Porteous Photography The photo blog of James Porteous

Fourteen days at the coalface – Day Three

After my sheer joy at not having to go to Paisley on Day 2, the inevitable happened as soon as I arrived on Day 3... we had to go and shoot GV images around Paisley - Paris of the North, it aint. As I left the office, I spotted the photographer who I'd been with the previous day, when we rejoiced at not having to go out along the M8 in the pissing rain. He looked happy that he wasn't the one going out with me, and I didn't really blame him.

The gist of the piece was that all is not well in the town of Paisley, and our task was to illustrate that it's becoming a bit run down and past it. This meant that the order of the day was the abundance of "To Let" signs that were strapped to various shopfronts along the main street in the town. I can't say I particularly enjoyed the job - it was quite depressing to be actively trying to show a place going down the shitter, and the fact that the people in one shop were packing up the remaining clutter from their failed business made it a bit unpleasant. You do tend to have some detatchment when you read about another town's financial outlook drooping, but when you see the people that are actually being affected by it, there is much more of a sense of sorrow.

Away from the mean streets of Paisley, and it was time for yet more of the inevitable vox pops. After having my by-line snatched from me in the first series of images, I was determined to make good with my series of six shots. Vox pops are not what you'd call challenging, and you especially realise this when you're paired with another work placement student, and told to just do it on your own. We nailed down our city street style-fodder in around twenty minutes, and booted it back to the confines of the offices to ditch the images onto the picture desk. I could do vox pop images using nothing but my wit to control the camera now. Maybe.

The final task of the day was to shadow one of the staff photographers out to a shoot in the city centre. Handy really, as the shoot was based for the most part on getting the Bull image for the article (basically, the one kick-ass shot that the picture desk will go for), and with a bit of work on lighting and setup, the staffer got it bang on. If nothing else, it was a lesson in the fact that you can create a good photograph out of very little, but I didn't get a chance to shoot much more than the exterior shots of the business. I think this job really showed that I still have a lot to learn about setups... I wouldn't have had a clue how to make an interesting photograph in this place.

Apologies for the strange delay that's kicked in, but it's been a hectic couple of days and I'm just not up to speed on my blogging. I'll do my best to make sure that next week's efforts are much more up to scratch, but at least my tardiness will mean you have something to read over the weekend. Every cloud, and all that...