Tales of Gloucestershire

Before getting to the planning stage of my tales of Gloucestershire idea I was already in the middle of a group of 20 or so graffiti artist photographing them after gaining access with their group with fellow first year PJD student Ryan Free.

We spent the afternoon photographing the artists complete their works as well as the surroundings that they were contained within. Ryan and myself decided that we had gotten enough action/grab shots and decided it was time for some portraits. The group was apprehensive having their faces clearly displayed in-front of their tags as this could incriminate them as they have illegally tagged around the city of Cheltenham.

We eventually persuaded some of the group to let us take some portraits luckily, we had both pre-framed and pre-exposed for the light so rattled off some portraits fast. As we were about to leave the group had tagged their group name ‘Motion Enterprises’ as well as their separate names they were all keener on getting a portrait in-front of this than there works.

We then approached who we thought was the ‘main man’ of the group Dave to talk about future opportunities to meet back up with the group. He informed us that he would be attending a free speaking event at the Frog and Fiddle where several other local artists would be attending.

After getting back and looking through our shots we discussed the approach we could then go down, both agreeing to focus on the ‘Arts in the Underground’ which has now become my title to this series. We decided to focus on the arts that were less socially accepted than others E.G. rapping, tagging, free speaking and many others.

Coming closer to the event I have decided to go and view the venue to see the available lighting as well as the setting to select the equipment that I’ll need to use. This also gave me the opportunity to speak to the venue owners who were more than happy for us to photograph the act if we had their consent before-hand.

The night of the event we paid entry into the event asking a stage hand if we could talk to the acts. After gaining access to the backstage we spoke to the act explaining that we were students as well as what we were doing and why we were doing it. The act was more than happy to let us photograph them both backstage and onstage.

I looked at a few photographers before the event including Alex Webb who was a great influence using his technique of obscuring the subject to create a more filling photograph.

As well as…..

After the shoot, we decided to email our best shots to the main group ‘The Sounds Of Harlowe’ who were very pleased with the images we had got of the event. I did 2 versions of the edits one for me and one for them their images were more commercial and shots they could use on website and blogs to advertise themselves. I also did a second edit for myself and the final tales of Gloucestershire series of images.

After finishing this shoot, we tried to gain further access to both sounds of Harlowe and Motion enterprises unfortunately we could not attend the second ‘Sounds of Harlowe’ show in Gloucester due to train times. ‘Motion Enterprises’ has yet to meet back up for a second time.

We have further plans with ‘Motion Enterprises’ to re-shoot them on their next meet up in Cheltenham.