As part of the A-level I’ve been embarked on, I’ve been working on a project based around the theme “Boundaries”. In light of the recent goings on with completely innocent photographers being tarnished with the “terrorist brush” (see numerous articles on the BJP for example – here, here or here), I chose to focus on the suspicious nature of people, and how often their snapshot vision of a scene is interpreted in a completely incorrect manner. So I decided that to try and highlight this flaw, I was going to shoot a series of potential crimes in progress, in various locations, with different models and lighting. I garnered a rather alarming looking list of possible offences, and tried to construct scenes in my head and then on paper for how I would like the result to look. These images are the final selection that I have submitted as part of my coursework.

105A Assault without Injury by Neil Alexander

56 Arson by Neil Alexander

28 Burglary in a dwelling by Neil Alexander

37.2 Aggravated Vehicle Taking by Neil Alexander

92B Possession of controlled drugs by Neil Alexander

19A Rape of a female by Neil Alexander

Misty trees by Neil Alexander

I’ve finally come to the end of the project I’ve been working on on the River Bollin in Cheshire and these are the final images I’ve chosen for the series.

Macclesfield Forest by Neil Alexander

Bollin Valley by Neil Alexander

Swinging tyre by Neil Alexander

River Bollin by Neil Alexander

River Bollin by Neil Alexander

Swinging Tyre over the River Bollin by Neil Alexander

As part of my final A-level project for this year, I’ve been spending a lot of time round one of my old play areas as a kid. The River Bollin meanders from the hillsides on the edge of Macclesfield Forest, through deepest darkest Cheshire, crosses the Manchester Ship Cancal near the Lymm viaduct and gets swallowed up by the Mersey shortly afterwards. As a youngster, it was a great playground. Whether it was bike rides around the valley, mammoth bridge building with the Scouts or just pottering around with an OM10, this place holds a lot of memories for me. So it was I decided to venture back there and make some photographs.

On this particular morning, there were a few clouds in the sky pre-dawn, but it looked as if I’d be set up for some nice dawn light over the particular location I’d chosen. I played with a few compositions, and tried different exposures and then waited for the sun to rise, which it promptly did. Followed closely by really dense morning mist! I’d set up a composition on a fallen tree about 50 yards down the stream. By 5 minutes after sunrise, and long before the sun had got up over the far embankment I could barely see my own hand, never mind my proposed composition.

So I decided to try to do something with what little I could see. I moved a little farther back up the stream and chose this shot instead of a tyre on a rope hanging from a branch over the river. I wanted to try and soften the water with a long exposure, but I also wanted a really shallow depth of field. To add to my woes (I had already waded too far into the river, and the water had breached the top of my wellies – I hate soggy socks!) & as I appeared to have misplaced my 77mm ND filter, I realised I was going to have to use the 72mm ND400 on a 77mm wide Tamron 70-200mm F2.8lens. Now I’ve tried this before and it works, you just have to make sure that the lens is pointing upwards slightly and rest the smaller filter up against the lens front inside the lens hood, and you may have to crop out a tiny bit at each corner. (The hood for this lens is really long, so there may be a few light leaks from the smaller filter, but generally I haven’t noticed any) The problem I had was that the tyre wasn’t far off the top of the water so to get my camera pointing upwards it was practically in the river itself! Thank heavens I had my little Nikon View Angler thingy as composing would’ve required a snorkel.

Anyway processed in SilverEfex Pro. Exposure was 1 sec at F2.8 ISO200.

Macclesfield Forest by Neil Alexander

For the final part of this year’s Photography A-level I’m working towards at the moment, I have been given the theme “Rhythms and Cycles”. I have chosen to make a series of photographs of the the River Bollin. I wanted to show the cycle of water from the rain falling around the start of a river, along its course to where it meets with the sea. I chose the Bollin as I grew up with the Bollin Valley almost as a second back yard, so revisiting it 30 years later felt appropriate considering the theme.

When I first became familiar with the river around the 70s, it was a stagnant polluted mess. I believe that industrial setups in the Macclesfield area used to discharge their raw waste straight into the river, and it just stayed that way. Eventually the Bollin Valley Partnership was formed and they managed to breathe new life into the river and its environs.

After extensive research I finally managed to chart the course of the river in its entirety (on most maps, it appears to disappear in Macclesfield and gets quite tricky to find again the other side), and worked out where the main catchment area lies on the edge of Macclesfield Forest.

Macclesfield Forest by Neil Alexander

For this first shot, I wanted to make an image of a dank wet forest scene to depict the catchment around the source of the river. Well I got what I wanted! In fact, I got a little more than I bargained for. By the time I was finished, I was absolutely soaked and having left the camera’s rain hood in the car it got increasingly difficult to get it out without drowning it.

I then decided that I wanted to produce this series in black & white. So these images are multiple frame HDR images processed in Photomatix and then converted to black & white in Silver Efex Pro. It may be a little overdone though – I’ve just printed them A3 so I need to get them up on the wall and digest them over a few days.

This is the final image I’m doing in this series for a while. It’s part of my A-level coursework, and I feel that I’ve got enough for the time being. Some are far from perfect, and I’d really like to do a few again, and have ideas for a few more. However, it’s time to call it a day as far as the coursework is concerned, and get the workbook & prints sorted out.
So for the final image, it was very interesting to hear & see people’s reaction to the topic and the image. In the interests of ambiguity, I decided that in this image, I didn’t want any faces in the frame. So I decided to place the female model on the ruffled bed with just her legs showing and the male leaving the room with his back to the camera. I put one SB900 in the corner of the room, camera left diffused and angled towards the top corner of the room so that it reflected back into the room. I applied a couple of red gels, though I had a devil of a time getting the room to turn red when the flash fired. If I put too much power through the flash, then I tended to end up with a pinky colour. If I reduced the power from the flash, then I got red, but not a great deal of light. I tried adding another red filter, and this helped a little, but not much. I then put another SB900 and a shoot through umbrella outside the room aiming in to try and silhouette the male. I also applied some red filters to this light. As you’ll see from the image below, which is straight out of the camera, I’ve had to do quite a bit in post.

Lighting setup:

The crime in case you are interested was rape. As soon as I told people this is what I was doing, there many reactions voiced, the majority of which were of a shocked and disapproving tone. Had I said that the scene was murder, then the reaction would have been totally different. Just an observation.

For both the images, the weather outside was so grey and drab that I made a decision to draw the curtains and just use a selection of the lights in the room combined with a couple of SB900s. For the first image (Amy sat at the desk), I positioned one strobe immediately to her left, on a stand with a shoot through umbrella wedged between the window and the desk. I popped another strobe camera right on the other side of the bed from Amy, so about 2 – 2.5 metres away from here with a snoot directed straight at her.

Lighting Setup for Drugs shoot from Crime? Project

Drugs2 from Crime? Series by Neil Alexander

For the next image with Amy walking through the door into the room, I positioned a light and a shoot through umbrella just inside the bathroom door to her right, and another back camera right diffused just to try and boost the background light a little. I experimented quite a bit with this scene, but I think that the halo effect of the pin light in the ceiling reflecting off the door around Amy’s head make this one.

Lighting setup for Drugs2 from Crime? Project

Just canned another one for this project so I’ll post again soon.

N

After I’d finished at the previous shoot, and warmed up a little, I decided to try and find somewhere on the other side of the runways that would have the setting sun in the background. I found a couple of possibles, one in particular that stood out.

So I headed back there about an hour before sunset, only to be confronted by another blanket of fog as the sun descended. I had hoped for some streaks of light from the landing planes in this, but alas there were 2 unsuccessful attempts at landing, and then it all went very quiet at this end. There was plenty activity up the other end with planes taking off, but down here it was eerily quiet.

I tried shooting with one light, camera right directed through the frame, with the subject about a metre or 2 back from the gate, and a much wider field of view. However when the fog descended, the water particles in it seemed to cause the light to reflect my strobe, and I could see visible lines of flash across the image. Add to that, the gate post that each gate was attached to was painted in fluorescent orange paint and catching any part of these with a strobe in the fog just looked horrid. So I decided to replicate a car’s headlights. I initially thought why fart about setting up lights when I can just use the car lights themselves – no point re-inventing the wheel eh? Alas, that would have been just too easy – the car lights were way too bright and lit up the scene to the point of ridiculous. So it was 2 SB900s about 1 1/2 metres apart gridded, zoomed to 200mm, and directed straight at the gate from about 1/2 metre off the ground.

Again, I like the image, but it doesn’t have the ambiguity I’m looking for – it’s so dark, it just looks downright weird. I need to print it large, and canvas opinion.

Next I think I need to try this with a proper model! And a much better looking one….

For the next image in my Boundaries project, for which I have now I chosen the title “Crime?” I wanted to photograph someone photographing something that in the current climate, would quite likely warrant a stop & search under section 44 of the Terrorism Act or some other similarly preposterous grounds for infringing a photographer’s fundamental rights. I figured I’d try and make an image of a “model” photographing planes at the airport around the perimeter fence of Manchester AIrport. So whilst researching, I stumbled across this location on Google Earth. Now I’ve lived in this area for over 30 years, and spent a not inconsiderable amount of time at this airport over the years. When I was a kid, we used to bike up to the service area of the airport and sit on a large grassy mound literally a stones throw from the main fuel terminal, probably about 1/4 mile in from the perimeter now. Manchester Airport has grown to a bit of a behemoth for us that live around it, it sprawls out in every direction, and there are planes overhead constantly. Anyway, I digress. When I found photographs taken by ordinary people of this area online, I figured that was where I was going to try this from first. I got out the OS maps, and worked out a route. I hauled my camera bag, lights bag, 2 lightstands, tripod & kitchen sink through waterlogged squelchy boggy fields for about 25 minutes. I negotiated a turnstile, rounded a corner and then suddenly the trees stopped and this view presented itself. I was right at the end of 05L in amongst the landing lights, just a few hundred yards from the end. I figured this was the perfect area to try for this shot.

It wasn’t quite dawn when I first arrived, probably about 30 minutes to go, but bloody freezing! And I thought I’d go on my own this time and not risk taking a model as I didn’t know what lay ahead. But if you’ve ever tried to photograph someone photographing something else, yet wanted to get both the photographer, and what he’s trying to shoot in the frame, compositionally it’s really rather tricky! This is kinda where I ended up. I set up an SB900 on a stand just to the front of the fence frame right, 3″ gridded it and directed right at my, sorry “the model’s” face. I’m zoomed out at about 80-90mm on the 70-200 F2.8, so it was quite a trek to and from the camera to check the frames, and the frost beneath my feet very quickly turned to mush. Eventually I was set up, and happy with my composition and lighting and then out of nowhere the fog descended. It go so dense in the space of about 15 minutes, that all I could see in the frame above was lights. Everything else disappeared! Then unbelievably as soon as it appeared, it went, replaced by the sun cresting the horizon. I am using a cheap eBay purchased remote to trigger the camera, which at the kind of range I was asking it work, was firing about every 7-8th button press. Which meant that co-ordinating a plane in the frame whilst fighting the now rapidly changing light, and checking the camera which meant a trudge through a now muddy trench, it all got a little testy!

So all in all as an image, it kinda works. I think the face is a little blown out, and the white balance may be off a little. However as the wife put it, “You just look like a weirdo plane spotter” – I think it kinda scuppers this from meeting the requirements of the project. Next…..

So I finally managed to get the permission I needed to stage the next shoot for my Boundaries Project. I wanted to stage an Arson attempt, and I had in mind the clubhouse of the local tennis club. In keeping with the theme, and just to make it that bit harder for myself, I wanted to do this at night too. I’d arranged with the fantastic Patrick, to meet at the club around 9, so I got there an hour before to survey and set up. I started by taking a few test shots with my new EP-1 to try and get some idea how I should compose the frame, bearing in mind that the last time I’d been here was as a child many moons ago. I’d remembered the layout pretty clearly, but some fairly major alterations had taken place since, so it was just as well I’d got there so early! I decided that I wanted the basic composition to appear like this:-

Once I’d surveyed the scene and decided on my composition, I then had to figure out how to light it all. I had to contend with a whole barrage of unpredictable security lights and motion sensors skirted all around the outside of the clubhouse. I decided that I could use one of the security lights to my advantage, but the rest created too much light, or lit parts of the scene that I wanted to stay dark. By using the floodlight on the front of the clubhouse, it nicely lit the middle part of the scene, so I then had to work out how to light Patrick. I also wanted to highlight the jerry can that he’d brought along, as this was a principal part of the final scene. After quite a bit of farting around, I concluded that the best spot to place lights to light Pat & the can was to tuck them just behind the wall at the end of the front of the clubhouse. Setting them up after that was a little of a challenge. As I moved around, I kept triggering security lights, and then seconds later I would be plunged into absolute darkness as they timed out and switched off again, and my eyes re-adjusted. The solution was to move the gear away from the sensors, and piece it all together in the pitch black. Which I’m quite pleased to say that I managed without too much cursing. Connecting pc-sync cords and tricky hot shoe mounts in the dark is quite an art! So in the end, I set up one SB900 on a stand set at F2.8 1/32 power. Set quite high up and pointing straight down at the jerry can. For some frames, about 3 feet to the right, I placed another SB900 and used this as a key to light Pat, but for this particular frame it wasn’t used. I placed the camera on a tripod at the far end of the building and using a cheapo wireless remote, to trigger the camera which in turn fired the strobes via Pocket Wizards. Camera was set to 1/4 sec F2.8 ISO200. I put the remote on the camera so that I could adjust the positioning and the level of light from the strobes whilst Pat moved around – I didn’t want to be running up and down the front of the clubhouse all night!

Anyway, all in all I’m quite pleased with the final image, and I think its a keeper for the project.

For the next in my Boundaries series, I chose “Theft, I had envisaged a man appearing to either look for or steal a wallet and car keys. The torch could have been required as a result of a power cut, or he may need the torch as he doesn’t want to turn lights on and attract attention.

Strobist: Shot in middle of the day, I closed all the blind in the room except one. I place a flash outside directed to shoot through window using the Georgian panes as a Gobo on full power. I gelled this flash with a CTO to give it the hue of the sodium light from a streetlight. I then dialled the exposure on the camera up to 1/30 sec at F8 in order to cut out all but a little of the ambient light. Another flash was placed camera right high up pointing down to the table to provide a little highlight on the wallet & keys. A 3” grid was applied to this one, and it was set to around 1/32 power. Ideally this light would have gone behind the subject to produce shadows that would match the torch light, but this wasn’t feasible. Possible fix in Photoshop?