28) Final photoshoot @ Greenbank - 14/4/18

On Saturday I went back to Greenbank to a final shoot with the van dwellers, solely focusing on portraits and more small details. Luckily the sun was shining so lots of the residents of Greenbank were sitting outside, making it easy to speak to them and take portraits. My contact sheet from the shoot can be seen below.

I'm really pleased with the shoot overall, and I feel I achieved what I set out to do. Some of my favourite images from the shoot can be seen below with more information on why I chose these as the most successful images. I decided to split them into my favourite portraits and favourite detail shots, 6 in each group.

Portraits:

I chose these above 6 portraits as my favourites from this final shoot because I really tried to experiment with different environmental backgrounds within the portraits and experimented with different framing, for instance from above (picture 6), and with full body and half body framing (as you can see in the rest of the above images). I also like how each image portrays a different person, because I wanted depict as many people living in this community as possible. I also love these images because all the individuals look carefree and happy, not wanting to bother others. This is something I really wanted to illustrate, because this whole project is about showing these people in a good light (instead of calling them 'disgusting' like the news does) and that they don't want to interfere with society and just live their lives.

Small details:

I chose these 6 images above as my favourites because I feel they present a little pieces of the van dwellers day to day lives, for instance the tobacco on their blanket (picture 6), the documents they receive when they've been found sleeping rough (picture 5), their self expression in the way they dress and accessorise their hair (picture 4) and their self expression in the way they decorate their homes (picture 1). I also wanted to show the way they are treated by others, for instance how the news portrays them. This is why I took an image of a newspaper excerpt about them (picture 3), calling them words such as 'disgusting' and saying they're 'taking advantage'. I feel they are being wrongly portrayed just for living a different way of life, and they're doing it legally so why should they be targeted.

Overall I'm really pleased with how this final shoot went and I feel I have enough images to put together a zine or newspaper. I'm going to take all my images and text to the tutorial on Monday with Amanda to see if she agrees that I have enough material to work with. My next steps after this is choosing a final edit of my images to use and then making the layout of my final output - which I'm really excited about starting!

#creativeinteractions #photoshoot