William Eggleston

William Eggleston is an American photographer, known for his colour landscapes of  urban America.

His images composition is always perfect and the positioning within his frame is a clear strength of Eggleston's. His first experimentation with colour photography was back in 1965 using a Canon and Leica which were very popular cameras of that time, from then onwards Eggleston's primary use was colour film within his photography. 

Above are a selection of my favourite images by William Eggleston, showing his American urban landscapes. The main reason I have chosen Eggleston's photography to look at as influence for me is because of the mundane atmosphere that is shown particularly in his landscapes and I think that if I could achieve this in my images that it would work really well with the empty pier. 

One technique I love of his is his use of viewpoints and angles within his images, especially lower angles photographs which I think make his images look more powerful and uniques.

Another technique of Eggleston's is his use of natural light and he uses the time of the day to focus on his lighting, e.g a lot of his images have been taken in the evening with the fading light. 

St Augustine's Church Penarth

During the Easter holidays I went on a trip to visit St Augustine's Church in Penarth.

St Augustine's Church is a Grade I listed building from back in 1989, the 19th century Parish church was structured by architect William Butterfield and was built between 1865 - 1866. 

The church has been described as 'one of Butterfield's finest churches, big boned and austere outside,   highly charged in the polychromatic patterning of its interior'.

Whilst visiting the church, I had to take 10 images inside and around the grounds of the church, however the Wednesday that I arrived the church was closed so I had to take the photos outside of the church and the grounds. 

- 2 x Close up of architectural details

- 2 x A sense of place or time

- 2 x Creative images of the building (inside or out)

- 2 x Abstract images

- 2 x Nature meets man made

Penarth day out!

A couple weeks ago, I took a trip to Penarth with a couple friends from my class to explore Penarth and it's most noted attractions. On the day itself we were very lucky with the weather and had a full day of warmth and sunshine. Whilst looking around Penarth I began to feel far more confident about my idea and the fact that I had to change my idea didn't daunt on me as much. 

The first stop we made was to the town centre to look at all the different business's and see the people of Penarth. I particularly like this photograph, I like the low viewpoint looking up slightly at the round about, along with the curve of the roundabout going across the image. 

The next stop we made was exploring Alexandra park where I was able to take this image of the beautiful blue bells growing. Whilst looking around the park I found that the majority of my images were close ups of the nature surrounding me. I like the colour tone of this image, and the fact that it's not really overly powering, instead a more subtle beauty. 

This is another image I took in Alexandra park, for this image I was lucky enough see the squirrel quickly and I was able to follow it on its quest to explore the park. I took several different photos of the squirrel but when he finally stopped running about I was able to get this shot. I would of liked to have gotten closer however my lens was limited to 135mm. 

The final stop we made was to Penarth pier where we rewarded ourselves with a long break of watching the beautiful sea view. As I did have an idea that I was going to photograph the pier for my main project, I mainly spent my time looking around the pier and imagining how I want my photos to turn out. When we visited the pier it was very busy because of the sunny day so the photos I took were quite packed with people (something I don't want for my finals), however as it was a test shoot this didn't bother me. 

Statement of Intent

For this project, I aim to produce an online blog showing my progress and research whilst working on my collaborative project with Penarth, along with a portfolio that contains a selection of my strongest images. 

Originally when starting this project, my initial idea was to document the life of a working farm in Penarth. However, as I did email several different farms, unfortunately none of them emailed back to give a reply, as I obviously couldn't spend a lot of time waiting around I therefore came up with another idea which I think will work out better for me. 

As my title is commerce/industry I am going to look at Penarth pier, and focus my project around the different industries that are on the pier, including the pavilion, cafes, ice-creaming stalls and the fishermen that sneakily fish (fishing is banned on the pier). I decided to chose the pier because of my previous research looking into Penarth I discovered that the main attraction and industry in Penarth is the pier.

I will be researching different photographers so help influence within my own work, one photographer I already know I am going to look into is Martin Parr, particularly his work showing British stereotypes. In my photos I don't really want to show the 'cliche' seaside photography that is crowded with people, instead I want my images to be very simple and spacious, definitely influenced by contemporary landscape photography where the mood can be seen as quite 'mundane'.  

Penarth Pier

Penarth pier is from the Victorian era, opened in 1895 at 750 feet long. 

The pier was created because of the growing popularity as a seaside resort as well as the need for much better communications in Cardiff. The regular ferry services between Cardiff and Penarth were started in 1856 and continued up till 1903. 

In 1929 the pier was sold to Penarth Borough Council, this helped to update the pier as a new concrete landing stage was built at the end, along with in 1930 an Art Deco pavillion was built. Sadly, only a year later in 1931, a fire broke out in the wooden theatre, the pier was rebuilt but however the theatre was not. 

In 1994, a restoration project was carried out with the cost of 650,000 pounds, repairing the rotten substructure and opening up a souvenir shop. Two years later in 1996, a program began replacing the steelwork, decking and berthing pontoon. Another two years later and the final restoration of the pier was carried out, the Heritage Lottery Fund gave a grant of 1.1m to pay for the final restoration.

The pier pavilion became a popular destination in Penarth during the opening of the pavilion in 1930's by the council. It was used as a cinema, dance hall and night club. The pavilion much like the pier, was renovated and became back up and running in the summer of 2013. 

The History of Penarth

The name Penarth comes from the Welsh words 'pen' meaning head, and 'arth' meaning bear, becoming  Head of Bear/Bear's Head and is still reflected upon nowadays with the Penarth crest with two bears and the sailing boat to show the towns sea commerce. 

During the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the town founded some of the finest architecture of that time, including churches, public and commercial buildings along with houses that belonged to the ship owners, coal workers and master marines who lived in Penarth. 

Penarth has many listed buildings including; St Augustine's church, The Pier, The Yacht Club and several different telephone boxes selected around the town. 

In 1963, Penarth Dock closed down after 100 years of it being first opened to the public, this saw a significant period in the history of the town. Yet, in the 1980's, the town witnessed a complete revival after the closure of the docks. 

Commerce & Industry

For this collaborative project with Penarth, I have been put into the 'commerce & industry' group, along with 4 other girls from my class. 

Commerce - 'the act of buying/selling, especially on a large scale 

Industry - 'economic activity concerned with the processing of raw materials and manufacture of goods in factories'

Penarth industries:

1) Penarth Pavilion - Cinema, cafes, ice-cream stalls, art club, fishermen, exhibitions

2) Banks - HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds, Santander, Nationwide, Natwest 

3) Restaurants & Cafes - Busy Teapot, The Fig Tree, Manor House & Hotel, Waterloo Tea House, Blue Pelican Cafe, Bar 44, The Pilot, Coffee #1, Starbucks

4) Services - Police station, Dentists, Post Office, Library, Solicitors 

5) Retail shops - Tesco, Boots, WHSmith, Hamptons