Manchester

On tuesday 18th february, we went on a trip to manchester, my favourite part of this trip was defiantly the Don Mcullin exhibition. I liked this because Mcullin style of photography is very similar to what i would like to achieve in my own work. i really enjoyed the trip and i thought it was a good day out with my classmates. I wasn't over impressed with the Urbis exebition, we went to the lowery aswell, the advertising section was good but i found the presentation was abit shabby. Overall all the galleries/museams we went to where good and i enjoyed looking at the work, my favourite parts was definatly the Circus exebition and the Don Mcullin Exebition.

we even found a good noodle bar!

Matt :) x

Places -

For the places brief, i have finally decided on my idea, although it has changed drastically from my original one which was to continue on the old working mans clubs, i have decided that i am going to photograph 'Barbers shops' to me a barber shop is a unique place, different from normal hairdressers they seem to have un-official traditions, such as the red and white pole in the window and the que outside the door on a saturday morning, all male sometimes even father and son all there for the same thing. No fuss! No straighteners! No Perms! a truly manly place!

Although there is literally hundreds of these places jotted around town, walking down my local high street i can quite easily walk in to at least 4 barbers, but are they a real barbers shop? a real barbers shop in my eye is a one man show, the shop he runs (or even she runs) full of history, on the walls, the ceiling and the red and white pole in the window, showing the quirky (or dull) personality of the person that runs it. how the scissors are lined up, whats on the walls, what the shop front looks like, what the seating is like, all these points make a barbers shop a barbers shop, and not a hairdressers!

I would like to approach this unit in a similar way i have approached my others, by photographing the individual barber shops, and barbers in there place of work, i'm going to shoot on my 5D mark 1, but i am also considering taking a few images on a medium format camera, i used these on the ND course and loved the results i achieved. I like to photograph subjects head on but i am going to play around with different viewpoints, although my style of photography is mainly directly onto the subject.

When doing my research, starting off i typed into google, all the images you seem to find are very commercial looking, this is what i don't want, i almost want my images to look like they arn't taken for a commercial purpose, to make money and advertise. I want an image to view, that dosen't nessecerialy have a financial purpose but more an image someone can enjoy looking at the history of your local barber shop.

Some examples of the type of work i would like to achieve follow :)....

John Crosley - Barber Shop

An Old Barber Shop

Johnny's Original Barber Shop