavy rainstorm and the clouds are still lowering overhead. I love the picture - but am not sure that it really shows rain, maybe storms, or light.

So far I am not happy that any of these really fulfill the brief, however, the other day I was sitting inside the office at work and the rain was pouring down the window and everything outside was given a rippled effect. I couldn't immediately get up and take a photo, but - maybe it could be replicated with a hose pipe. An experiment is required.

Exercise - Juxtaposition

This exercise is designed to show how things work together to give an illustration of a theme. I choose to illustrate a book cover, partly because my narrative story is about a person and their hobby, partly because I find still life setups challenging, both to make and also to light and photograph.

The first challenge was to find an appropriate book, many of the books in our house are science fiction, and I struggled to think of a still life that would work. Eventually I remembered one of my favourite books of modern poetry - Of Rowan and Pearl - poems about rural Scotland.

                                                              'these berries

                                           that flare out in bunches

                                           enamelled in sheerest red..'.

                                                           ( Margaret Gillies Brown)

I set out by finding a rowan branch, they are full of berries at the moment, some seashells and strings of pearls. The arrangement went though many permutations, initially getting more complex, but I finally settled on a simple close up of the berries and pearls. I went though a slow process of setting up, photographing, checking images on the PC and then altering the arrangement. This meant I could leave the camera and lights in position and only change one variable at a time. I also carefully followed my checklist developed earlier, after assignment 4 feedback.

• think about what you are taking 
• rowan and pearls
• why are you taking it?
• for a book cover - therefore a portrait  shot is likely to work better
• what detail are you concentrating on?
• the colour of the berries
• what light are you using?
• artificial , lit from a slight angle, at the level of the berries and reflected via a gold reflector
• shutter speed and aperture
• aperture chosen to get as much of the picture in focus as possible, shutter speed not important as using a tripod, and cable release. ISO 100 to minimise grain.
• focal point
• the point at the middle of the berries and the top of the pearls, manual focus used to get this spot on.

ISO 100, f/22, 90mm efl, 2.5 secs.

• did it work?
• yes
• if so – why
• plenty of thought during the process!
• if not – why not
• what settings did you use
• as above, slow shutter speed, and small aperture
• what lighting
• artificial - but moved the light around until it really shined on the pearls
• what post-processing
• minimal, RAW processed in Lightroom 2, slight sharpening and enhancement of the red colour, levels checked in PSE8
•  

I then had some more fun making a book cover using the picture. I did try various more complicated layouts - but finally went for something simple. The title font is called 'Broken Ghost' and is available free online. The names are in 'Century'.