The users' point of view

Planning

Last week we were away from home at the Hay on Wye Book Festival. We had been to the Festival before and I therefore knew that the event is held in a field on which a number of marquees have been erected as venues, cafes and shops interlinked by covered walkways. I did not initially expect the Festival to have potential as a source of locations for this project.

• The marquees where presentations take place are darkened for most of the time.
• The huge number of people and tight scheduling of events means that the stewards have to be fairly strict to get people in and out of each venue as quickly as possible.
• In most photographs that I had taken in previous years, I had cropped out as many areas of white canvas as I could as I did not find these particularly interesting.

However, as I was there, and as I was taking photos of the event for my own photo journal, I thought that I might as well make the effort to photograph the Festival location from the users' point of view.

I could foresee a number of challenges in taking photographs of the marquee interiors:-

• In a solid building there will often be columns, arches, rooms, doors and internal structure. The Hay marquees on the other hand are almost all rectangular spaces with plain walls. The structural supports are invisible outside the exterior walls.
• In a solid building the light will normally be designed to reveal the form and geometry of the space in a visually interesting way. Light is often directional, coming from windows, doorways and "architectural" electric lighting. In a marquee, on the other hand, the ceiling and walls are generally translucent resulting in an extremely diffuse light.
• The ceiling of a marquee, however, may have interesting lines where the fabric has been joined. Unlike the ceiling of most solid buildings, the ceiling of a tent will generally be the brightest part of the scene.

On thinking about this, I realized that there are plenty of marquees on the Festival Site in daylight such as the main entrance, cafes, book shop and the queuing areas outside the event marquees, so that I did not need to include photos of the darkened marquees set up for presentations.

The rest was a matter of experimentation of viewpoints, mainly using wide angle settings and small apertures to bring out some points of visual interest in the scene. I selected a few of the better results below.

Later in the week, it also struck me that in Hay, second hand bookshops are central to its character. I thought I should therefore try to take some photographs from the users' viewpoint of these shops.

Most of the shops that I had been in were very small with shelves and floors stacked with books. The light is harsh electric light from naked neon or tungsten bulbs. The windows have usually been covered up to squeeze in some extra bookshelves. I remembered passing a large building saying that it was the Hay Cinema Bookshop. I therefore chose this as a location where I might find a little more room and perspective. I was hoping to find a location where there would be a viewpoint to look down on the floor below, or, failing that, a place where it was possible to see a row of shelf ends.

Photography

1 Festival Site - Public Entrance

Panasonic G3 14-42mm at 14mm (28mm equivalent): Iso 400 f8 for 1/125th

The Entrance is a busy area: a wide covered tunnel which seems a purely functional space. It has the main information desk, notices and posters, the newspaper shop and entrances to the box office and the Festival shop. It is therefore one of the important hubs of the site. Crowds of people are passing through all day, some stopping but most are just walking in and out. This photograph was taken at a relatively quiet time as I did not want the view to be totally blocked by people. At the busiest times, it would not be possible to get a reasonable view of the space as it would be too congested with people.

Analysis of image

I took a sequence of photographs ranging from a high viewpoint overhead down to floor level using the camera's rotating screen to view the scene. The photos from high viewpoint had fairly static compositions which I attribute to the strong horizontal elements: the roof, the peoples heads and the floor. I decided that this one with a low viewpoint was more interesting, because in this case the figures in the foreground introduce some vertical lines into the composition.

The roof lines and diminishing size of the figures in the distance convey a feeling of depth of the scene. None of the figures is too prominent or too individual to be overly strong as a point of interest (I toned down the red of the man's shirt in the right foreground to match the ladies shopping bag in the central foreground).

I also made a variety of exposure adjustments e.g. to lighten shadow areas and increase the contrast of the lines in the ceiling.

I considered converting this image into monochrome as colour did not seem to be adding much to the subject. However, a preview in Lightroom showed that monochrome did not offer a stronger image, so I left it in colour.

2 Festival site - The Friends Lounge

Panasonic G3 14-42mm at 14mm (28mm equivalent): Iso 400 f8 for 1/1ooth

In contrast to the Public Entrance, the Friends Lounge is a calm location where people can sit, drink, chat and read in between events. Consistent with this atmosphere, it has a more decorative ceiling with draped fabric and chandeliers.

Analysis of image

I chose a viewpoint to one side to give the space and ceiling a three dimensional perspective. I positioned myself in front of this particular table mainly because the chair arms were shiny introducing some highlights into the foreground which was otherwise quite gloomy.

The man reading a book draws the viewers eye strongly, but there are plenty of other faces and figures to glance at. Whilst much of the frame is filled with people, I believe the image portrays the place as much as it portrays the people. I also tried a shot slanting the camera to see if this would visually promote the geometry of the ceiling relative to the people in the foreground. This did not work however.

The red of the man's jacket is helpful as it mimics the red of the chairs and other small points of red further in the background. The red contrasts nicely with the off-whites and greys of the ceiling. In this picture, I think that these colours add to the vibrancy and interest of the scene.

As with the first image, I made a variety of exposure adjustments e.g. to lighten shadow areas and increase the contrast of the lines in the ceiling.

3 Festival Site - Lining up to go in to a performance

Panasonic G3 14-42mm at 14mm (28mm equivalent): Iso 400 f8 for 1/125th

This is a view of people waiting outside one of the huge marquees to go into a performance.

Analysis

I chose this location because the queue is a straight line along a covered walkway. The people are lining up on one side so that it is possible to see into the distance along one side of the walkway. I held the camera at an angle so that the converging perspective lines of the floor, the ceiling, and the diminishing size of the figures recede into the upper right of the frame. This sort of composition is difficult to avoid with corridors and other spaces of this shape. I needed to wait for the steward in the yellow jacket to move back far enough to leave an open space in the foreground.

Looking at this photo afresh, the green carpet appears over-prominent and the structure of the ceiling not prominent enough. I think the composition would have been improved with a lower viewpoint. Corrections to tone down the green colour and brighten the ceiling would go part way to adjust this imbalance, but not wholly.

4. Festival Site - Snake lines

Panasonic G3 14-42mm at 14mm (28mm equivalent): Iso 400 f8 for 1/1ooth

At other marquees, people are lined up in zig-zag lines outside of the doors. This is a view of one of the zig-zag "snake" lines outside one of the venues when the space was empty during a performance.

Analysis

I stood at this location as I wanted to have one of the arrows painted on the carpet in the foreground with the lines receding into the distance. The idea for using the arrow was triggered by one of the photos that I saw in competition at my local photography club a few years back. The picture by Andy Tobing showed a yellow painted arrow in an empty multistory car park pointing towards a young woman standing at an ironing board, ironing. It is a very good photo, even though this is not my style of photography.

I angled the camera downwards to emphasize the converging lines on the carpet. The arrow is relatively low key, but it does add interest to the foreground and leads the viewers eye into the picture.

The are some figures in the central band of the frame that the viewers eye can rest on, but again nothing too prominent to detract from the view of the marquee area as a whole.

I made some adjustments to straighten up the walls and adjust the relative exposure levels as for the other photographs.

The dominant white and green colours are not aesthetically pleasing together, but the composition is not one that I would expect would make a good black and white photograph also.

5 Hay Cinema Bookshop

Panasonic G3 14-42mm at 14mm (28mm equivalent): Iso 400 f5.6 for 1/13th

I found that The Hay Cinema Bookshop had two floors of bookshelves. There was one place where it was possible to look down onto a small section of the floor below, and I took a number of photos from different angles from that spot. However, the people in this area were generally walking through rather than browsing books.

Analysis

This photo, on the other hand, was taken on the ground floor looking down a space between some bookshelves and a line of bookshelf ends. I chose this standpoint as I wanted to see a view of the shelves crammed with books, but also populated with a few individual users looking at books. In this photograph, there are two individuals in the middle and far distance both browsing books. They provide points of interest to draw the viewer further into the picture.

I held the camera at an angle so that the composition is asymmetric and also pointed it downwards to minimize the area of neon ceiling lights included in the frame. The floor luckily has some visual interest as the cement in the foreground has been stained by customers wet and muddy shoes. In the background, the wooden floor is bright which provides a partial silhouette of the women sitting on one side. Otherwise she would be difficult to see.

The ceiling lights at the end of the corridor are blown out, but detail in that area is not especially important.

Conclusions

Photography of buildings and architecture seems to be one of the most popular genres of photography with club photographers. For me, however, apart from an occasional photograph of buildings when traveling, I usually find such photography one of the least interesting genres to look at. I was not therefore expecting to enjoy this section of the P&P course as much as the other sections.

I feel that this was a useful exercise in planning, technique and composition. I learnt several useful lessons:-

• Once a location is chosen, light is the first essential to consider.
• The composition needs to show the space and its use in a visually interesting way. This may take some experimentation for structures and spaces that are quite plain. Photos taken square to a subject and pictures with all or mainly horizontal elements can be drab and uninteresting.
• It is important to get an appropriate balance between floor and ceiling by raising or lowering the lens viewpoint.
• Whilst I normally choose to include people in scenes, in these pictures such figures need to support the visual portrayal not dominate it. They should not be too large or too bright or too eccentric.
• The viewpoint and timing need to be chosen so that the location is reasonably empty and the space is not obscured by too many bodies.
• Colour can enliven a picture of a space, but this is probably not under the control of the photographer. (This may explain the strange colours sometimes used on television when filming people in offices, laboratories etc. ) Whilst monochrome may be suitable for some architectural forms, it did not seem suitable for these subjects.