Photoshoots

Willington 

Disused cooling towers 

Canon Mark II 
24-105mm and 10-20mm lenses

The disused cooling towers in Willington were my first shoot. I decided to shoot these as they work perfectly with my theme 'power sources and how they interact with there surrounding environments'. 

I really liked the fact that the towers were abandoned, it shows a lasting impact. Showing that even though they are no longer in use they are still impacting the area visually. 

I drove to Willington and parked in a social club car park about 500 meters away from the cooling towers. I had see the club before but never taken much notice. When I parked up I decided to get out and start shooting, showing the cooling towers peering over the club. I then noticed that the club was named 'The Chimneys' and had a logo with five cooling towers. I couldn't have asked for a better photo opportunity to demonstrate the way in wich the towers effect the local area. The local area semmed to have embraced the towers or at least the club had. 

I continued to shoot for a little bit longer around 'The Chimneys'. Once I had shot enough I decided to it was time to get closer. I walked down the road to see where I would be able to get a good shot from. I had seen a brilliant image taken by a Magnum photographer of a cooling tower being built, in the shot there was a group of sheep in the foreground. I really liked the effect of this image so I aimed to create something similar, or with a similar effect and as luck would have it there was a field full of sheep next to the cooling towers. 

I entered the field and started walking and shooting. At this point the 24-105 lems decided to stop working, there was an issue with contacts on the sensor. So I was forced to shoot with the 10-20 lens, this isn't a bad lens but it is very restrictive in terms of zoom. This meant I had to get very close to the sheep to achieve the shot I wanted and as you can imagine the sheep didn't like me getting that close, so I couldn't get the shots I wanted.  

As I was walking around the field I noticed there was a panel taken out of the fence leaving an opening into the grounds of the cooling towers, although this maybe wasn't totally up to health and safety regulations I couldn't pass up the opportunity to photograph the towers up close. 

I made my way around the towers. Around the towers there was a huge waste land, the size of 3 or 4 football pitches. I walked around the perimeter shooting, there were large mounds of dirt and misc objects and piles. I photographed everything I could trying to show the towers and there impact in the truest form. 

I found it quite interesting that underneath the towers there was a multitude of different graffiti as if the towers had now become a place for people to go to expres themselves, away from everyone. This is another form of interaction between a power source and the community. 

After I had shot enough in the cooling towers area, I left and re-entered the sheep field. At this point the 24-105 lens has started working again. I began photographing the sheep with the large towers in the background. While I was doing this I stumbled upon (not literally) a sheep corpus which had mostly rotted away.  Like any edgy photographer I shot it in the same way I had been shooting the live sheep, Im not sure whether this says anything about the project or whether its just a cool image. I need to this about this further. 

My final shots were taken with the small barn in the foreground and the cooling towers behind. I really like there shots they meet my criterial of a loaded, deep full of detail without being over powered. 

Overall this was a very informative and worthwhile shoot. I got a lot of ideas and it helped me progress in this assignment.  


AFTER THE SHOOT 

Once I got back to college and loaded up the images I realised I had ballsed up. I had been shooting for the most part of the shoot using the shade white balance setting. This was a bad idea, it had made the images rather warm, giving them a almost sepia tone. I HATE SEPIA. 
So I chose the best images and began editing them, adding a cooling filter which more or less sorted them. 

As I was editing I went onto the HUE setting, I have never really used this setting so I played with it and really like the results. I pushed it all the way to the right and all the greens turned a deep purple. I loved this, it worked perfectly, working with the subject matter so well and added an extra leve of depth to the image. 

I will be continuing this effect to see if it works in different settings. 

(Examples of the edited hue images)

Contact Sheets

 These are are my selection of images from the shoot. I decide to correct them (removing the warmth from the images) so that they would look as natural as possible.

This location and subject matter really warranted a wide shot, something with impact. I realised early on in the shoot and while examining the shots that the close up images just weren't right, they didn't convey anywhere near the same amount of impact as the wide angle shots. The close ups seemed squashed and with out focus where as the larger shots were spacious but still full of interesting subject matter. Even certain wider angle shots such as image number 4 and 9 still seem a bit cramped compared to shots like 1 and 2.

I feel 1, 2, 5, 6 & 7 are the best images I produced on this shoot. Each major element in the image is proportioned correctly in conjunction with each other e.g. In image number 2 the towers dont over shadow the shed, the troff isn't to small that it becomes insignificant, the tree on the left fills the space perfectly and isn't cut off in the framing.

Although overall I think the best images for this shoot were taken in the fields around and the grounds of the cooling station I do like the shot taken around 'The chimneys' social club. These image have a slightly different aesthetic (well, the shots I like do e.g. image 6) they are taken from a different angle, feature a more toned down colour pallet and instead of being full of green space the shots are packed with more subject matter but without being too busy. These images also use leading lines effectively, with almost everything apart from the tree and the towers being a straight line but this is done in an effective way thus not becoming over powering.

I haven't decide yet whether its the shots I've taken, the subject matter or a mix of the two but the portrait images are no where near as strong, for certain stand alone pieces of subject matter it works well but on this particular shoot landscape images are much more effective.

The shots that have worked best are ones that seem to either have a horizon that changes levels/is disrupted (images 2 and 7) or shots that incorporate an amalgamation of leading lines (images 3 and 6).

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Rugeley 

Power station B

Canon Mark II 

24 - 105mm and 50mm lenses

For my second shoot I decided to continue photographing power stations, at this point I have not totally decide whether I will be souley focusing on power stations as my subject matter but this seems to be the way I am leaning at this point. 

I decide to photograph Rugeley power station B as it is quite close to where I live and it is also a live station (apposed to Willington which was closed). The power station is located along side the river trent on the outskirts of Rugeley. The 4 large cooling towers and chimney are a very prominent feature of the skyline in and around the town, protruding from luscious fields, peeking from behind homes/business and generally creeping into your eye line. 

I began my shoot in the town, trying to find photo opportunities that conveyed the way that the people of Rugeley have changed for /adapted too/ reacted against the cooling towers. Although the towers were very noticeable there was very little interaction from the residents of the Rugeley. There were no themed social club to be seen, nothing celebrating the towers but then again nothing going against them.

Despite this while I was walking along the side of the power station I did notice something. Trees had been planted surrounding the entire station. The trees wee roughly 10 feet tall and in normal circumstances would have been sufficient cover to disguise something and to an extent the thick layers of trees do a good job but the sheer size of the towers over power the trees and continue to loom over the them. Rendering the trees futile.

I found this concept quite entertaining so while I was shooting I tried to line up certain parts of the trees with the towers and chimney. I really enjoy this approach and I will be looking into it further.

After shooting in the town and not having much luck I moved closer to the station. I had noticed a ruble yard on the way to the station as I was driving into Rugeley so I decided to go there and see what I could get. I parked up and entered the ruble yard. I climbed to the top of the ruble pile and started shooting; the station was peaking over the top of the pile. I had started shooting with the 50mm but after a few shots I realized it was way to restrictive so I switched to the 24-105mm lens which gave me a lot for variety and different shots to work with. I shot here for a while, moving around to get different shots and angles. As I was leaving a lorry had come and opened the gate into the much larger ruble yard which was on the other side of the train tacks. I walked through the now open gate, down a tunnel and came out in the larger ruble yard which had a better view of the station. I shot for a short while but had to swiftly leave as the lorry started coming back.

After my swift get away I headed closer to the station. I parked on a small sort of estate with a McDonalds, Beefeater type restaurant and a premier inn surrounded by wasteland, a common theme around power stations. 

I started shooting juxtaposing the business on the estate and the power station in the background. I then moved closer to the station walking along the outskirts of the station photographing the trees and the way they work with the towers (I have already spoken about this).

Finally as I was leaving Rugeley I decide to get a few final images from behind the power station. I looked on google maps and noticed there was a long lane leading to a dead end behind the station. I found the land and drove down it. There was another lane come off this one which took me to a good viewing point. I parked up and started shooting after a while a moved further down the lane shooting from different places. I continued this until I had enough images.

I think this shoot was quite successful; I got a good collection of images and some fresh ideas.

I do wish I had gotten more images from inside the town juxtaposing the homes with the towers, showing how the towers blend in and or stand out.  

Contact Sheets 

These are the images I've selected from the shoot.

Although I have selected these images as my best shots I think the last part of the shoot (images 12 to 25) were the best and most photogenic. Although images 1 to 11 are interesting and have a strong composition, with an abundance of eye catching pieces of subject matter they just don't work quite as well as the later images. The reasons the later shots work better are; firstly the shots are much cleaner, there isn't a huge amount of clutter/debris, where as the first images are almost the complete opposite, in some peoples eyes they may see this as a good thing but for these particular images I prefer the cleaner calmer aesthetic. Secondly, images 1 to 11 are taken for quite a distance and although this isn't a problem I prefer the closer up shots. Thirdly, the closer up images (12 to 25) have begun to incorporate a sub theme in which I have been looking at the way bushes and trees try to hide the towers and chimneys (images 13, 16, 17, 21 are great examples of this).

I really like how the later images (12 to 25) look so secluded, they only feature the green grass and bushes for the lower portion of the images and then the blue sky as the background. This in turn focuses the viewer on the portion of the station that you are photographing as there is very little distraction e.g. image 25.

Although I like the minimalism of images like 25 and 21. I think the best shots from this shoot are the ones that find a middle ground between 1 to 11's busy aesthetic and 13/11's minimalism. These shots that I am talking about were taken at the same time as the later images and in the same location, they have a similar aesthetic to the minimal images but with more detail spread out through the images, giving the viewer more of an idea of the size of the station. This gives the image more context, giving you more of an appreciation for the sheer size of the towers/chimneys. Examples of these shots are 18, 23 and 24.

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Ratcliffe

Power station 

Canon Mark II 
24 - 105mm lens
Manfrotto Tripod

The next stop on my tour of the local areas power stations lead me to Ratcliffe, a large coal powered power plant near Nottingham. 

This is the furthest I have traveled to a shoot so far in this assignment, driving for roughly 30 minuets. Ratcliffe is also by far the largest power station I have photographed so far with 8 cooling towers (the biggest towers I have seen so far) and one large tower. The station also featured a huge coal pile, which had bulldozers roaming around it constantly. The coal was moved by a large white transporter/conveyer belt system. Which looked amazing, I took great pleasure photographing this as it was something totally new, it set Ratcliffe apart from other stations I had visited, making the images that I collected different and interesting. 

Due to the sheer size of the power station it was it quite a remote location, this made quite a few things difficult. First of all parking, we must have spent half an hour driving up and down the same strip of motor way parking somewhere, having a small argument and them moving on but eventually we went back to the second place I suggested, parked up and began shooting. 

As Ratcliffe is so remote it was quite different to photograph, the station is much larger but is is also much more hidden by trees and bushes. Not in the same way as Rugeley where the trees had been planted to hide the station but just because nobody goes there. Huge bushes and hilly fields made getting a perfect shot of the station much harder. On this shoot I had the most trouble finding the right shot. I am not entirely sure if this is because the shots were harder to find or if I was being more of a perfectionist this time round. 

I had a rough Idea of what I wanted to shoot from images I had seen on the internet, I wasn't that interested in the cooling towers them selves. I was more interested in the other things going on around the factory e.g. the coal conveyer belt, large triangular silo, and other crazy blade runner looking things. 

We walked from the car over a few fields toward the station. I wanted to head toward the coal conveyer belt first as that was the closest point of interest. We ended up on the top of a hill looking over the coal yard with the station looming in the background. I began shooting. I then decide to change lenses. I had left the other two lenses in the car. IDIOT!!!. As the sun was rapidly setting I decide to continue shooting with the 24-105mm for the rest of the shoot, in some ways this wasn't a bad thing as it keep continuity for the shoot.  

After getting a good few shots we walked through a small wood and into a clearing where you could see the towers protruding through the canopy of the trees. I wanted to move further up the hill but this way was blocked so my assistant said we should walk down the hill closer to the station. we did so and ended up in a starnge see of 4 foot tall nettles underneath a tunnel of trees. Quite a sight, a took a few shots but this wasn't what I was there for. I moved to the edge of the trees and took a few shots but the angle wasn't great so we walked back up the hill. 

I wanted to get to higher ground to get a more complete shot of the station. So we did. We ended up looking over the station from the highest angle yet. At this point the sun had started to set and the light was all wrong so I set up the tripod got the right angle and waited. When it got dark enough I began shooting, moving a few hundred meters along the top of the field every so often to get the right shot.  By the end I had gotten so beautiful long exposures.   

By this point it had gotten quite cold, dark and we were all quite tired from all the walking so we decide to call it a day. 

This was a productive yet stressful shoot but it was worth it. I produced so nice images and I look forward to fully evaluating them. 

Contact Sheets

These are the images I have selected from the shoot (daylight).

I decided to continue the sub theme in which I have been looking at the ways in which the trees and bushes around power stations try to cover up the large structures (this can be seen in images 1, 6, 10, 11, 12, 14 and 18). some of these shots weren't quite as good as the shots taken at Rugeley power station (e.g. 1, 12 and 13) but others worked really well in a slightly different way (e.g. 10, 11, 14 and 18).

For most of the daylight shooting I focused on the coal pile. I experimented with different angles and positions (e.g. 2, 3 and 4). I am yet to decide which position works best as I do like the closer up portrait shots but the larger landscape images do show a lot more context and information. Overall these shots are all to a high standard. I am also yet to decide wheather to show grass in these shots (e.g. images 4 and 5) 4 looks good with out the grass, it focuses the image and dosen't distract the viewer by adding different more colers and textures but the image with grass gives the image more context and adds a certain level of life.

Overall I think images 10 is the best images from the shoot. 10 is a brilliant example of the sub theme but also it is a good image in of its self. The shot features an interesting subject and follows the minimal theme but with a deep layered background.

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Night photography 

These are the images I have selected from the shoot (Night time)

I experimented with different white balances while shooting to see differences it whole have, changing it from the correct white balance (e.g. image 2) to a different white balance (e.g. image 1) gave the image a red/orange glow. This is an interesting change but overall I prefer the correct white balance as I like my image to look as true as possible.

Another thing I don't really like about image 1 is that its to close up the shot seems to tight on the subject, I much prefer the composition of images 4 and 3. At first I really like the fact 3 was aligned with the large tower but after looking at it compared with image 4 it looks to constructed.

Image 2 is an interesting composition but there is too much dark space for it to be realistically considered. All the images realistically are too dark around the grass area, this would have too be changed in post production or re-shot.

Overall I think image 4 is the best image. It is the largest image and it has a smooth flow as it incorporates the coal pile drawing the viewers eye from the right to the left along the conveyer belts. The sky is also well exposed and atmospheric.

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Rugeley 

Power station B

Second shoot

Canon Mark II 

24 - 105mm lens
Manfrotto Tripod 

After the Ratcliffe shoot I decide that I wanted to take a night photography approach to this assignment, I have so many ideas that would be applicable within this assignment (purple hue idea, how the towers interact with there surroundings, night photography/long exposure or nature covering up the stations) but I feel night photography is the strongest option. So I decide to revisit Rugeley at night to shoot it again.

I arrived in Rugeley in the early evening and while it was still quite light I made my way around the local area and shot in some different areas to the previous shoot. I chose to shoot from higher ground this time to get a better view of the power station. I liked these images as the raised level gave a better angle and perspective. I moved to a different location, a park/social club next to a running track. I hadn’t actually noticed how visible the chimneys were from the park until I pulled up, I then realized they were positioned perfectly. They even had corresponding trees underneath three of the chimneys (following one of the subthemes of this project). I shot here for a while then moved on to slightly higher ground, this spot didn’t really work out to well. The composition of the images wasn’t quite right.

As the light started to die I moved closer to the station. I parked up and shot a little bit but the light wasn’t quite right so I waited 30 minutes or so (had a little stop at McDonalds) and started again.

I began by shooting from a distance, getting a feel for the length of exposures, which white balance to use etc. This angle wasn’t working out all that well so I decide to get up close to the power station as I had shot here before in the past and there were a number of brilliant shots and compositions. The power station is flanked by a fast long road and along the side of this road is a thick row of trees and bushes which have been planted to attempt to cover up the station (I have spoken about this in my previous Rugeley shoot write up). I walked along side the road every so often dipping through the trees to get the right position and shot. I was using a tripod so that I could achieve a high quality long exposure, I began shooting on quite a low shutter speed but ended up bringing it up to 30 seconds after a while as it really made the colours pop and gave everything an beautiful vibrance. I tried to recreate an image that I had got while I was there in the day but as  I was using a tripod I couldn’t get the angle quite right and the image didn’t work to its full potential, I attempted to amend this but after a while I moved on.

I walked all the way to the end of the trees/bushes and looped around, here was a spot that I had also found last time and where I had gotten a few brilliant images and this time was no exception. I basically took the same composition but with a 30 second exposure and my god it looks good. I loved the composition of the original image but the long exposure just adds a totally new level to the image. Giving it an unnatural, 3D look. The image straight out of camera looks interesting and well edited, with a supernatural edge.

This image will be a huge contender for the final image

I then made my way back to the car shooting every so often on the walk back but had little luck. I just couldn’t get the compositions quite right.

Finally I made my way to another spot I discovered on my previous trip. This spot was positioned behind the power station on the opposite side of the train tracks in a young national forest. I continued to shoot on a long shutter speed and also continued to achieve beautiful images e.g. the intense orange shy and bright piercing lights. After a while of shooting I had complied a large number of shot which were to a high standard so I decided to call it a night.

Through out this shoot I had been shoot on a variety of different setting; I had been doing so to achieve the best possible final image. I was taking inspiration from the work of photographer // who splice his images using the best sky from one shot the best foreground from another and so on to ultimately produce a prefect image. I will be editing the images soon to see if this approach works

Over all this has been a good shoot, I have produced some brilliant images, other  maybe not so strong but over all I feel I have come out with at least 2 contending final images.

Contact Sheets 

These are the images I have selected from this shoot. 

This shoot was very much pre planned. I had found many of the shot in the day time on a previous shoot, for example I image you will recognise image 1 and 10. 

Much like the Willington shoot I realised that close ups are too devoid of focus to be interesting enough for my final image e.g. images 3 and 4. Although saying this I also realised that too wide of an angle or being too far away didn't work either. These shots although at night look very atmospheric due to the sky just don't feature enough of the station or the station is not prominent enough to work (examples of this are images 6, 7, 8 and 9). 

I do stand by my belief that wide angles are better for this type of subject matter but a problem I encountered with this approach at night was that you end up having to photograph lots of different types of light if your not careful and this can be a problem with long exposure. The problem with capturing lots of different types of light in a long exposure is that certain parts of the image will be a very different tone or intensity to other, this can make the image overexposed in areas and underexposed in others, it can cause areas of the image to become grainy as the camera is working over time to correct them and this is defiantly not acceptable for my work of any level. (examples of this are images 2, and 5). 

Overall I think the best images from this shoot are 1 and 10. They not only feature brilliant composition (this has been discussed in previous Rugeley shoot), a good mix of minimalism and interesting subject matter but they also have a wonderful exposures (although 1's is better than 10's). 1 features the beautiful soft auburn light from the sky in the top half of the image and the sharp detailed light from the street light in the centre of the image illumination the lower portion of the shot. Where as 10 features a much darker sky, there is still a hint of the auburn tones in the sky but nowhere as much as 1. 10 relies largely on street lights for its lighting using the street light in the image to illuminate the lower portions of the image (road and grass) and the street lights on the road behind the photographer to subtly illuminate the whole image.

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Ratcliffe 

Power Station 

Second Shoot 

Canon Mark II 

24 - 105mm lens
Manfrotto Tripod 

Ater reviewing the first Ratcliffe shoot I realise that if I wanted to use night time images of this location I would need to return and reshoot. 

I decide that this time I wouldn't bother with the day time images, I would focus on the night images so I set of from home at around 9:00 and ended up arriving at around 10:00ish due to roadworks. 

when I arrived at Ratcliffe I headed to the same place that I shot in last time and did a very similar exercise. I began at one end of the field and made my way around the upper edge shooting for a while then moving about a 100 meter and doing the same things. Seeing which compositions worked best, which settings gave the right effect and changing the angles. This time I walked all the way around the filed, this gave me a better appreciation of of the different angles that the station offers and I found a brilliant angle which I hadn't photographed last time. 

I spent a lot of time deliberating on which shots worked best, the closer up shots of just the station or the wider angle shots that incorporate the coal pile and the crazy conveyer belt system it uses. I have now come to the conclusion the wide shots work better. 

I decide to use the 24 - 105mm lens as its the lens that I have used throughout this project and it just works so well and keeps a constant continuity. 

I have also been using inspiration from photographer // while shooting. Much like the second Rugeley shoot I have been taking shots of the same subject at different exposures so that I can then layer them over each other to for the perfect shot. For example getting a shot with a perfectly exposed sky but and over exposed station then lowering the shutter speed so that the station is perfectly exposed. I would then layer them on top of each other and remove either the sky or station of the top image so each segment is perfectly exposed. 

I spent about and 2 hours shooting and by the time I finally called it a night my hands felt like they were going to fall of as the tripod had gotten were cold due to the cold breeze (photographer problems). 

Overall the shoot was very successful and I was extremely pleased with the work I produced. 

Contact Sheets 

These are the images I have selected from this shoot.

Although to some people I imagine all ten of these shots would look very similar (well maybe apart from image 10) to me they very different. Each tiny change of the composition whether it be zooming in/out slightly or moving 300 meter around the filed to aline the peak of the sillo with the large tower are all very noticeable and can totally change the subject and how it is perceived.

Once again I am going to start by discussing the size of the shot. I personally much preffere thae larger angle shots not only because this is my rule of thumb but because I like the coal pile as much as I like the power station, thus I prefer images 2, 3, 5, 8 and 9 more than 1, 4, 6 and 7 (as 1,4,6 and7 have cut of the coal pile).

Although I prefer the shot that incorporate the coal pile I love the composition of image 1, the are brilliant leading lines which seem to both lead to the large tower with is directly in the centre of the image, the silo is also positioned perfectly.

Image 7 is to straight on and flat.

Although the main focus of this shoot was the station its self I really like the image of the coal pile on its own. It has a certain space age tranquility too it that I just love. It also features some brilliant leading lines, you begin in the top right and then are drawn to the left of the page but then pulled back round to the top right by the swooping road.

I really enjoy the lightness of image 8, all the other images feature very dark foregrounds but for this shot I decide to use a longer shutter speed and illuminate the the grass giving the image around 30% more detail. Making the shot much more interesting to observe. (I believe this is the strongest image from this shoot)

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