Ideas

I unfortunately have many ideas for this assignment and am finding it hard to pick one to develop.




IDEA 1:

Idea 1 my first idea is to do a story on for and against fox hunting as a tradition and sport practiced for many centuries many citizens are pro fox hunting thinking it is not only their right but also a sport and a way to rid the country side of fox as they are seen as vermin on the other end of the scales there's most of the population of the UK and animal atavists who believe that it is a brutal and unacceptable "sport" in result of this the government has band it. I would love to do this assignment but there is a few things that are holding me back to carry it out one being my opinion of this situation may make the out come of this story bias I am completely against fox hunting and because of this I believe I will also find it hard to hear the point of view of pro fox hunting characters with out insulting their view & them them selves.

IDEA 2:

My second idea is in regard to the ongoing battle of badgers and bTB whether the cull will help or worsen the situation, or cure it and also about the vaccination of badgers, this story is one I am not bias on and therefore will be open to find out my own opinion. I will enjoy this subject also as in order to perfect this story I will have to spend time with the badgers and learn about a subject that I have been interested in all my life the only down fall of this story will be finding people and ways of extracting the information needed to create this properly. Also I don't know if I will be restricted because of the topic being a virus. 

IDEA 3:

I love this Idea because of its simplicity and how easy it will be to create compared with the other ideas which will give me the time and effort to make the assignment to a better quality. The idea is to research and get in touch with local conservationists on the topic of deforestation and the species that are most in danger of declining the quickest. I believe this will leave me with a lot of time to study the situation also because trees don't move unlike fox and badgers I could set up shoots to the highest standard, the only issues I have with this idea is the wow fact could be not of the same standard of the other ideas. 

CONCLUSION

I have come to believe that the better idea for this photo journalistic assignment would be Idea 3 due to the amount of sources I will be able to obtain, because of the ongoing subject has been an issue for hundreds of years the information will be vast and varied creating a good range of opinions and research that has already been conducted. I have contacted Dartmoor National Park on the subject and am at this stage awaiting their response, also I have a friend who has been working along side this issue for many years and will be extracting his knowledge as a result.The other reason for my picking this subject is that I have always wanted to construct a Black and white film project on trees as I believe there variety, texture and age is awe inspiring. The Trees shapes and the texture added with the authenticity and depth of black and white film prints leads me to believe that the out come will be a beautiful selection of final images. Although I would like to do the project in black and white I also think that the subject I am taking on will look just as good in colour due to the vibrancy and colour pallet I will be offered in the woodland habitat, along with HDR toning that I am looking forward to learning. All in all I would like to use a medium format film camera and a digital camera to try and get best of both worlds (have to talk over with tutors to see if this is possible). My story will be the way man has shaped the woodland landscapes in Dartmoor over the years, to do this I will have to contact conservationists and possibly historians that have worked on this subject. I know very little of the story but what I do know is that a vast woodland that used to cover Dartmoor has been largely diminished due to live stock and charcoal extracting. My story will be about the pros and cons of man's impact on the location. The main location I am desperate to use is Wistmans wood, the reason I am so keen to use this location is due to the age of the wood, it is one of the oldest woods on Dartmoor if not the eldest this helps me because it could possibly be the only wood that has survived man's arrival to Dartmoor, this could be due to man's superstition of the woods legends which is the fact of it being the most haunted place on Dartmoor. Another good location for this shoot may be Cann woods as I know for a fact that it has a large amount of deforestation and re-plantation of trees. I will present this assignment by using a blog to show my main body of work such as this and research and to present my images I am playing with the thought of creating a magazine article and blow it up to a large image in a plain floating frame so as not to detract from the images. My inspiration for this Idea came from Alex Nails Dartmoor collection, the beautiful photos showed me of what can be done on Dartmoor, the image that caused me to turn down this route was :

"Forest for the trees" taken from Leather Torr.http://www.alexnail.com/dartmoor/pine-forest/

I love this image I think it shows the spirit of the trees of Dartmoor. The image almost looks as it was taken in Canada which shouldn't be hard to believe as before the impact of man on the UK it was not that different such as the wildlife, the UK used to have Wolves, Bears, Lynx and Beavers but they were hunted to extinction and the land was heavily modified by man to support our selfish needs such as farming and fossil fuels. The other image that inspired me was:

Guardians of the Forest by Viveca Koh
This image was taken in Wistmans wood and reminded me of how magical the place is and the opportunity  that the place provides for this project. I love the way that she has added the glowing lights that give the image a fairy feel, the image also has a great angle which with out it would have seemed a lot less exciting. I reckon this image required a tripod as the image looks as if it was taken at dawn or dusk making the light not to a good enough standard also due to the heavy fog I reckon a flash would have bounced back of the moisture creating glowing orbs of water so I have narrowed it down to a long exposure shot that would have required a tripod. This project seems as if it has been made for me as the brief contains everything I wish to do in my career, I'm hoping that after I finish my degree I will find a job as a photo journalist in nature magazines such as BBC wildlife mag. My love and interest for nature and wildlife has no limits, before I started photography my main interest was wildlife which led me to work at a zoo, study animal care, dive and it even became the main subject of my photography work.


Development

I have decided to use the mamiya 645 for my images after seeing the results of other images taken on medium format cameras, I think I will use colour film then scan them in using the Nikon cool scan LS9000, this will allow me to have a great quality image that I can still put through P.S editing processes.
I will be taking a set of images showing both ends of the scale, a few shots of deforestation, a person pro deforestation,
a few places where planting is commencing, a person against deforestation and areas of trees that have escaped the process such as Wistmans wood.

NEW DEVELOPMENT

I have yet again changed my Idea on the use of film and camera, since I have seen the works of Sebastiao Salgado I have researched the film and camera type he uses to produce these high tonal range images and came to the conclusion that this will be more cost effective and add more drama to my final.Salgado uses a 35mm film camera with a black and white film called TRI-X 400 (more info in Salgado page). I will also be displaying my images with in a blown up magazine page to show how it would look in a photo-journalistic product.

POSSIBLE VARIATIONS

During the shoot I will be shooting both digital and film just in case of the film going wrong but also just in case I end up preferring the colour images and decide to use them as my finals, at the moment I can not decide due to them both having different properties that could sway my choice all in all it depends how the images come out at the end of the shoot that will determine the out come of this project.