The 'Alien' or 'Foreign' Environment

An amazing adventure for this area of the 'places' project would be to go to exotic cities and landscapes across the world and photograph a completely foreign environment where socially the ways of life would be completely different to that of my own. In the future I will make this dream come true, being able to explore strange new lands (omg how 'Star Trek' did that sound - lol) and document the entire journey through my eyes behind the camera lens.

Unfortunately as it so happens at this time of my life I am having to juggle looking after my daughter, running a house and working a full time position as a customer care team manager therefore I am having to keep my feet firmly on the grounds of England. I have decided however to go and photograph a part of Yorkshire as my 'alien' or 'foreign' environment. I plan to take a day out with my family to a place which we have never visited before and hearing through the grapevine that 'Haworth' near Gibson is a very beautiful and interesting village, due to its historical 'still running' steam trains and cobbled roads, we headed off on a beautiful Sunday blue sky day.

http://www.haworth-village.org.uk/visitors/visitors.asp

http://www.haworth-village.org.uk/360/places/places.asp

Unfortunately whilst I was in Haworth I had technical camera problems with my old school film SLR camera as it was my intention to take some moody black and white images of the steam trains and cobbled roads however below are my contact sheets of the images I captured with my DSLR Cannon D50.

Below are my chosen photographs from my journey exploring Haworth which I feel I should consider to use as part of my submission for 'The Alien or Foreign' Environment; they are accompanied with their original raw file and camera information. All manipulation was done via Lightroom 2.0 working in my usual way of firstly checking correct exposure for the whole of the photograph, cropping where necessary then adding detail to colour and tones to bring out the best features of the final image.

RAW image

DSLR settings - ISO 200, 135mm, F6.3 @ 1/125 - White balance (AWB)

RAW image

DSLR settings - ISO 200, 47mm, F4 @ 1/80 - White balance (AWB)

Although these two images are very similar it was my intention to photograph the scene with both a landscape and portrait viewpoint to see if as a viewer you would interpret each photograph differently. I believe that the landscape approach gives you a theatrical sense that you are looking out to the world as a stage whilst quietly sitting back enjoying a nice cold beer at the bar. I used a combination of both shallow and deep depth of field to enlighten my required effect to the onlooker, that the audience is actually there watching the world go by whilst perched at the bar.

RAW image

DSLR settings - ISO 200, 65mm, F5 @ 1/125 - White balance (AWB)

Using a portrait approach I feel that this is not as evident, especially having zoomed into the station in the background making this the main area of the overall image.

RAW image

DSLR settings - ISO 200, 33mm, F5.6 @ 1/200 - White balance (AWB)

RAW image

DSLR settings - ISO 200, 35mm, F5.6 @ 1/100 - White balance (AWB)

RAW image

DSLR settings - ISO 200, 38mm, F4 @ 1/30 - White balance (AWB)

RAW image

DSLR settings - ISO 200, 75mm, F8 @ 1/125 - White balance (AWB)

It is my intention to go back to Haworth very soon to do a re-shoot and possibly incorporate both sets of images I obtain into a sequence which will bring together both journeys as one narrative. I hope to do this in the form of a sketchbook, documenting the history of Haworth and showing the vast changes to the landscape over the many years which have past from the early days of Haworth becoming a built up area within the countryside.