Day In The Life Of – What Is It?
At the start of the year I made a commitment to myself that I was going to start a series of personal projects with the concept being A Day In The Life Of.
Much of the work I do on paid commissions and assignments is fairly formulaic, media publications have their own styles that have to be adhered to, images for PR press release need to be shot a certain way, etc. In particular with Editorial assignments, the publication is often going to use just one image, so I usually stop after 4 or 5. Never mind that with the massive fee they pay they actually deserve less than 1. Sometimes it’s a shame, because there is a lot more of a story to tell.
I also get more than a bit frustrated at seeing the same types of images used in publications over and over. A lot of which are, sorry to say it, complete and utter crap. You know the type of thing, the first sign of a bit of summer weather and we’re inundated with images of a kid eating an ice-cream, or people sitting in the park, or “social” images of er, people on the beach. Some publications use so many “social” images from events that they completely miss the real images that could be got. I fear that one day we’ll be seeing “social” images from the scene of a car crash.
It’s either the above, or a constant deluge of supposed “celebrities”, most of whom I couldn’t name, who never mind A-list would only just about be Z-list celebs at best, and are only “famous” for er, being famous.
So here’s the challenge I set myself at the start of the year. Once a month shoot a picture-story, photo-essay, documentary, call it what you will, of a REAL person, or event, or even a business.
Unlike my normal day-to-day shooting which is set-up and usually involves direction, lighting and instruction, these will be shot where at all possible with available light only. If that means high ISO’s, noise, grain or blur, then so be it. The intention is not to direct, but to record. Where appropriate they might be black & white, but some images just scream out to be used in colour so it will vary. There’s no rule that documentary images HAVE to be monochrome.
A selection will be posted on the main website, and a slideshow created from a larger selection which will be posted here on the blog and on that TubbyYou thingy.
So, from the start of the year until today, every month you’ve seen precisely, um, none of these. That’s been due to a fairly hectic schedule, and the fact they’ve taken a lot longer to organise than I thought they would.
However, a couple are complete, a couple more are half done, and a couple more arranged.
If I start catching up by posting one a week for the next few weeks I will I should I might be right back on schedule within a few weeks.
You have been warned. Look away now. Change channel. Un-subscribe. Emigrate.
They start tomorrow.
TTFN
