Brief 2

For our second Photojournalism brief we were tasked with taking an A3 portrait image to illustrate an article from THE SCOTSMAN titled “Loves letters to be sent from Edinburgh’s Hogmanay before Brexit”. We were told it shouldn’t be too literal and contain a strong human element.

From what we dicsussed in class it was determined that:

• can’t go to this event before deadline but headline is main point
• can’t be letters, too obvious
• think off-beat, not too literal
• “Europe we love you” – Graham
• can be symbolic
• candid or posed

From this I started to think about the sharing of cultures between Scotland and the other countries in the EU and I immediately thought of sharing different kinds of food, maybe photographing people from different cultures sharing foods that were obviously not native to Scotland i.e. cheeses, curries, paella etc. I wanted to focus on the gesture of sharing to show the love and sharing of cutlures between our countries.

Using Facebook Events and Google I searched the web to find if there were any food markets/stalls on that weekend (22/09/18-23/09/18) but needed a model for the image I had planned. My friend was available on the Sunday to go out to a market in Edinburgh so the day before I sketched out a couple of ideas I had on Photoshop:

The first image is what I went with in the end; I wanted someone in the foreground drinking Irn Bru (to tie in with Scotland) and then through them you could see people from the market interacting with the public. The second image I had thought of was similar in that I again wanted something in the foreground to frame the image. So I had planned on having two people cheersing beer bottles blurred out, framing a couple walking and holding hands. However, I went with my first idea in the end which turned out like:

Although I got this image and felt it worked well I was concerned that I might not meet the brief again and so set up a second shoot at Calton Hill in Edinburgh with model, Sarah-Louise Main. I remembered from college the previous year another student had purchased a clear crystal ball which, when shot through, caused refraction and so the image would be upside down. I thought that using something like that would make the image more interesting as it could be seen as the world turned upside down. So I purchased my own clear crystal ball and wanted to capture Sarah-Louise in a powerful pose, seen through the ball but also seen in the background but out of focus. I set up this shoot for Monday 24th September and captured these images:

Unfortunately, after showing my three images to Graham and the rest of my class it was decided that none of these images fit the brief. The first image was too vague and didn’t show enough connection to the EU or sharing of cultures and my other two images failed for similar reasons. I queried Graham to see if the reshoot had to be a whole new concept or if I could take an image that was basically the same as the two images i took at Calton Hill but with the addition of an EU flag and he said that would be fine.

So I ordered an EU flag on the Sunday and on the Tuesday I got my friend, Robbie, to meet me at Calton Hill where we recreated a similar image but with the addition of an EU flag:

The original printing of the image was not correctly exposed so the hand in the foreground was too light, and the background was too dark. However, Graham said that it passed as the concept worked better than my original. Before sending the digital copies over to Graham I re-edited my image so it was exposed properly.

Due to the positioning of the sun at the time of taking the final image I couldn’t use the exact same location as I had before, so you can’t see Arthur’s Seat but I feel the idea is still the same. Due to Robbie’s schedule I wasn’t able to shoot later in the day however, if I had had less time constraints I would have shot the image with Arthur’s Seat in the background again as I felt it tied the image together better.

This time around I felt the brief was more difficult than the first, but I am learning a lot every time we do it so I feel I’m getting the hang of things more as we go on.