Assignment 5 – Illustration and Narrative

The objective of assignment 5 is to produce a series of images that illustrate a story for a magazine, including a cover illustration and several pages inside. In previous posts, I’ve shown the planning and image selection stages of this assignment.

For this part of the assignment, I will show the images that I’ve selected and the captions intended to go with the images and then finally, show the images as part of pages for the magazine and how it would be organised. This will allow me to discuss how I see the images relating to each other and show there relative sizes.

Images

Illustration – Front Cover

This image is using two symbols to illustrate the purpose of the magazine. The largest symbol is the classic black car with the silver trim and the white walled tires. This is something I feel is immediately recognisable as an old 1950’s style car even though we are only presented with a small amount of the car in the image.

Although this is the largest symbol, I don’t think it is the most predominant symbol of the image. This would be the two reflections of the red car. This is obviously a car from a different era and I feel the juxtaposition of these two cars together illustrates the show very well. In addition to the two cars, there is evidence of people in the image, a key part of the narrative I was hoping to achieve.

Welcome to the Show – Page 1

Entrants to the show are welcomed with each car being photographed on arrival.

Owners prepare there vehicles, getting everything right before the judging begins.

Having the welcome arch as the first image of the series seemed like a great introduction. It clearly shows what the event is and has a car arriving. The colour of the car was intentionally chosen to relate back to the red car of the cover image.

As mentioned previously, including people in the narrative was an important aspect so I felt it was important to have a strong image of a person on the first page. This image shows a car owner preparing his car and there is colour relationships to both the other image on this page, through the yellows, and again back to the cover image with the black cars.

Things to see and do – Page 2

The show has stalls selling all kinds of parts for different vehicles.

Merchandise isn’t restricted to car parts. These classic key rings covered many of the car makes at the show.

These two images are intended to work as a pair. The man looking at the car parts tells the story of how attendants to the show can do more than look at cars. In the background of this image, we can see the key rings which are then shown in detail.

No classic car show is complete without representation for the Mini Owners Club for people to enjoy!

These DMC Delorean’s are great examples of 1980’s Classics.

With these two images, I wanted to introduce a bit more of the show and what is happening. The choice of cars is also intended to give a subtle message about the progression through time of car manufacturing. The cover photo was showing detail of a car from the 1950’s and a modern day car. Here, we have the mini which was introduced in the late 1950’s and has been popular since and then the Delorean’s which are a well known car from the 1980’s from the film ‘Back to the Future’.

Small Details, new and old

The major manufacturers were all represented.

Again, these two images are intended to be viewed as a pair using just a single caption. Having been given the context of the show with the images on the previous page, I wanted to focus in on some smaller detail. Using these two images, they show this detail but also show new vs old.

The Farm Car Cart was an interesting blend of many different vehicles. Starting life as a 1930’s Ford, it suffered bomb damage during the war. To bring it back to a useful function, the body was removed
and the remains were merged with a 1895 horse cart.
In 2010, the car was rediscovered after having been abandoned since approximately 1953 and restored using any parts, from any industry, that would do the job. Top speed is 45 mph and 8 people can be carried in the rear.

These three images continue, and go further, with the idea of showing and giving more details.

The bigger picture – Page 4

Classics from all the different eras were on display for everyone to enjoy.

Although the show is mainly about the cars, other vehicles were on display such as this collection of war time utility vehicles.

This final page was intended to show the larger environment, maintain the narrative of peoples involvement in the show and also hint that there are additional things happening. The first image show more classic cars of different types and subtly includes people walking amongst them or having a get together. From the research I had done, I wanted to capture this kind of image which included people but I didn’t want the people to distract to much from the cars.

In the last image, a similar style has been used but vehicles, other than cars, are introduced. I deliberately left the introduction of other vehicles until the end of the narrative so that it brought the story of the car show to an end but also hinted that there could be more to see at the show.

Layout

The pages below show how I would take the images, organise them into there pages and show there relative sizes.

Front Page

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Reflection

The first thing that comes to mind when reflecting on this assignment is that I approached a stranger and asked if I could photograph them whilst they were performing a task seemingly unrelated to me. Although this doesn’t really relate to the assignments objectives, to have done this, is something I’m quite proud of.

Throughout this course, I think my ability to plan and prepare for capturing images has improved and with this assignment it proved especially useful. Photographing at an event meant that I could not go back and capture that ‘critical moment’ because it would have gone. Also, at an event, there are photographic opportunities everywhere. Some obvious and some not so. The plan helped me stay focused on what it was I needed to capture to meet the objective.  However, having too detailed or rigid a plan could be restrictive.

Having a plan wasn’t the only preparation that proved useful. Before going to the event, considering the types of images I wanted to take meant I had the correct equipment with me. As I had wanted to take long exposure images, I would have been stuck without a tripod, or if I hadn’t considered the fact that there could be strong contrasting light and busy back grounds I may not have taken my flash.

Coming home with a varied selection of images to choose from put me in a good position to be able to build the narrative I had imagined. However, putting it all together into the magazine format wasn’t easy. There were images that I had an emotional attachment to, because I liked the idea of the image or the image itself, but for some of them, they simply didn’t fit. I felt that I had enough images to be able to double the number of images I finally included but I think this would have defeated one of the goals of the assignment. Although the putting together the article wasn’t easy, it was still a fun and interesting exercise to carry out and I enjoyed thinking about how a larger number of images could be put together.

From this assignment, it has shown me that it takes practise to put everything together that I’ve covered on the course. As I progress, I can feel things becoming more instinctive. Using the idea’s from part 2, Elements of Design, is something that comes to me much easier now and is a great aid in trying to find an image. Also, I think I am much more aware of lighting scenario’s following part 4. Colour is something, however, that I think will need a lot more work. It seems like colour is a very complex area in the art of photography that could take a life time to master.

Assignment 5 – Illustration and Narrative, Image Selection

Having planned the images I was going to take for this assignment and captured them, I needed to filter them down into a collection that would give the narrative of the day. As was mentioned in the course notes, reducing the number of images can often be a difficult task in itself and I decided it was a good idea to include this part of the process in my write up.

I started out taking the collection of images down to the ones I was most happy with and then I organised them into the narrative elements I had intended to capture, excluding time, illustration images that were intended for the front cover image and then others that I felt appropriate to capture at the time. The reason for excluding time was that I felt all the images could contribute to this part of the narrative.

Illustration Images

The first two images were captured specifically with the intention of using them as illustration images. The first image is a simple statement that this is a classic car. However, with the second image, the message is a little more subtle but I feel it has a better illustration of the event as a whole – that the classic car show has cars from different periods in time. Finally, I included the image with the sign as a candidate for the illustration image because it makes a very obvious statement that this is what all the images are about, even though it wasn’t initially intended to be used as a cover image.

Car Developments – new and old

The new vs old images have captured there intent however, in the groupings I’ve used to present the images in this post, I don’t think they’re working together. This is an interesting point and for the final image selection, I really need to be careful that the images work together.

Car Parts – Close up details

The car parts part of the narrative was always going to provide plenty of scope with this event and I wanted it to continue with the new and old images being captured.

People

Photographing people is not an area of photography that I have practised and certainly not photographing strangers. Other than the image of the man checking the oil in his engine, all the other people were captured without me interacting with them. However, for the man checking his oil, I managed to build the confidence to approach him and ask if he minded me photographing him. He was happy for me to do so and continued with what he was doing. This was probably one of my single biggest achievements with the exercise and something I was proud to have done.

Others

In the assignment planning, I had discussed the idea a wider image of the show to show context of what was happening. However, with the image that I had used, It was very busy with all the cars and the people. An idea I had was to use a long exposure to blur the people, leaving the focus on the cars but to still have the people evident in the image. I was pleased with how these images came out.

These three images were captured because they have a story of there own with the history of the vehicle. I captured the three as I thought they would work well with extending the concept of time in the overall narrative.

This image was captured to provide greater detail and context to the image of the man inspecting car parts.

Final Thoughts

With the set of images above, I feel that I’ve appropriately captured the event and have enough material to tell a narrative of the show. Organising and presenting the images in the was I have chose here though will not work well for the final article. I think presenting them in these categorise presents breaks in the story that doesn’t work.

Taking that into account, my chosen layout for the magazine article will be based mostly around the timing of the event:

1. Cover Image – The reflection of the new car in the body of the old car
2. People arriving in there cars
   • The car arriving at the show
   • The man checking his oil
3. The cars available a the show and people interacting with them.
   • The series of minis
   • The DMC Delorean’s with the other cars in the background
   • The man shopping for the car parts
   • The close up of the key rings
4. New vs Old
   • The close up of the Jaguar
   • The close up of the Bentley ‘B’
   • The story of the car rebuilt
5. A greater overview of everything going on
   • The long exposure with the cars
   • The long exposure with the military vehicles

Assignment 5 – Illustration and Narrative, Planning

The objective of assignment 5 is to produce a series of images that illustrate a story for a magazine, including a cover illustration and several pages inside. The theme of the assignment is very open and any suitable subject which has a narrative element is deemed appropriate.

Choosing the Theme

After deliberation, the theme I’ve decided to use is that of a fairly local classic car show. I chose this as, after some investigation, I felt I could picture in my mind a narrative with specific elements that I thought could be well represented with images.

The narrative elements I was going to try and include were:

• Time – people would be arriving at the event, preparing there cars and then interacting with the event as a whole. This was something that was specifically mentioned in the assignment and had been causing some problems with previous ideas.
• Car developments – I pictured this having an interesting association with time. From looking at the events website, It was obvious that classic car’s weren’t restricted to old cars but that there was a mix of old and new.
• Car detail – The cars at the show would be exposing detail that isn’t normally seen in every day life. A lot of the cars would have there bonnets raised to reveal the well cared for engines underneath.
• People – Although this was the last narrative element I considered, I decided it would be one of the most important parts of the narrative. Being a car event, I imagined it would be easy to really focus in the on the vehicles and, although this would be able to form a narrative, it would be weak without people. The event was going to be a show and a show without people there to enjoy it would be pointless.

As part of choosing the narrative elements I was going to include, I thought it was important to make the decision of the audience I was going to target with the magazine article. The two choice I felt I had were either a local magazine or a car magazine. Making the choice between these two intended audiences would give a weighting to the narrative elements. E.g. for a local magazine, being read by local people, representing car detail would be much less important than if the audience was for a car magazine being read by car enthusiasts with no real interest in the local area.

For the assignment, I decided I was going to produce an article targeted as something for a car magazine. The choice was made purely for personal interest as I am a car fan.

Idea’s and Inspiration

Having considered what is was I wanted to captured conceptually, I did some research as to the kind of images others had produced when attending car shows:

I liked this image as it captures the event really well. It’s showing a lot of the show and capturing the people at the event. However, I also feel the image is very busy and I’m finding that my eye is drifting around the image looking for a focal point. This gave me some areas to consider:

• The show is going to be busy and isolating subject may be difficult.
• Having a wider image is working well to describe the show more holistically and it’s good to see people engaging with the show but combined, it can produce a distracting image.

This image is beginning to capture more detail of a car and shows the kind of opportunities that will be available a the show. Something that struck me about this image is the lighting. The timing of the show is obviously close to mid day because the shadows are short and the contrast is high.  The show that I was to attend began at 11am so I would be facing similar problems as this image.

 

Seeing this image made me thing about the cover illustration for the assignment. Being this close shows some really interesting detail and I feel it is a strong illustration, possibly for an article about police cars.

The image also made me consider the format of the magazine article. I thought it could be possible to create a landscape orientated article but this would be strange and would certainly go against convention.