Final Photographs

The Editing Process

The final edit of my photographs will have to be a very considered and thought about group of images which help to put across the job of the twenty first century industrial workers.

I started by getting together contact sheets of the over 700 photographs from the 4 shoots. I had a rough idea of which photographs I was going to choose however I made it a big thing that I was thorough in my edit to enable me to create the strongest set of images possible. I then started to edit down and pick out my favourite images from each scene that I photographed, looking for image quality, focus, content and overall suitableness.

In terms of the editing of the chosen 13 final images, I found that I did not have to do much hard manipulation other than simple levels, tone, brightness etc. I tried to do all of this hard work on the other side of the camera instead of in photoshop. 

The Picture Story

As Jason keep rightly reiterating, there are several structural must haves when it comes to any picture story. These are as follows:

• The hook shot
• The establishing shot
• The medium/ environmental shot
• The detail/ close-Up shot
• The portrait shot
• The gesture/ exchange shot
• The closing shot

It is very important when considering each shot for the set of final photographs, so that the story flows well and can be read easily by the viewer. It is not to say that the above guide cant be added to or adapted because it can and in many circumstances it often is.

Captions

I have been asked to include captions for each of my photographs inorder to create more of a story, of which would fit into a magazine/ editorial piece. In most editorial features there will be images which relate to the story, these images will more often than not have captions.

Captions are are a very important part of a magazine feature, they can help to describe the relevant image in a few words giving an informative summary of it.

I will try to show some of the humour within the metal work factory due to this being such a large part of what I saw whilst photographing and speaking to the workers. These captions will help to back up the humour that is apparent within some of the images but will not take away from the serious message that I am putting across.

Below are my captions:

Image 1- Bill 62 & Phil 51

Image 2- “I engrave my name on all of my tools”

Image 3- “The technique has remained the same for decades”

Image 4- “We still interact with the machines”

Image 5- “Patricia does all of our book work”

Image 6- “Cast Iron Anvil”

Image 7- “Over 1200 degrees”

Image 8- “Mind the sparks!”

Image 9- Safety Gear

Image 10- “Prioritizing is essential”­­

Image 11- “The world is health and safety mad these days”

Image 12- Bill “milk no sugar” Phil “milk one sugar”

Image 13- Bill-“You do more eating than you do working, Phil”

Note

I have, if not obvious, decided to stick to one of the briefs that I proposed to Jason and Karin due to the fact that I can get more involved in just one project rather than juggle two projects for the one assignment. I will come back to the 'Hands' proposal in my own time as it is a project I am interested in greatly. The route that I chose to pursue is the metal work photographs, as can be seen in my blog.

Thomas Ruff Machines

During the second shoot that I did at the forge, as well as building a better report with the men who work there, I also saw different potential routes to go down for the assignment. One of these potential paths was influenced by the work of Thomas Ruff, a photographer who recontextualizes images originally taken from an industrial pattern book. He reworks the images so that the end result is a hybrid of pre-existing photographs.

Below are examples of his work.

Whilst walking around the metal work factory I noticed an abundance of machines similar to that in Ruffs photographs, I obviously subconsciously photographed these with the images of Ruffs in my head helping me when setting up the photograph. Below are a few of these type of photographs that I took whilst at the forge, these are still very ruff and I have planned to rephotograph these machines on a white back drop.

I can see that there is much room for improvement in these photographs but I am using these purely as inspiration/ the basis for future photographs.

August Sander

The thing that I like about Sanders work is the pure dirty truth about them, they show hard working labourers. I want to try and capture a part of this in my photographs, which I intend to be fairly similar to these images. The similarity to my images is that his photographs are all taken in the labourers work place, as will mine.