Major Project

My concept


Following on from my minor project I am now starting my major project. I throughly enjoyed making the documentary / photojournalistic style photographs I produced for my major project. I felt the work produced was what I found I had a natural interest in as well as a natural ability. I therefore want to carry on this style of photography, into my Major project. 

For my Minor project I shot images of my day at the yearly event of Durham Miners gala, in County Durham. I produced a series of images as prints and as a maquette book, where I told the story of the days events from begging to end. The way I portrayed this days events was through a documentary style, by capturing off guard shots of the people are the days events. 

What I found worked well when shooting the days events of Durham's Miners gala, was that because it was such a busy event, and an event which happens once a year, I was able to use my camera comfortably, among the other many photographers that were there that day, without a batter of an eyelid by anyone else. I've always enjoyed documentary photography, however I have often found difficulty and challenges when it comes to the likes of street photography or any documentary photography involving people. When photographing in an every day situation, I tend to find people looking, questioning or being weary of the presence of a camera. At busy events such as Durham Miners gala, this was never the case.

Something else I throughly enjoyed about photographing this day, was that when it came to making a book of my images, I had images that told a narrative. The viewer of the images would be able to be lead through the days events from beginning to end, through the use of my images. This concept of telling a story with my images as appose to just having one or two stand alone successful images, was something I felt I wanted to carry focusing up on in future projects.

When thinking into the future, about what career path I may want to take on following this degree, I have thought about the possibility of photojournalism. I feel I would enjoy is the idea of being employed to then be sent on projects where I would have to document particular events, such as events like these. Therefore in my Major project, with around 4 months to work with, rather than focusing upon one vast subject matter, I intend on finding several events or various subject matters to experiment photographing in this documentary style way with the intentions of being able to possibly make another book from. I feel trying to find particular events to photograph or interesting subject matters which I can photograph in this documentary style will be suitable practice in improving my natural ability to capture interesting documentary shots. This should also then hopefully hold me in good stead upon graduation as I will have a portfolio of numerous successful documentary photographs which I could take to a future employer. 

I am not going choose what events I photograph as of now, as I intend to keep researching to find up and coming events or interesting subject matters I feel will be most suitable for me to photograph. 

The kind of events I have in mind as of now are the up and coming Junior doctors strikes, or any strikes for that matter or possibly being able to photograph a day at the races.