I have been working on my photography project of the people and places of Shard End for a few weeks now. In that time I have been invited into some of the primary schools and pre-school learning unit, the metal detectors group, the pensioners group. I have lined up further visits to the schools in the area and so far I am getting a very postive response from people. I have been invited to attend the AGM at Alysford Hall in Shard End to talk about my project and get more community groups interested in allowing me to take their photograph.
I will be outside the Shard End Community Centre on Birmingham City Councils Mobile Art Unit offering to take photos of people visiting the centre or just passing by in the street. My list of people and groups are growing and I am having to keep my diary updated!
Photographing people of all ages, either individual portraits or groups of people is outside my comfort zone. It is something that is proving to be a challenge but is producing positive results that I am pleased with. Also the feedback from people viewing my images has been positive.
For this project I have gone totally digital and have even bought the Digital SLR with lens! This has allowed me to generate a large pool of images quickly which can be edited and reviewed in a way my film SLR can not. It is also making the project economical. I am going to create an online resource of the images produced through this project to make it as accessible as possible to the people of Shard End. Hopefully it will be of interest to a global audience as well.
The exhibition I plan to have at the new Library of Shard End will take place during the middle of June. I have a lot of work to do in not only acquiring the images but also sorting, editing and getting information data. I will keep you posted on latest developments.
