Photographing Communities Portfolio Reflection

After looking through the collection of photos from the shoots, I filtered through and narrowed down my selection to thirty images total. When considering how I wanted to present the images, I used Adobe Lightroom to adjust the exposure of the images and adjust the colour temperature as well. For the narrative of my series, I wanted to put the viewer in the perspective of being a part of the Solent Running Sisters and running with them by structuring the images to follow the structure of the sessions themselves.

Starting with a wider image of both groups, I used the warmups to introduce the two groups and start the journey. To capture the feeling of following them, I matched images from both groups as closely as possible, using medium shots in addition to details and portrait shots to cover David Hurns “five picture method” (Davies 2023). Hurn talks about having five shot types to create a photographic narrative with the five shots being: an establishing shot of the location and people, a relationship photo of the people and their connectio n to the story, a person working, a controlled set-up shot and a close up shot. From my shoots, I managed to cover almost all of these areas with an establishing of the groups warming up, a relationship of the group running, which is similar to the person working shot description, a detail of people’s faces and finally a set-up shot using a group portrait of nearly everyone in the group. The combination of the narrative linking the timeline of the runs and the shot types create a series that I feel explores the community and puts the viewer inside of the community and within the journey. I finished with the group photos to indicate the end of the sessions using a sunset or darkness to show the passing time as well.

I am happy with the result of the project; I achieved a lot of what I set out to do and learned a lot of lessons regarding communication and how that can disrupt projects in the long run. I would have liked the challenge of iterating between shoots and using more flash photography, including off camera flash, however this was not possible due to the time lost. If I was to do the project again, I would try and contact multiple running communities in case a situation occurred similarly to this as this would allow me to maintain my original timeline and goals I had set out. Overall, I am satisfied with the work I achieved and have learned a lot of technical and organisational skills along the process whilst leaving room for improvement later.

Bibliography

BATE, D., 2020. Photography : the key concepts. 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge