This was Burton College's first time at the Free Range Art and Design Show. I was displaying photographs from my 'Vote for Ruth' project as a part of this. Easily the biggest exhibition that any of us had been involved in, I think most of us underestimated how much there was to do. Preparations and putting everything up was as equally manic as the opening night. Still it was all good fun and certainly an invaluable experience.

 

Putting everything up.

 

My 'Vote for Ruth' work.

 

Ruth Smeeth, the focus of my project came along too.

 

Still a few days of Burton College's end of year show. The Foundation Degree photography is situated at Burton Library. If you're in the area, it's worth checking out.

Students from Burton College on the Foundation Degree in Digital Media Production (Photography) will be showing work from the 17^th to the 21^st of June. As one of the students, I’ll be exhibiting thirty images from my recent A Vote for Ruth project.

 

Jill moved into photography as a second career after working for twelve years as an agricultural economist. In 2004, with two young children at home, joined Cleveland College of Art and Design, to study for a degree course and graduated in 2008.

 

Wanting to find a way of producing work without travel or huge cost, Jill produced Guns in 2007. It was a way of commenting on larger issues in a local way. In this case, about how guns are present in our everyday lives.

 

Leading from that, Jill went on to photograph army recruits, noticing how young they were. This work won her the Fujifilm Student Awards in 2007. This was a great boost and as this was significant, Jill decided to revisit one of the recruits a year later. He had since left the army and Jill made a short documentary of him.

 

Living in North Yorkshire, surrounded by moorland owned by military, the nearby Catterick Garrison is an ever present part of Jill's life. At this time there was much in the news about lack of equipment for soldiers and embedded photographers. Taking a slightly oblique look at war photography, Jill produced a small series called Firing Range. 

 

Within the overall title of Training Land, Jill produced a third chapter of work, Birds. Within the army garrison is a nature reserve where a bird ringing programme takes place. Jill created a series of eighteen images hoping they would encapsulate what she was trying to say about the army and people caught up in war. Much of Jill's work is referenced to conflict and also explores beauty and renewal.

 

Jill also completes commissions for local design agencies and does research work with Majority World, who work with indigenous photographers.

So it's been a week since the date of the General Election has been announced. With this, the photography for my Final Project of this academic year has gotten under way. In the run up to and including the Election, I'll be following Ruth Smeeth, the Labour candidate for Burton Upon Trent, hoping to provide a behind the scenes photo-documentary.

This project started sometime before the General Election was announced though. The Final Project is a self initiated piece of work and I already had a few ideas of what I wanted to do. My self imposed prerequisites for this project were to do something with people and to make sure it was something I could really get my teeth into. I soon settled on doing something related to the General Election. To keep it achievable, I decided to focus it purely on Burton Upon Trent, a town local to me. From there, I wrote a proposal and began a long period of emailing the candidates, at the time those that had announced they would be standing were from the Labour Party, the Conservatives and the BNP. Choosing to ask the BNP was something that I deliberated over for sometime, as I have absolutely no love for them whatsoever. However, this project isn't about my politics and it would provide another aspect to the photos.

Regardless, the BNP didn't bother to reply to me. However, Andrew Grittiths of the Conservatives did take time to reply to me. Sadly though, after discussing with his campaign team, he declined to take part in the project. Thankfully, Ruth Smeeth from the Labour Party met with me to discuss the project further and agreed to take part. I started photographing the week before the Election announcement. Ever since it's been an ever increasing whirlwind of activity, including conferences, meetings, visits and campaigning. Ruth, her campaign manager, Steve and the rest of the Burton Labour Party team have been very accommodating and supportive of my project. It certainly helps to have built up a trust between us.

I decided to shoot this project digitally. Mostly this makes things a lot easier for me. As I'll be spending a lot of time with the Burton Labour Party, it enables me to work from home afterwards to select images and see how it's going. I'm gravitating towards using prime lenses, typically a 50mm and a 24mm. I prefer the look and feel of the resulting images and it means I sometimes have to get in close to what's going on. I don't want the images to be purely a documentary, they've got to be aesthetically interesting too. This is sometimes a struggle and I have to remain alert at all times and work hard at seeing potential shots. The other issue I have is ensuring the photographs have a distinguishable style, something I can call my own. But I'm sure this is something every photographer faces. 

www.PhilipGrocott.com