Mark Holmes

Documentary Photography.

The photographer i’ve chosen to look into is Ed Thompson, the reason i’ve chosen him is that he’s quite young and he is one of the few that aspire me to go out and do documentary photography. The one of the royal wedding was shot really nice and creatively, theres one photo of a tent and a woman and a baby in there from this photo i get a sense that they’ve been waiting there ages and would’ve done anything to be there, they might have traveled far to be there. They are also very proud that they’re from england because they have loads of flags and almost all there possessions have the countries flag on it. These coluored photos have an impact on me because they’re fun instead of the normal documentary photos of riots which are powerful and make you feel the emotion they are feeling but don’t inspire me.

For the black and white documentary i’ve chosen Robert M Johnson, the reason i’ve chosen him is that his work gives you a feel as you were there and a sense of what the people are feeling. Robert M Johnson pushes his black and white film so it’s quite grannie, this has a good effect though because it makes it look older and more historical like everything he’s shot is for a purpose. One of his photos of a security man with his leg up on a post makes you feel like he’s protecting the store behind him and is trying to look more powerful by making himself more seen, you get all that from a black and white photo. Another thing that i love about his photography is the hight level of contrast though out the images from heavy blacks to light whites then loads of tones in between.

Social Scene Research.

For my social scene i’m going to do a market, i’ve chosen this because there is always a range of people and the fact there early in the morning the lighting is better, i’ll be shooting this with a 400 iso black and white film pushed to 1600 this will give it a grannie look to it. I think it’ll work well with black and white because it gives it more of a documentary feel and also gives it character.  I’ve done some research into social scenes and have been too a market in cornwall, for the social scene i shoot from the hip so that you can get people in the shot more natural and not looking at the camera. 

These photos are from a market/car boot sale, I like the contrast in these images and the way that the people didn’t know i was taking the photos and thats why some people are part way through conversation, i think the warm effect works well because it makes it look like it’s been taken with a film camera.  

Lab Service Report.

The colour film i used was a Fujicolour X-TRA 400 the information/data sheet is found here.

The colour lab that i went to was boots, i found them to be very helpful in what i needed to know and for the range of services they have, you go into one of the stores and ask them to process the film if you’re processing a pushed film it’ll take a while longer (1 week) if you want it done in the hour it’s a little extra or if not it’s 2 days. They have a range of different options if you want just negatives if you want CD’s or a range of images. You can get them on canvas but it will normally take about 1/2 weeks. The service was very helpful and they answered any questions i had about it, for my 26 prints and a cd it was £7.99 which i thought was quite reasonable. This was much better than when i went to jessops where they took about a month to process my pushed 400iso film. I was given the prints and the cd in an envelope and i was very impressed with the quality and the end prints and quality with them.  

Family Contact Sheet.