Brief 5!

On 22/02/19 we were given our second last Photojournalism brief which gave us three subjects to choose from; Childhood, Outcast, or The Corner Shop and instructed us to create three images which could be used for an editorial piece based on one of those subjects.

I originally ruled out Childhood as I don’t know many children, certainly not closeby, and I didn’t want to go about asking strangers if I could photograph their kids! So then I was left with Outcast and The Corner Shop. I had originally thought for Outcast I could find some really alternative people but then after discussing the brief in class I realised that my lecturer was looking more for people who were on the fringes of society; people that wanted to be part of society but were not accepted. From this I quickly thought of homeless people; often they are trying to be a part of society and yet are ignored, and forgotten about.

From my inspiration images,

toronto-homelessness-201801033-e1515283136534

I liked the idea of showing how isolated homeless people often are, and felt that this would emphasise the feeling of them being outcast. To show this I thought of taking an images of a homeless individual with people rushing past and by using a long-ish shutter speed I could blur the passerby’s so the homeless person was the only focus of the image.

I went to Edinburgh however, after walking around for over 2 hours I wasn’t able to make contact with anyone that was happy to be photographed and for the images I wanted to take I really needed to be close in to the action and more involved with my subject. I headed back home feeling disappointed and vented to a friend who suggested I get in touch with one of their friends who had kids, as I could possibly photograph for the “Childhood” heading instead.

After reaching out to a few different people I was eventually connected with two women who were happy for me to photograph their children. It was actually great because I already knew them! In 2017 I had photographed the L.A.M.S. performance of “Anything Goes”, and both mothers were part of the cast! So I set up two shoots for the following day, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

My inspiration images for these shoots were;

I liked how animated these images were and wanted to show that in my own submission. I wanted soft, natural lighting which would aid my images in appearing more candid. I directed both mothers to dress their children as they normally would for the day, and once I arrived for each shoot I looked for natural pockets of light and kept my direction to a minimum.

In the morning I photographed Nicol, Mhairi’s 2 year old son, playing with his trains, and then playing in the garden; chasing his gran’s cat, and searching for the fish in the pond. These are some images from that shoot: