Square mile: Initial thoughts

My initial thoughts on the brief.

Two square miles immediately come to mind so i need to decide which one to go with.

First idea : The area around my childhood home. Much of my childhood years were spent in Craigshill, Livingston near Edinburgh, through the 1970’s. I mentioned to my wife that I think i could still walk blindfold from my old house to the bottom of the hill where the shops are, about 1 mile away, even though it is now 40 years since i have been there. Considering this idea I am immediately attracted to the nostalgia of it all. This created a number of images in my mind that i could try to capture. As an example – There is a hedge which run for what seemed like forever, not far from my house. When i was young, we used to climb onto the hedge and see how far we could traverse across it without touching the ground. My idea is I could take a shot along the the edge of this hedge from a low angle and with a depth of field and focal length that would stretch the hedge into some virtual infinity.

Low angle? Next idea! I will take all shots from the perspective of a 6 year old, hip height. I will try to emphasize this aspect so the series looks like it was taken by me 44 years ago when i was 6. I love this idea.

Then came the realisation, how do i know the hedge is still there after 40 years, indeed how do i know any of my childhood memories still exist in physical form? I turn to google maps for the answer –

Fantastic! It is like nothing has changed. My old house, the field i used to play football in and the cops of trees we called ‘the jungle’. And the hedge running all the way up the side of ‘the jungle’.

There is one major problem with this square mile however. In my minds eye I am 6 years old and it is perpetually summer. Sunny and warm, scorched grass and melting tarmac. I write this blog entry on December 1st and it certainly is not sunny and warm, the tarmac is cracked but solid as rock. I may revisit this assignment but I will wait 6 months to do so.

Second idea. I feel like the luckiest photographer around. My next square mile is the centre of Edinburgh. I have worked and played here for the last 36 years barring 4 years split between Yeovil and Glasgow in the mid 90’s. There is more interesting ‘stuff’ to photograph in the centre of Edinburgh than any city really has a right to expect.

No pressure then is my next thought.

Winter is the perfect time to photograph the city. Like most cities in winter, Edinburgh has two identities – the night and the day. I will aim to cover both identities in the series with a work and play theme. Edinburgh not only has some amazing architecture it is also a bit of a world class party town. There is the world’s largest arts festival in August and famous new year celebrations, right now the Christmas celebrations are gearing up so the town is full of lights and ice rinks and fair rides, winter market stalls and mulled wine. My problem will be, how on earth I can reduce this cornucopia of image possibility down to a coherent series of photographs that ‘sit’ together?

‘sit together’ is the next part of the brief i consider. I have never done this before! I have spent some time over the past couple of years with a mild obsession in photographing the Bass Rock, which sits out in the Forth, off the east coast of Scotland – here is my latest image of the rock

However I can’t say i have considered how i could take the many shots of The Bass Rock and select a series that ‘sits’. Time to do some research I think.

Last point in my initial thoughts, and very apparent from the image above. I think i spend a lot of time with my images trying to inject interest in post processing. I think i am generally quite clumsy in this pursuit. With clarity, I have how I want the the image to look in my minds eye, but seldom can i transfer that to the actual image I am working with. In the end I think I tend towards over production. In the image above for instance I think the white water at the bottom is just too blue, looks nice but not very real. I suspect all this is down to a basic lack of confidence in the images I take which forces me to over egg the pudding. So for this assignment I will refrain from this and aim to make the images I take as close to real as I can manage, documentary style.