My initial idea was to take a series of photographs of this stall; a panorama of the beach with the stall in the foreground, a foreshortened view of the stall standing in front of the construction site behind it where a multi-story hotel was being built, more intimate photos showing the stallholders dealing with customers, setting out the shells and so on.
My second idea was to take a sequence of photographs of a Balinese cookery course that we did in our last week in Indonesia. This would include photographs of shopping in the market, fresh produce, food preparation, cooking, plate presentation and so on.
I took various photographs based on both these ideas, but the picture essay that I have done derives from the photographs that I took of the popular beach in the first week. The essay is entitled "Busy on the beach" in which I aim to show the beach as a place used by both local people and tourists. I wanted to make a distinction with the deserted beaches popular in holiday brochures and "pleasure beaches" dedicated solely to tourist activities.
The essay contains 7 photographs and text displayed on two horizontal A4 pages:-
Page 1 - Busy on the beach
Page 2 - Busy on the beach
Observations
The pages can be viewed full size on my Flickr page:
The reasons for this arrangement of photos were as follows:-
- On page 1, I wanted the photograph of the stall with the waves and beach in the background to be large. This is intended to give the viewer an overall impression of the location, which I think works even though the background is blurred. It is also the photo with the strongest composition. The triangular shape of the waves in the background act as an internal "frame" for the stall in the foreground. The three figures in conversation at the stall are the main point of visual interest, but the eye wanders back past the figures on the beach to the skyline of buildings and cranes.
- Of the other photographs, I wanted the photograph of the religious ceremony to be large. There is a lot of visual detail of the offerings in the foreground and people in the middle ground. I therefore made this the main photo on page 2. The other photos could be smaller in size as the subjects were relatively simple.
- I wanted the second photo of the shell stall to be on the front page, as I wanted to make a comment about the ethics of selling shells. Viewers with strong views on ecology would, like myself, deplore the sale of shells. I feel that blame should fall at least equally upon the people who buy the shells.
- After allowing for the text, there was space for just one more photograph on page 1. I chose the photo of a surfer, as this is the activity that this beach is most famous for. This is intended to be part of setting the scene for the viewer.
- The three other photographs are quite high contrast with a simple subject. I fitted these around the main picture on Page 2. Small size does not dilute their visual interest too severely.
- The relatively flat lighting of the photographs on page 2 creates a consistent atmosphere between these photographs. On the other hand, there is direct sunlight in the three photographs on page 1 (backlit in the case of the surfer). There is a therefore a commonality of the light environment on each page which is pleasing.
I had a choice of producing the pages using Microsoft Word, Photoshop Elements, or Microsoft Powerpoint. Having worked in business before I retired, I was more familiar with Word and Powerpoint software. However, I decided to use Photoshop Elements in this case, as a way to become more familiar with parts of this program that I had not previously used.
I imitated the layout style and text from a photo essay in an old National Geographic magazine that I had stored away in a cupboard, "Malaysia's Secret Realm" by photographer Mattias Klum (NGS August 1997). Browsing through several of these old magazines, I was interested to see what a variety of different layout styles were used, even for photo-essay type articles (mainly photos with just small pieces of text). This layout has a white background, which I think suited the light in these photos. I also liked the treatment of text, concise and clear.
Conclusions
I get a lot of pleasure in arranging and presenting photographs, so this exercise was right "up my street". Some imperfections remain in the alignment of photos on the page etc., but I did not want to unduly delay other projects by further small adjustments to the final product.
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