Frankie Knee Photography

January

9th - 16th Jan 

Borrow camera, lenses and tripod from uni, go and shoot areas that I have already shot, already know where I need to be positioned so just achieve final images for these. 

16th - 23rd Jan

Contact archive again and find out whether I am able to copy/take some of the archival images of town. 

23rd - 30th Jan

Borrow equipment and shoot areas which I have not yet explored, concentrate on getting the positioning correct. 

30th - 6th Feb 

Go out with drone, try and capture birds eye shots of town, similar to ones found. Find more images of old green spaces which are now gone around town. 

6th - 13th Feb 

Go out and shoot areas which have completely changed over the years, these do not have an original to copy from so figure out what expresses the change in these images the best. 

13th - 20th Feb

Go and photograph areas in the housing crisis such as terminus street, see if I can gain entry to the flats themselves. This then gives me the opportunity to add this in if I feel that this is what the project needs in order to be successful. 

20th - 27th Feb

Collect media coverage of housing crisis to include in final piece.

 27th - 5th Mar

Start editing and bringing work together, figure out how coherent the work really is as a whole, decide whether I feel anything image wise is missing. 

5th - 12th Mar

Go out and finish any last photographs if needed. If not begin working on layout/presentation of work. 

12th - 19th Mar

Continue working on presentation.

19th - 26th Mar 

Start planning on creation of final piece.

26th - 2nd April

After meetings with my tutor and consideration into how my project will make the viewer feel, I have decided I may change the meaning behind it slightly. With just the comparison images, I felt like the project was really lacking meaning and felt that all viewers would feel the same, they would just look at it and be like oh yeah that's cool and flick through the pages rather quickly. Therefore I began to research into the town a little more. At this time there was also a lot of news articles popping up about how Harlow is an overflow town for london communities and there is currently a lot of controversy in the media about ‘rabbit hutch housing’ being erected throughout the town. 

Rabbit hutch housing is sub-standardly small studio apartments situated in old flat blocks which are in fact smaller than the legal sizing for an apartment. This would usually be illegal however the companies who are creating these apartments are getting away with it because they are situated in office blocks rather than buildings designed for housing, they don't officially count as apartments. These small apartments are hardly big enough to fit a double bed and this is then taking over the entire living space and kitchen also. Families are being shipped out of the london communities into these apartments, more often than not, there are families with children all crammed into the tiny room and they are expected to live there for considerable amounts of time. One of the same style housing developments in Ilford saw an office block which has been turned into 60 flats, each of which measures as little as 13 square metres. According to nation space standards, the minimum floor space for a 1 bedroom, 1 person home is at least 37 square metres. These houses are less than half the size of the legal standard however they are becoming increasingly common. Terminus street is one of the examples in Harlow. It is an office block situated above a car park on the outskirts of the town centre. This is an example of the tiny rooms with families living there. Also due to it being mainly overflow from London, a lot of the people who are sent here from these places are the people who are generally more trouble to authorities. Therefore, in the first 10 months of people living in these homes, crime in the area jumped by 45%. 

Here are some of the quick edits I have done to get the idea of how the images compare to originals. 

Here are some of my next shoots. These were shot on my personal DSLR. They are not quite the quality I am planning to produce my final piece in however they gave me a better understanding on positioning due to the lens being different to the iPhone. I worked harder on these images and took multiple options so that once I was home and could put the original image side by side with my images it was easier to tell which was closest. 

I have been looking in depth for more images to recreate, here are a few that I have been looking into and I look forward to going out and shooting these. 

Slacksbury Hatch, 1958

The Chantry, 1952

The Golden Swift, 1959

The Greyhound, 1959

Here is my very first shoot of images. Unfortunately these were shot on an iPhone as my camera was not charged but I do feel this was a good starting point because it helped me to realise that some of these images would work very well and others would not work at all. I was only able to replicate a few of the images due to it getting too dark whilst I was out shooting however I feel that during the next shoot I will be able to shoot using a camera and I will know rough positioning for shooting meaning the images will come out slightly closer to the originals. 

I felt as though I was able to replicate this one quite easily due to the building hardly changing over the years however it was be slightly harder with a larger camera as I did have to stand against a wall and hold my phone above my head to capture this shot. It may however shoot completely different on a camera. 

This image was really quite hard to replicate due to the river bank changing over the years, I had to stand right on the water edge and the tree on the left is so overgrown that it meant you are no longer able to see the building next to the parndon mill which is unfortunate. 

The structure of this building has not changed significantly which has meant this is quite a good photo to replicate. I do think this one creates a lot of emotion based on how similar they are but the ever so slight changes over the years are noticeable at the same time. 

This image is really unfortunately a complete flop. due to the trees being quite thick they are covering pretty much the whole point in the photo and i do not think this is an image I will use in my final project as you just can't see anything. 

I have changed my idea slightly since the previous session, I have decided I want to concentrate a little more on certain areas in town rather than looking directly at housing estates old and new. I think I want to look a little more at some of the churches, pubs, shopping centres and schools. The reason behind this being that there are more old images of these and also there is a little more of a personal aspect to them. I am thinking about making the book more like a thought process rather than a documentary style book. I have decided this because it is something that hasn't really been done before in my town whereas there is already the Francis Frith collection which is a little more of a documentary style piece. 

I have also changed slightly how I want to photograph the town. I am not thinking that I can use found older images of certain areas of Harlow, revisit these areas and create a replica of the original image. I think this will be interesting because you will be able to see how places, buildings and surroundings have either stayed the same over the years or whether they have changed drastically. I think I want to look at places which still exist but also areas which have been completely redeveloped into something different.

To add a little more depth into this piece of work, I also really want to speak to my own family and friends and show them the images I have taken. I am then going to see if they have any memories or anything they would like to talk about based on the images. For example, find an old picture of my parents school and then get some quotes about their memories or the place and how it makes them feel looking back into that time of their life. I came up with this idea when I was explaining to my parents what idea I had for my final project this year. I was showing them some of the very original images I had found and they both got very excited telling me about how they remember the town being full of prams and kids being left outside while their parents went shopping and how they remember going for shopping trips into the market square with their parents when they were children and how exciting this was. I think this will then contrast very well with my own memories and memories of the younger members of the family. I can then create a comparison between the two.

A good example of something I would like to include would be an old image of Brays Grove school. This is the school my eldest two siblings attended in Harlow. Brays Grove was then closed in 2008, demolished and a new school was built in its place (Passmores). This was then the school that my younger brother attended. I think this will be a very good one to do because there is the direct comparison within my family and I think that they will all have something to say in regards to the school. 

Another old photo I would like to find and re-photograph would be The Chequers pub. I would really like to photograph this as this was in fact the pub that my mum was running and living in when I was born, we then continued to live there through the earlier years of my life, I would say until I was about 7 years old. Therefore I have my own memories of this particular building. However, The pub is no longer there, it was demolished a few years ago and has been replaced by a row of houses. Although the image will not be a direct replica because of the building no longer being there, if I photograph from the same positioning as the original image, I still think this will be affective in other ways to compare the old and new. 

Another place which no longer exists and I would like to photograph would be where our old swimming pool was located, I found an image from the underpass outside of the building and I think if i photograph from this same underpass the housing estate which is now there, this is another good comparison. 

Overall, I need to do a lot more research in the local archive and try and find some photographs of the places I am very keen on photographing but also speak to people as I know there is a Facebook group where people post old and new photos of Harlow which might also be another good source of photographs. I also need to get out shooting as soon as possible to figure out how easy it is going to be to photograph some of the areas I have in mind and figure out whether some of the images are phesible to replicate. For all I know, there may now be something which will completely obstruct me from replicating the images. 

Below are some more images I have found on the Facebook page which also include dates of when the photographs were shot which is also very important to know. 

The Greyhound 1924

The Hare Pub, Hare Street, 1976

Market Square, 1957

Netteswell Church, 1900

Parndon Mill, 1960

Prentice Place, Potter Street, 1955

I have been thinking about what I would like to do for my major project this year and I have come to the conclusion I would like to base my project on my home town. I have been thinking about creating a documentary style piece based on how the architecture in my hometown has adapted over the years. I would like to find old images of some of the earlier housing estates and what style of architecture they were built in. I then want to compare them to some of the new build housing estates. 

I have done some research on the history of Harlow and found out that it started off as an industrial town and then in 1947 an order was put in place community housing for approximately 60,000 people. They then began using Harlow as an overflow town for London and due to it being a mainly industrial town, it meant that there were a lot of jobs available for the people who were being moved out of London. The town was split up into self supporting neighbourhoods with their own shopping precincts, community facilities and pub. 

I would like to create a book using all of the information alongside old images of Harlow that I have found as well as new images I have photographed myself. I think this will be a really interested project because it means me looking into the history of the town and also means I can explore the area a little more than I have before. I will need to contact the council and find out more information about the architecture in the town and this may be a little difficult however if I can get all of the information, it will be a successful informative piece of work. I was also considering creating two final pieces of work and donating one to the council, they may then even exhibit it in our local exhibition space which they often use to exhibit information about our town. 

I will include below some images of the local area I have found on google. I will need to find better quality images however I felt that these images were a start. 

When shooting for my male piece, it was very easy, I set up the studio with two studio lights shooting down onto the model to create a slight shadow underneath his bottom, we then got the model into position and began shooting. Fortunately, it didn't take too long to shoot due to the pose being very simple and once I felt comfortable with the images we had taken, I packed up the studio and head home to start editing. 

Editing wasn't the easiest for this piece, the initial edits were fine but when it come to editing in the GQ logo, it was quite hard to blend it well and prevent a halo around the hair, after a few Youtube tutorials, I gave it another go and was eventually able to edit this in. After shooting and during the editing process we discovered that the backdrop we used was very dirty and there were a lot of dirt marks around my model, these needed to be edited out using the clone tool and playing around with the brightness of the background. This was the latter of my two images to be edited so I already had all of my fonts prepared and it was just a case of adding them in, this was relatively easy. The final piece has come out very well other than the odd mark on the backdrop which I unfortunately missed. 

When it came to my final shoot we completed the hair and makeup in the studio whilst I set up the equipment, I already knew roughly how I wanted my lights positioned but once there I used a chair to position the lights correctly to create the right shaped shadows. The hair and makeup was completed and we began shooting.

As I wasn't 100% sure which of the four male GQ magazines covers I would like to replicate at first as I was a little worried about whether they would work well side by side, I chose to shoot all four of the positions. They were reasonably easy to shoot. 

We set up the lights to one side of the model to create a shadow and once everything was complete, I shot various images and once home chose the image I felt was best suited alongside how I wanted to shoot the male model. 

Editing was not too difficult for this piece as the original was already pretty close to how I wanted this to look. There was a slight blue colour cast which needed editing out and some of her hair was a little whispy to the right and I didn't like this so I was able to get rid of these. As i edited this image first, it took some time to figure out the fonts but this then makes it easier to edit my second piece. 

After hours of editing, I was very pleased with my final piece. 

I discovered after my few practice shoots that if I wanted my female model to look glamorous then I would need to hire a makeup artist. I was able to find someone and create a practice look. I wanted a highly glamourous look and for her to also look very sophisticated and attractive. I brought a pony tail hair extension so that I could tie up the models hair in a high, straight ponytail. I then found some makeup looks online which I thought would work very well for my cover. 

We created a half face of our practice look.