Environmental Tutorial Notes

During my tutorial with Steffi Klenz I explained my conceptual idea for my environment unit shoot (explained in my post- Environement Unit reserach- 'Panorama: Britain's Dirty Beaches') along with my inspirations so far and then made some notes on the comments and advice given;

- I started looking at Bernd and Hilla Becher's images as I was really intrigued by the way that the repetitive nature of their series' make the subject such as gas tanks look beautiful making the backdrop insignificant.

Bernd & hilla Becher 'Gas Tanks'

- Although I wanted to create a series of repetitive images to exaggerate my theme I don't want the pipes which I would see as ugly to be the main focus and inturn do not want them to be taken as a good thing.
- The tutorial has made me think even more about the ignorance we have towards them as we discussed how if there are 20,000 in the UK are we able to blank them out when passing them? Do people really know what they are and what is coming out of them?
- Steffi advised me when doing the shoot to take two different versions of the scene; one taking on a similar style as the Becher's to exaggerate the fact that these are on our beaches yet we ignore them. However Becher's images are very mathematical which makes the viewer move their focus away from the subject and focus more on the composition & precision of the work.
- Therefore I will do a second image in the similar manner of Richard Misrach's image 'Swamp and Pipeline'. His image is mainly concerned with the natural swamp however when looked at more closely you realise there is a horrid pipe running through the front of the scene; I feel it is quite a dramatic image due to the way that the water looks so smooth and calm and then suddenly there is an aggressive, harsh horizontal line running through the frame cutting it in half.

Richard Misrach 'Swamp & Pipeline'

- By making the CSO pipe the smallest part of the image it will enhance the ignorance we have towards them. Including it in the image combined with for example children playing nearby gives this sense of irony; asking the question to the audience how could you ignore it?
- It begins to add a sense of humour, that it is so ridiculously obvious and scary to think about that you almost have to laugh.
- I will shoot my images during the morning when the lighting is very bright and I will frame them to create the 'perfect' beautiful beach scene; in each scene there will be a different theme to the surrounding subjects to highlight the ignorance and different things that can be effected by CSOs eg. children, surfers, nature etc.

- After my tutorial I visited some beaches in search of CSOs, I was shocked at the amount I found at the first beach I went to. I discovered the 'Good Beach Guide' website that had a huge list of beaches recommended and not recommended alond the South East coast.
- I travelled to the following beaches which were described on the 'Good Beach Guide' as:
235 Worthing West Sussex South East Recommended Basic Pass
236 South Lancing West Sussex South East Recommended Basic Pass
242 Newhaven East Sussex South East Closed Basic Pass
the statistics showed that over the last two years Worthing and South Lancing beaches had gone from recommended to basic pass while Newhaven went from closed to basic pass.
- When on Worthing beach I was shocked to find 6 pipes all with different amounts of water running out of them along a stretch of under a mile of beach. I couldn't understand how this was allowed to be like this, and while looking at them and taking some practise shots I was approached by people walking along the beach.
- In some cases they made some interesting comments which highlighted my theme of ignorance while others I asked for their opinion; some said 'what a beautiful day to take photos', others commented on the pipe 'I wonder what it is, and when I asked them to comment on the pipe people said, 'it's a bit of an ugly thing to take photos of whatever it is'.
- Although it is not a good thing that people are unaware of what these pipes are and the effect they can have on the environment, I was pleased that my work would be able to help people to understand what these things are that litter the beaches.
- The most horrific beach of the day was South Lancing, there were 3 massive pipes that had been unsuccessfully disguised by wood to look like windbreakers. The first thing that hit me was the smell of the surrounding stagnant water once I was able to approach them as I was almost scared of these monstrous things due to the fact that I felt they shouldn't be there.

- I will now go back to the same places with a Mamiya RZ with colour film ISO 160 to capture my theme in a frame, I am using colour film as I found that the pipes stood out due to their colour contrasting with the tranquil, neautral colours of the beach and water.