Two Sides of The Story – New Opportunity

Having already played around with the idea of two sides being ‘Red v Blue’, Theresa May offered me a chance to use the idea in a real general election.

My initial idea of using abstract images didn’t fit the documentary genre that was being covered by this part of the course. However, I now had an opportunity to use my experience of the EU Referendum in 2016 and see if I could produce something new using the same theme. I like the idea of taking of using previous ideas rather than lurching from one subject to another although I am aware that this may attract criticism for being ‘samey’.

I drove round the polling station locations on the weekend prior to the election looking out for election signs and possibilities of compositions with reds and blues. In addition to polling station locations I identified sites where party signs were displayed and noted these as suitable for Thursday’s election.

Rightly or wrongly I didn’t take any practice shots on this visit. My aim was to capture people at polling stations and the locations were empty at the weekend. I had worked at these locations the previous year and was comfortable that I knew them well enough.

Even if I wasn’t going to produce images good enough for the assignment, I wanted to capture the event from a documentary and journalistic point of view. The work is not only about national politics but also about my locality and the impact of national government on my community.

Two Sides Of The Story – Initial Ideas

Having read through the course notes I thought I would start working on Assignment One as I progressed through part one.

In EYV I tended to go for socio political subjects as it is something I have an interest in and feel that this has the opportunity to project in to my images.

As assignment one was ‘Two Sides to the Story’ I thought I would continue from assignment five of EYV where I attempted to capture ‘two sides of a debate’. The debate being nationalisation. The finished set was probably a bit vague and did not convey my intentions expressed in my essay. So although not entirely successful I liked the idea and thought I would try out some more left/right ideas by using the colours red and blue.

I tried to create red images that were pleasant and comforting. I wanted to contrast these with blue images that were unpleasant and uncomfortable.

Having taken them a couple of weeks ago I am now returning to the idea having worked through the photojournalism course notes. My conclusion is that these images are too abstract and I feel I need to include people in the images.

As there is another election I am now considering extending my EU referendum assignment and covering the General Election as a form of ‘aftermath’ photography. My thoughts are now to get images of people at polling stations or outside party offices where there are blue and red hints of colour and backgrounds.

I have taken the day off of work to spend the day being a photojournalist. If successful I will submit two sets – one red, one blue – for my assignment submission.