seeing the blind...

Today I spent the afternoon at a visually impaired shooting session at Helston and District Rifle Club with Joe Stinton, a thirty-seven-year-old man who lives in Helston, a small town outside of Falmouth. Unlike the majority of the shooters present today, Joe is completely blind. Despite this, he has been shooting since 1999, stopping only momentarily when his child was born. He has been selected twice to compete in the World Championships, and on Friday he will be joining the rest of the Helston team to compete at the British Blind Shooting Championship in Wolverhampton.

Joe relies on a laser fixed to the gun's barrel  to 'see'. The laser points towards the target, resulting in a high pitched noise to be relayed to the headset; the higher the pitch, the closer he is pointing to the centre of the target. Once all his shots are fired, the target is pulled back to the Joe via the rope and pulley system for inspection.   

There are two disciplines in blind shooting: Supported and Unsupported. Quite self-explanatory, Supported shooting is with the use of a tripod and a chair; Unsupported is with neither. Of course, shooting unsupported is far harder, and only Joe and one other shooter at the club are skilled enough to do it. 

Helper Kieth Busby acts as Joe's eyes when initially aiming the gun towards the target. After that, it is all down to Joe.

A perfect score of fifty. Joe gets five shots before the round is over; the bullseye is worth ten points. During the competition this weekend, however, the competitors will only have two shots per target, with thirty targets to hit under timed conditions. 

Joe is surprisingly efficient at manoeuvring, and only needs help when traversing larger distances and attempting tasks which require more dexterity than average.  

Joe celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday two days ago.

This was a fascinating shoot to say the least, and I think Joe is a brilliant guy. He was more than happy for me to be there and we are meeting again next week, at which time I plan to capture more of his day-to-day life. 

S

The Portrait Element: Manningtree Sailing Club - David Shipley and Sid Smith

On Thursday 5th January, I visited Manningtree Sailing Club to photograph David Shipley - an ex-marine engineer now 18 years' retired. He is an acquaintance of my grandfather's, who is heavily involved with the club and all things nautical. We met at the Manningtree Sailing Club clubhouse, where, over  a couple of pints of Adnams, we discussed his history of sailing and involvement with the club. Below are a couple of examples of some digital work I produced on the day - as with the rest of my portrait sessions, I will not be able to process any of the films until I return to University (which is tomorrow, thankfully). Throughout this shoot I used  my Canon 450D DSLR and Olympus OM - 2n (35mm film), along with a Metz flashgun. 

David Shipley

Shipley was a keen sailor in the past, competing in numerous national and international races - the largest being the North Sea Passage race, which he entered a total of seven times and won twice. He also won the London Frostbite race three times - a race which takes competitors 32 miles along the River Thames, starting at Tower bridge and ending at Erith Yacht Club. His hay-day was cut short, however, due to the un-timely death of his friend during a boating race in Holland. Since then, Mr. Shipley has merely dabbled in sailing, buying and refurbishing a small fleet of traditional fishing boats and selling them. In between this and sporadic pheasant-shooting excursions, David has battled with cancer and is the full-time carer of his mother, who, regrettably, is otherwise incapable of looking after herself.       

David showing me a picture of his dingy on his mobile phone.

Sid Smith

Whilst photographing David, I took the opportunity to make some portraits of my Grandfather, Sidney Smith.  I have not as yet had the opportunity to undertake portraiture with a member of my family, and I found that the personal relationship made for far more successful and intimate portraits. Like David, my grandfather was, and still is, a keen sailor and an exceptional advocate of the Manningtree Sailing Club. 

  

Above are three of my favourite digital portraits from the day - in particular the middle and bottom portraits. I think that these are the most successful because they show the estuary map in the background - the Stour estuary being a huge part of Sid's life, which gives context to his extensive history and his love of the landscape. 

Sid posing next to his yacht

I am really happy with the results of this shoot, and I would like to carry out more photographic documentations of my family in the near future - the personal aspect of the subject matter created a very close emotional connection between me and the photographs, and a great sense of pride in the images. For now, however, I need to concentrate on my University projects at hand, which require me to deal with subjects who I am not familiar with.

Reading poetry

S

Nina Berman

Nina Berman

Nina Berman is a documentary photojournalist with a particular Interest in American political and social landscape. Her work has been widely published, exhibited and collected, receiving awards in art and journalism from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the World Press Foundation. Her images of wounded American war veterans have become recognised internationally through solo exhibitions in galleries such as the Dublin Contemporary and Princeton University.

Purple Hearts

Purple Hearts is a body of work consisting of portraits of wounded American soldiers photographed in their homes, military hospitals and bases across the U.S.A. The Images are part of book published by Trolley books.

I find Berman’s use of light very interesting, using both artificial and ambient light to illuminate her subjects. The portraits were shot using medium format film, which results in portraits of stunning quality and colour – as seen on the above left image, the use of film produces vivid colours which really captivate the viewer; the scene of the veteran standing outside his home almost seems surreal and artificial, with the man’s semi-bionic arm emphasising this. On the contrary, the above right portrait, shot through a piece of glass or plastic, has a far more human feel due to the use of softer or ambient light. The subject is lit from one angle only, casting the right side of her body in shadow. This, and the fact the portrait was shot through the glass mottled by condensation and dirt, gives rise to a great sense of humanity and sombreness. For me, the barrier in front of the subject acts as a metaphor which represents the physical barrier he will be facing for the remainder of his life.

9/11 – afterglow

After the attacks on the world trade centre, Berman was on hand to photograph the aftermath of the event. The series was shot on 35mm black and white film, and are presented side by side to create semi-panoramic views.

I think that the idea to put present the photographs side by side creates some interesting effects, with one image leading on to the next, often blurring the boundaries. However, sometimes the effect is a bit over-powering, and I feel that the meaning is somewhat lost on certain occasions – for example the above images of the Stock Exchange partnered with a shot of some rubble. I think the fact that the two images are so busy creates a problem – when they come together it often becomes very difficult to view them as single images. I think in comparison with other work of the same subject, Berman’s photography is quite weak – Joel Meyerowitz’s body of work dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 deals with the event in a far more in-depth and emotional manner. I believe that this problem is all a matter of access – Meyerowitz was the only photographer in the world who was given access to the Ground Zero site where the workers were clearing the site.

Joel Meyerowitz - Aftermath 

By gaining full access to Ground Zero, Meyerowitz managed to create photographic profiles of the workers themselves, through portraiture and candid shots, to give a far more human feel to the events. This sense of humanity is something that Berman unfortunately does not capture in her work due to her lack of such intimate access.              

S 

Ivor Prickett

Ivor Prickett

Irish-born documentary photographer Ivor Prickett dedicates his time to completing long-term photographic projects, whilst at the same time carrying out editorial assignments for a wide range of international clients. Prickett has worked on numerous projects, and is particularly interested in post-war areas dealing with the aftermath of conflict. Currently, Prickett is based in the Middle East where he has been documenting th revolutions in Egypt and Libya.

Portraits

Amongst his documentary photo-stories, Prickett carries out many commissioned portraiture shoots for various magazines, newspapers and journals – including the Sunday The National, the Saturday and Sunday Telegraph, and Fader magazine. The majority of these portraits are shot on medium format.

This is one of my favourite portraits by Prickett. It is of top Syrian Jockey Bourhan Sallah after winning a race at Latakia racecourse in North-Western Syria as part of a body of work commissioned by The National magazine. I think that this is a very simple but brilliant portrait, with a spacious frame and ambient light. The use of colour by Prickett picks up on the brightness of the jockey’s yellow uniform, which immediately catches the eye amongst the more conservative hues. There is a great sense of direction in this photograph, too, even though it is a static shot – the lines cut in to the sand to form the racecourse are emphasised by the white fence which runs adjacent to it, leading the eye inwards towards the subject. This is all contained in the square frame of the medium format exposure, which helps to give a sense of equality and completion which makes the portrait that more compelling.

Free Libya

The Libyan uprising started in mid-February 2011, at the peak of the ‘Arab Spring’, following the example of countries such as Tunisia and Egypt. Prickett travelled to Libya twice during this time, witnessing brutal fighting and its aftermath, as well as the “eerie normality” that descended on the country as it became clear that Col Gaddafi would not go down easily.

 As with his portraiture, Prickett documented the Libyan conflict with a medium format film camera, capturing the events in stunning clarity and colour. I chose this shot of rebel forces – reacting to incoming shells fired by Gaddafi’s loyalists – as an example because it shows the extremely dangerous and difficult conditions Prickett would have been working under – especially when using a medium format film camera. The results, however, were definitely worth the effort, as what ensued are a fantastic set of images that document the uprising in a whole new way. The decision to use medium format film instead of a 35mm digital SLR shows the conflict in stunning quality and colour, picking up on the details and hues that are abundant in the Libyan landscape: the arid desert sand and rock; the dark hues of the weaponry and vehicles; the deep blues of the immaculate Middle Eastern skies. The above shot is in fact not my favourite image of Prickett’s from the set, but it is the best example of his dedication and talent as a photojournalist to shoot with medium format in extremely dangerous conditions – for that, I respect Prickett a lot and I look forward to seeing more work of house in the future.   


S

The Portrait Element: Glynn Thomas

Today I carried out a portrait shoot with Glynn Thomas, a Suffolk printmaker who specialises in etched prints with stunning colour. Both my family and I are big fans of Thomas, and several of his prints hang from the walls in our house. His abstract landscapes depict a world with a perspective flipped on its head - roads appear to begin in the sky; huge chunks of towns and villages are flipped on there heads in a conglomeration of architecture and natural scenery. I was lucky enough to gain access to his studio, where Thomas creates his works on a traditional Victorian replica printing press. 


Thomas was born in Cambridge in 1946 and studied at the Cambridge School of Art from 1962 - 67, specialising in illustration and printmaking. He then taught printmaking at Ipswich School of Art for twelve years; now, Thomas resides in the sleepy village of Capel St. Mary in Suffolk, working as a full-time artist. He has illustrated a number of books and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers; at the Society's 1983 annual exhibition, his etching 'Honfleur', was awarded the Davys' prize for the best print.


Portraits

Glynn poses next to his traditional Victorian replica printing press.

I felt that this shoot was far more successful than the one at the Pinkuah Arms last week - above are a few examples of the portraits I took using my DSLR (as with the previous shoot, I will not be able to view the film exposures until I return to University). 

There was far better light in his studio than in the Pinkuah Arms, and the room was infinitely more photogenic. With Glynn I felt a lot more comfortable and a lot more confident in using the flash gun, I was also far more proficient in the positioning of the subject. Furthermore, I was far more aware of composition, spending  more time on each shot - making sure I bracketed (when shooting on film) and taking the time to talk to Glynn between shots to create a more comfortable atmosphere. After about ten minutes I was shooting without doubt in my exposure or composition.

 

Above are my three favourite portraits taken on my digital camera - if I was to decide an ultimate favourite from the three similar frames, it would probably be the very top image, simply because of his more relaxed stance and the way I shot from below, giving a far more interesting composition.

I am particularly proud of these shots because I believe they are the first time I have managed to truly use the Metz flash to its fullest potential - the subject is well-lit by the flash, but not overpowered by it. To help create the softer light I covered the flash head with a piece of white clothe held in place with an elastic band, helping to create a nice tonal range and a softer light, with dark hues of brown, green and blue. 

The final three portraits are of Glynn standing with his traditional Victorian replica printing press, which he uses to create his prints. I think these images are very successful, as they are well-lit and serve the purpose of environmental/formal portraits well. Again, I used the Metz flash with the make-shift soft box to create a more ambient light. Here, though, Glynn was also lit by light coming in through a window, which illuminated the scene nicely, picking up the details in his clothes and in the frame of the printing press. 

All in all, I am very happy with the results of this shoot, and I can't wait to see how the films process. Next week I am heading to Manningtree for a portrait shoot at the sailing club there - I am exciting to continue using the Metz flash more and more to keep on improving my portraits. 

S