A Sense of Place - planning

Choice of topic
The instructions for this assignment are to devise an imaginary commission for an intelligent, thoughtful travel publication which would demand a considered in-depth treatment.
The objective is:-

• To produce at least 12 publishable images from which to make a final selection of 6 images. 
• To show the character of the place and the people.
• To show as much visual variety as possible.
• To take time to get to know the location reasonably well.

The reading materials my tutor had suggested for this stage of the course included a vast gamut of work ranging from Martin Parr's work to other less known photographers: some portraits of street characters (Eric Kim), some night photographs of children's play areas,  empty and rather threatening (Anne Kathrin Greiner), and a set of photographs of ordinary people learning carpentry skills in a workshop. To this mix, he added the link to a website "people and place.net" concerned with sustainability and other social issues. Having thought about all of the above, I felt that I should look for a photo-journalistic type of subject in the local area that I could visit and revisit several times.
It took longer than I expected to find some suitable ideas. I decided the best one would be "The Use and Misuse of the River Wey in Guildford". This idea was suggested after reading information on the Guildford Interim Town Centre Framework. This document, issued in September 2012 by the Borough Council identifies a number of areas in the centre of the town which are less than ideal and invited comments from the local community. One of the paragraphs in the report is about the River Wey, noting that "Whilst much of the River is well used and attractive, the riverside where it flows through the town centre is not as attractive, nor as well-used as it could be."
I thought that this would be a suitable topic for various reasons:-

• The topic deals with a question of visual quality - the attractiveness of the river. Photography should be a suitable medium for this topic.
• There should be enough variety for twelve photos. I had seen the river being used by a rowing club and a kayaking club. The river banks are used for many different activities, offices, depots, cinema and theatres, a boat-yard/wharf run as a museum by the National Trust, car parks, a department store and so on.  
• Water can be an attractive visual element in a photograph. There should be potential for taking some visually attractive pictures.

There would be a few ordinary people going about their business in the various locations, and I would hope to find situations where people figured at least anonymously in the pictures. This seemed OK as the use of anonymous figures was one of the things covered in this section of the People and Place course. I would not, however, expect to have portraits of individuals as a result of this choice of subject.
Approach
It was not my intention to create the text and layouts for this imaginary article, but I needed to have an idea of the likely narrative in order to plan a sequence of photographs.
The draft narrative that I created as the basis for the photography was as follows:-
For a town in the 21st Century, a riverside location has potential to be used for public amenities:

• Open green space
• For recreation and sport
• Attracts visitors
• Attracts businesses (pubs, cafes, galleries, shops)

I recently visited two prime examples of such development: Bilbao where the Guggenheim Museum is located on land that was previously an enormous shipyard, and Bordeaux, where the banks of the River Gironde have been transformed from an area of derelict warehouses on my last visit 45 years ago to a broad promenade with gardens, cycle ways, a tram service etc. 
In Guildford however, the utilisation of the banks of the river remains driven by 20th Century priorities:

• Former industrial land is still mainly zoned for offices and light commerce;
• Other areas have been taken to add to the roads and car parks.
• The accessible riverside spaces are relatively small, and are not easy for visitors to find. 

I used this narrative to make a list of subjects and riverside locations that I would like to photograph, in summary:

• Offices and depots on the riverside
• Roads, bridges, car parking, traffic congestion
• Other buildings: Cinema, theatre, department store
• People who use the river: kayakers, rowers, National Trust personnel. 

When it came to planning specific visits:-

• I discovered that the National Trust museum is closed throughout December, so I had to rule that out as one of my locations. This was a pity, as I hoped to take a boat from their wharf along the river to take some photos from a waterborne viewpoint.  
• The Kayak club website told me that they would be holding an inter club event last Sunday on the river. On my first visit to the rowing club, the river was in full flood after heavy rain and they were not allowed to launch their boats. They told me however that normally they practice regularly on Saturday and Sunday mornings. 

My other principal concern however was to obtain suitable lighting for the various subjects. An advantage of photography in December is that the sun is relatively low all day. For daytime shots, I waited for bright weather days to get relatively high contrast pictures of buildings and places. I wanted the photos to have a strong visual impact even though there is a risk of blown out highlights and underexposed shadows. I chose to photograph some subjects at dusk as some of the buildings are shielded by trees and do not stand out well  in daylight.  
Presentation
I decided that the photographs should be presented in black and white for several reasons:

• Some of the potential subjects, for example, the kayaks are bright colours, whereas others e.g. some of the industrial buildings are very drab colours. Use of black and white allows the viewer to focus on the content of the pictured scenes on a similar basis. Use of the original colour photos, on the other hand, would have made it difficult to keep the visual impact of the different photos in balance, one with another.
• The conversion to black and white is a useful way to control the tones of key parts of the composition.
• I felt that black and white photography was well suited for a photojournalistic sort of project. 

I did consider the possibility of reducing the saturation levels in post processing as an alternative to black and white (I envisaged a sort of tinted post-card effect). I decided not to pursue this, however as it would be difficult to achieve a consistent colour palette, and the effect would seem even more "mannered" than the simpler alternative of using black and white.
The black and white conversions were mostly done with Silver Efex Pro add-in to Lightroom. I looked at each photograph individually and chose the preset that I felt best suited the subject and composition of the picture concerned. I tended to chose the settings which resulted in higher contrast and clarity. I considered using the more moody options ("triste 1 and triste 2" for example) for the less attractive industrial and commercial buildings to emphasize their forbidding appearance. This might be suitable for individual photographs, but such a difference looked out of place when viewed alongside the other prints.
I did not take into account of page layout requirements when taking or selecting the pictures. Most of the pictures selected are horizontal in format, with only a couple in vertical format. This balance may not suit the magazine layout requirements.