Exmoor Ponies

Exmoor ponies have been introduced to The Forest of Dean in an attempt to preserve the natural grazing pasture from being overgrown.

The ponies were recently moved onto the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust Reserve at Edgehills, just north of Cinderford as part of a project being overseen by Foresters’ Forest, a Heritage Lottery Funded Landscape Partnership Scheme that has overseen many projects in the area. The public are still free to walk the footpaths that pass through the reserve, but are encouraged not to feed the ponies due to their wild nature.

This project was initiated because of the overgrowth of many grazing areas in the Forest of Dean caused by the forced cull of thousands of free-roaming sheep in 2001 following the Foot and Mouth outbreak.

I went to the Edgehills Reserve to find the ponies and photograph them. This idea also worked for my journalism module as I wrote a short news story about the ponies' introduction into the Forest of Dean.

 Here are my contact sheets.

Craig Jones

Craig Jones is a wildlife photographer who has undertaken photography projects in different fields, but the one that interests me the most in relation to my own project is conservation.

He uses his photography of conservation to reveal good and bad situations regarding wildlife to the public in an attempt to help by spreading the word. Jones uses the power of a photograph to bring about positive change in a terrible situation, be it poaching or animal cruelty, as well as showing the good that people are doing within the area of conservation.

These are a couple of his images:

Image from https://www.craigjoneswildlifephotography.co.uk/wildlife-photos/midnight-bear.html

This image is beautifully composed, with the midnight light reflecting off the water in the forest pool. Craig Jones captured this photo in Finland, where in the summer months it is light all day. The water must not be disturbed, as the reflection of the bear and the woods is so clear. This photograph is captivating, and it is the inclusion of the forest pool and the reflection that makes it more than just an image of a brown bear in the woods, it makes it seem almost magical.

Image from https://www.craigjoneswildlifephotography.co.uk/wildlife-photos/watching-the-sunrise.html

Again, a key element to the success of the image is the light. In this photo, it is the sunrise that gently surrounds the grey seals that draws focus onto the animals, as the foreground and background are out of focus. The colour of the sky is a soft colour, contrasting against the harsh steely blue of the water. I may use the technique of blurring the background when shooting my images to create a focus on the animals that intensifies the point that is being projected.

Image from https://www.craigjoneswildlifephotography.co.uk/wildlife-photos/tiger-hunting.html

This last photograph is a stunning example of wildlife photography. The use of angle and composition creates a ethereal atmosphere to the scene of a Bengal Tiger hunting in the dawn light. Yet again the use of light has been vital to capturing this beautiful photo, with the tiger's features being gently illuminated, and the grass being pale and out of focus.

I will definitely take inspiration from Craig Jones' work and technique when capturing my own images, in the hope that they would be half as good as his.

Anthony Pierce

I have been researching wildlife photographers to get an idea of the techniques used when photographing animals, as well as the quality of the images that is required. I found one photographer, called Anthony Pierce, who specialises in marine wildlife photographer, in particular, cetaceans (whales and dolphins), and pinnipeds (seals and sea lions). His work has been featured globally in the media, such as magazines, books and travel guides.

The quality of his photographs is very high, and are composed extremely well. Here are a couple of his shots of fur seals and sea lions.

Image from http://www.dolphinphotos.co.uk/page_2948954.html

Image from http://www.dolphinphotos.co.uk/page_2948954.html

I like the detail of the face in the first image, as you can see the individual hairs of the seals fur. It is well composed as well, with the seals face in the centre of the frame, and it is looking directly at the camera as well. It is close-up with no empty space, and by filling the frame, it leaves little room for distraction. The second photograph is also the sort that I will need to capture for my project, a wider shot with the entire of the sea lions body in the frame. Pierce has managed to capture the sea lion in motion, as well as the water droplets splashing off it from the movement. This is something that I will have to remember to focus on when shooting my own images.

What I am Focusing my Project on

I have decided to focus my project around wildlife conservation, mainly marine wildlife conservation. But I am also going to do a couple of posts about the recent introduction of the Exmoor Ponies to Edgehills Reserve in the Forest of Dean as it is local to my home and relates to current news. I find wildlife photography very interesting as there is such a variety as to what you can focus the camera on. As well as full body shots encompassing the entire animal, it is often prudent to capture some macro or close-up shots, as the more detailed the image, the more rounded the accompanying story. I also quite like the fact that wildlife photography can be challenging, as you cannot communicate with your subject to stay still or pose in a certain position. I will say that it requires a lot of patience and possible waiting around for that 'decisive moment', but that is just part of what I enjoy about this type of photography. It also helps in other forms of photography as well, as you begin to learn to anticipate a subjects next move, and this can be helpful when doing street and portrait photography.

I am going to use Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook as my media outlets for this project, as these are the most popular among the public. I'm not going to include any vidoes as I have noticed that people don't really have the patience to stop and watch videos, instead preferring to quickly glance at an image, and more often than not, not even bothering to skim the accompanying caption. Due to this, I think that Instagram will be my most successful distribution outlet as it takes just one tap for a photo to be liked, whereas on Twitter you have to engage more with the multimedia. If it isn't easy to interact with, then I have found that people won't bother at all. The only drawback with Twitter is the limitation on how much text you can write to caption your image. It's something like 116 characters, which means that a lot of my posts from Instagram will have to be shortened. I will retweet my posts using my own account, to try and circulate them a bit more, and to ensure that there is one of my posts up and in the timeline every few hours. I will only use Facebook to share with my friends that I am doing this project and my Instagram and Twitter accounts, as well as a link to this blog. But I will wait until a couple of days before the deadline to do this as a lot of my images will be posted then. I will also use Facebook to post my final images from the project to see if by posting them all together I get a wider response than if I posted them separately.

Mind Maps of Societal Issues

In class we discussed societal issues that we could focus on for our individual projects, and this is a combination of those ideas and my own in mind map form.

I have chosen wildlife conservation to be the focus of my social media project as it gives me the freedom to explore different areas of conservation globally.

How Social Media Platforms are Used by the Media

The use of social media platforms is the most popular method to spread the word in the modern era. Nowadays people are constantly plugged into the web or an app on some form of technology. I will not deny that I am guilty of this, and as an aspiring photojournalist I find the constant news updates helpful in staying in touch with what is happening worldwide. People have all the information they could want at their fingertips, and the media uses this to their advantage.

Different social media platforms target different audiences depending on the form in which the information is released, be that text, video, audio or image. Instagram is used to release videos and photographs onto the web, and journalists find it a vital app for the distribution of news and information to the public, as the modern public have become used to interesting images that will capture their attention and basically tell the story without having to read much of anything. Everyone is in such a rush to know things first that being able to quickly scroll through a few photos and not long paragraphs of text is so much more convenient when on-the-go. This is a major contributon to the downfall of newspapers, as your phone is so much smaller to carry around with you everyday, and just makes everything that bit more accessible. The videos on Instagram can only be up to 30 seconds long, but with cropping and splicing technologies, even the longest of news stories can be made brief. Instagram has millions of users, meaning that each news company has a wide audience to inform daily. But this also means that often users may have been informed of news via other Instagram users prior to the news companies knowledge of the event. This is due to how connected the public are, and rather than view something through their own eyes, it is viewed through a camera lens on their phone to be instantly uploaded, shared and viewed by millions. Unfortunately this may also lead to the end of minor news companies as well.

Twitter uses a combination of text, video, audio and images to circulate information, with most MPs and celebrities having an account, everyone can find out anything about anyone. Most major news companies have an account which is used as an outlet to update people on news worldwide in brief yet captivating paragraphs, often accompanied by an image or short video. This ensures that people will continue to follow them and their accounts activities as they are known to be a reliable source for brief yet interesting information. It has become almost like a competition, to see who has the most likes and followers, and sadly this has made the actual content of posts seem less important, with people constantly checking to see if their posts are popular.

Facebook can be used to post pretty much any form of social media, yet it seems less popular with the younger generation in regards to the news as there is no limit on the amount of text, or the length of a video that can be posted. This means people are required to spend more time browsing and thus don't find out as much as they want. This is probably why Twitter and Instagram are more popular in terms of the distribution of news, as well as Facebook being a more social platform than Twitter and Instagram, and a better way to stay connected to family and friends.

Personally I find a news app called Quartz to be a reliable and efficient way to keep updated with the world's news as, in keeping with the younger generation, it sends news updates via text. Whilst being brief, it doesn't cut out any important information, and uses images and GIFs to support its text. Every time something new happens, you get a notification from the app letting you know that more news has been sent to you.

Social media platforms are extremely useful in being instantly updated of news worldwide, but it also means that people aren't experiencing these events for themselves. The media uses the internet to distribute information quickly and efficiently, and this is an improvement on having to wait 2 weeks or longer for photographic film to be developed and sent to the newspapers before the image can even be seen, as it means that people can know about events even as they are happening, instead of weeks later. The advancement in technology also introduced the possibility of a wider variety of media forms, from videos to GIFs, to images. I think it's safe to say that people are a lot more knowledgeable about worldwide events in the 21st century than they were in the past, and the continuation of the use of social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram by news companies will ensure that they remain so.