For this resit module titled: (Festivals) I have shot Tafywl which is a welsh language and culture festival located in Cardiff Castle. The set of photographs shows how consumerism of a festival can be locally sourced from surrounding areas (Wales). This demonstrates how smaller or local venders can have an influencing role within a Festival despite not having popular branding.
Y Not festival is an annual music festival held at the end of July. It is located in Pikehall, Derbyshire. The festival originated in 2005 by organiser Ralph Broadbent, the first year the festival was called Big Gin Festival located near Biggin. Due to the large attention the festival was relocated to Pikehall in 2015, with having over 15,000 attendees.
For this brief of ‘festivals’ I am going to be photographing the indie band ‘Getrz’, a 4 piece band from Swindon. They will be playing the ‘This Feeling Stage’.
This shoot relates to the live music elements of a festival.
For this shoot I had arrived at Cardiff Castle at 6pm, I had chosen to arrive at this time due to statistics from 2018 which indicated this was the optimal time where there was a maximum amount of attendance. Using Larsen’s technique’s of photography I found that having more subjects to photograph was better and created a presentable atmosphere which underlined the amount people at Tafwyl.
The problems I found with this shoot was the positioning of the photographs, due to security and health and safety I wasn’t able to get a higher vantage point as it was gated off, I could have gotten some more creative photographs of the crowd by the main stage.
This photograph by Lisa Larsen of crowds welcoming Yugoslavian leader Tito was used as a key influence on my work for this shoot. I used style of fitting crowds into the frame.
If I were to do this shoot again, I would contact the organisers of the event, this would allow me to have back stage access and access to the stage, allowing me to have a better vantage point onto the crowd and as well get personal photographs of the artists on stage. I would also have a range of lenses including a telephoto lens which would create more dramatic photographs like the exampled photographs from (Reading 2018).
For the first shoot of this brief I am going to be photographing the Tafywl, this is a welsh language festival held in Cardiff. It is hosted in the Castle this year on the 21st, 22nd and 23rd June. I will going to the Tafywl on the Saturday, statistics from 2018’s Tafywl has an attendance of 16,000 people which to patische Lisa Larsen’s work I will need a large crowd of subjects.
This is a photograph from the previous year. After studying this photograph I will be bring a selection of Lenses. The first lens I will be using will be a 50mm lens with f:/1.8, this will benefit my work with intimate photographs using a wide aperture for a shallower depth of field for portraits. The second lens I will be using is a 24mm – 105mm. This allows for a wider angle, capturing more visual information in the frame . Using my research from previous festivals (Reading Festival 2018) I will be using similar styles for this shoot.
For this shoot, I am going to capture photographs of the crowd, portraits and other miscellaneous photographs which create a narrative to the event. following the ideology of a 5 picture story. When taking portraits during this event I will be taking details which can then be added on to the metadata for the photograph.
Lisa Larsen was a German photojournalist, she was known as one of Life’s pioneering female photojournalists. Her photographic career started with Larsen working for Black star, also known as Black Star Publishing agency, a New York based photography agencies established by German refugees in the 1930’s. Larsen worked as a picture file clerk but become a freelance photographer working for prestigious names such as Vogue, The New York Times, Parade, Glamour, Charm, Holiday and Life.
After 1948 the majority of Larsen’s work was contracted for Life Magazine, the bulk of her assignments were entertainment and fashion pieces of work, this includes photographing the Vanderbilts, Kennedys, Bing Crosby, and the Duke of Windsor.
Larsen moved away from fashion and lifestyle to political pieces of photojournalism, a piece of her work during this period was the post election portrait of First Lady Bess Trueman, but Larsen’s most notable domestic political work was the wedding of John f. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouiver in 1953.
Larsen spent 4 months in Moscow, Russia in 1956, gaining admiration from Nikita Khrushchev who was the first secretary of the communist party of the Soviet Union at the time. Due to Larsen’s work ethic and general demeanour she gained favour not only with Khrushchev but Marshall Josip Tito a Yugoslavian leader during the time, Larsen was the only photojournalist permitted to photograph Tito in Russia.
Larsens approach to crowd photography set a standard for photojournalists. Time magazine described Larsen’s work as “finding a way to make pictures of crowds that both captured the energy of multitudes (and smaller gatherings) while making sure that individual faces weren’t lost in the mix” The first exampled photograph was taken in Russia, 1956. This large crowd was welcoming Yugoslavian leader Tito.
Lisa Larsen inspires me by the way she captures people in the moment, and how she conveys different crowds emotions in comparison to having a one sided photograph. I will be using Larsen’s process in trying to capture the details of subjects faces in crowds when I am going to do my next shoot.
Elvis Festival is a annual occurrence in which the town of Porthcawl turn the seaside town into a hub for Elvis Presley fans. Over 20 venues in Porthcawl follow the theme of Elvis Presley, the last event was 27th – 29th September 2018. Following the brief of festivals I am going to review my previous work I had taken at Elvis festival and discuss what was successful and unsuccessful in capturing a day event like Elvis Festival.
When taking these photographs at the Elvis festival I focused mostly on portraits, I think it is important to take photographs of the surrounding areas to create more of a narrative in comparison to having a majority of portraits, but it is still important to use portraits when photographing events.
This would have be an interesting group photograph but I was shooting at f:/1.8 which meant the aperture was too wide creating a shallower depth of field which was not needed, the police officer on the far right is in focus but the other two aren’t. When taking group photographs I need to use a smaller aperture to get all people in focus.
In music festival photography to make a still moment more interesting the best way to capture it is to capture colours and still motion from objects or people. The various photographers who documented Reading Festival (2018) had used different methods in photography with framing and creative uses of lighting.
Sarah bennett’s in this photograph uses the silhouettes of the crowd by using a low ISO a. I like this photograph because of the the amount of visual information in the photograph, yet there is nothing that has true definition which is why I think this photograph captures the atmosphere of a crowd just as well as a a day light photograph.
Ashely Verse’s use of crowd’s visually is completely different from Sarah Bennett’s, although Verse is using a shallow depth of field focusing on the male with the blue water proof over him and whats infant of him, there is still a lot of visual information which is puts into perspective what is going on around the focus (male in blue). What I like about this photograph is the use of colours as well as framing, the framing is quite tight keeping what is visually necessary to the point of the photograph which is to show the atmosphere of the crowd, you can see verse has done this by cropping out the railing in the bottom left of the photograph.
For this project I will be producing 12 – 15 images which will be a journalistic photo essay with the topic of ‘Festival’. A festival is a day or period of celebration, and it is also a organised series of concerts, plays, or films typically held annually in the same place.
Collaborative Practise (Resit) 