ASSIGNMENT 1 - MY OWN NEIGHBOURHOOD

I live in Lyme Regis, which is a town in the very west of Dorset, bordering on East Devon.  The first written record of Lyme Regis was in 774 AD when the West Saxon King Cynewulf gave the land along the river Lym to the monks of Sherborne Abbey to establish a sea salt manufacturing industry. However this area had been inhabited for thousands of years. The Romans knew the town as "Lym Supra Mare".  Lyme takes its name from the River Lym, lym meaning a torrent of water.

Lyme is a fascinating place regardless of the tourist attractions and events that are mostly based around its links to fossils and the Jurassic Coast. I had to look at Lyme Regis wearing a different hat, that of a resident instead of the tourist/visitor that I’d been myself in the years before we moved here in 2009.

I have tried to capture both sides of Lyme, that of a seaside town in both high summer and the winter months.  In high season most areas are overrun with visitors who just come to sit on the beach and consume local delicacies. Whilst this brings in revenue to the cash strapped town, it spoils it for the people who have chosen to live in the area permanently. Very few of the day-trippers venture further than the beach, main street shops and the road to the car park. Those discerning visitors, who come out of season, i.e. from mid-September to April, would see the town as it really is, with the townspeople going about their daily business.  There is a strong sense of community with a wide variety of social events which are kept going by those people who were born and bred in the town and surrounding area.  There are two websites about the town and its activities, which keep locals and visitors up to date with happenings:

www.lymeregis.org

http://www.whatsoninlyme.co.uk/

It’s certainly been a real challenge to take a different view of Lyme, using my two very different cameras, but a project that I have found stimulating.   My main camera is the Nikon D5100 SLR, which I bought in November last year, and an Olympus Tough 3000 compact.  It’s so easy to go along and take hundreds of pictures with no real thought to the subject, composition or light. Living in such a photogenic town as Lyme Regis, I could snap away all day and have nothing decent to show for it.  This assignment has made me look at the pictures I take in a more specific way and utilise the settings available on-camera rather than just point and snap.  I have included some ‘pretty’ pictures of the beach, harbour and town but the one overlying subject I have not dealt with in-depth before is how all these extra people and the resultant traffic that comes with them affects the town during the summer months. 

One of the main problem areas is the number of buses, lorries, vans and cars that try to move through streets which were never designed for the size and number that come here.  With the influx of so many visitors in high summer there is also an increase in anti-social behaviour by some elements of visitors.  They also do not seem as aware of the seagull problems that beset the town throughout the year.  Seagulls feed on the rubbish left behind by visitors and even, swoop down whilst eating on the sea front and steal food from anyone who is unaware that they are such ruthless predators.  Also, visitors don’t deal with their household rubbish correctly as the birds know when to scavenge the black or white plastic bags put out for rubbish collections later in the week.  As holiday makers come and go as and when, they leave their rubbish bags out when they leave not realising that the birds will attack the bags to get hold of any abandoned food items.  This means that there is often the content of the bags scattered down the streets which in turn attracts more birds and makes more work for the local street cleaners who have to sort out the resultant mess.

There are an overwhelming number of second homes and holiday lets, especially in the old town area (see demographic information in appendix).  Out of season the old streets are still very picturesque but they are empty of residents (or visitors).  The number of these homes puts the price of houses and flats well above what the average young person can afford and, with little spare land to build affordable housing, they have to move out of the area to live and work.

The map above shows Monmouth Street, in the old town, which is featured on the panoramic image in my final image.  Apart from one house, which is converted to a block of flats, the rest of the houses you can see are all holiday lets or second homes.  This is common in the streets of the old town as it is a fairly flat walk to the main shopping street and beach.

Another problem with the people of Lyme is its aging population.  Whilst there is a good percentage of young children between 0-15 (14%) and a good provision of schools in the local area to accommodate their education (see appendix) there is a far larger number in the 60-84 age group (38%) which is much higher than the county average of 30%. There is also an employment problem as most of the younger age groups are employed on a seasonal part time basis as most of the work is in summer jobs.  The age groups 16-44 make up only approximately 21% because there is not much full time permanent employment.

BLOG ADDRESS

I have a blog to accompany this module and you will find it at the following address:

http://jenhollandspdp.blogspot.co.uk/

SELF-APPRAISAL

A Brief Chronicle of Time

I’ve been building up a portfolio of pictures of Lyme since we moved here in 2009 and began to assimilate pictures in early 2010 as part of my work for some of the OCA modules.  I always have a camera with me, be it a compact that would fit in my pocket or my larger DSL - always a Nikon but dependent of weight which one I have at the time.  My latest choice is the D5100 which is lightweight as I have a problem with larger cameras and lenses.  I also like this camera as it has the facility to use the digital display off camera so that I can hold it high or low and still see what I’m taking.  My previous Nikon was the D7000 that had a fixed display screen and was quite weighty.  The one before that was a D5000 which introduced me to a movable screen. I really missed being able to view pictures using the screen, as I’m fairly short and can get somewhat lost in a crowd.

My taste is eclectic and includes images of whatever is happening when I venture out. There is always something to see or celebrate in Lyme and the picture opportunities are endless.  There have been some areas that have been difficult to gain a suitable image such as the bad traffic in my local street.  It seems impossible to gain an acceptable print of the whole street as it’s so narrow and blocked with traffic.  That is the main problem where the cars, trucks and buses will not give way to each other.  I’ve tried several times to get good images but I don’t seem to get an acceptable shot.

Post-Processing Notes / Specifications

See attached notes attached at end of self-appraisal.

Basis of Selection of format and delivery method

I mainly work using JPG files as I like the fact that the images can be seen instantly.  These days there is little loss of quality for what I need.  I have tried to work in RAW but don’t like it that you have to work through each image separately to see the results. With the facilities in Photoshop CS5 now, including Levels and Shadows/Highlights, I can achieve what I need anyway. 

If I want to preserve the layers in an image I would use a TIFF format rather than the Photoshop PSD format.  I use TIFF mainly because you can use or import a TIFF image anywhere whereas the PSD format is limited to the Photoshop products.  There are other formats that are more readily available such as PNG (portable network graphics) and GIF (graphics interchange format) but they tend to have limitations when it comes to editing and uploading images to the Internet.

Conceptual Approach

I used the pictures in this assignment based on a time span of 6 months, from high summer to the winter months and how the town is affected by the huge influx of visitors during those weeks, ie, mid-July to mid-September. Then I wanted to show what the residents see outside those weeks and what a glorious little town it is even with all its problems.

Final Portfolio

I am pleased with the images that I have linked together.  They are a mixture of old and new ones and I think they show how different it can be in a pleasant seaside town.  I work in a local charity shop one day a week and it is not unusual to hear people who come in say what a lovely town Lyme is and how they would like to live here.  We have found it to be very different to what we thought it would be like when we experienced it only during the summer months before we took the decision to move but it’s been well worth the effort of fitting in.

Many times I have submitted pictures for different assignments and liked half or 2/3rds of them, but this time I can really say that I am satisfied with all of these pictures that they meet the brief.

File Specifications

No	File No / Name	Type	Resolution	File Size	Colour Space	Date Taken	Image Size (inches)	Manipulation
1.	DSC_0341	. jpg	314 ppi	2.55 Mb	RGB	26.8.2012	12.6 x 9.5	Original image
1a.	Town Beach High Summer	. jpg	314 ppi	6.46 Mb	RGB		5.86 x 3.91	Levels checked, shadows/highlights adjusted, cropped and sharpened
2.	P9020970	. jpg	314 ppi	2 Mb	RGB	2.9.2010	8.15 x 6.15	Original image
2a.	Fossil Beach	. jpg	314 ppi	9.89 Mb	RGB		7 x 5	Slight cropping to reduce sky, Levels to darken beach as over-exposed due to time of day picture taken, sharpened
3.	DSC_0352	. jpg	300 ppi	2.47 Mb	RGB	7.12.2010	10.72 x 712	Original image
3a.	Museum Roofs	. jpg	300 ppi	10.9 Mb	RGB		8 x 5.13	No cropping, but levels checked for balance and sharpening before printing.
4.	DSCN0964	. jpg	300 ppi	28.6 Mb	RGB	22.5.2010	12 x 9	Original image
4a.	Cobb High View	. jpg	300 ppi	13.2 Mb	RGB		8.5 x 6	Slight cropping to get horizon off mid-point, Levels checked, shadows/highlights adjusted to lift foreground, sharpened.
5.	Photo(2)	. jpg	72 ppi	3.59 Mb	RGB	10.9.2012	13.4 x 18	Original image
5a.	Traffic	. jpg	300 ppi	9.09 Mb	RGB		5 x 7	Original was a grab shot taken on iPhone as difficult to get this image. Levels checked and adjusted along with shadows/highlights as image dark. Sharpened before printing.
6.	TIFF Monmouth Street	. TIFF	300 ppi	68.6 Mb	RGB	15.9.2012	26.5 x 10	Original panorama
6a.	Monmouth Street Residents	. jpg	300 ppi	60.4 Mb	RGB		26.5 x 10	I took 28 images using a Nikon D5100 on a tripod and in portrait mode to get better merging together. Had to use Transform to skew angles of two images to get a better fit.
7.	DSC_0998	. jpg	300 ppi	46.0 Mb	RGB	22.9.2012	16.4 x 10.9	Original image
7a.	Crowds	. jpg	300 ppi	29.6 Mb	RGB		13.1 x 8.8	Realized I wanted this picture after summer crowds had gone so needed to use zoom lens to compress people in street to appear as though there were more than there actually were. Also needed to lighten image and sharpen it.
8.	_DSC0341	. jpg	300 ppi	14.9 Mb	RGB	7.12.2010	9.4 x 6.15	Original image
8a.	Final Resting Place	. jpg	300 ppi	11.3 Mb	RGB		8 x 5.5	This was taken during a heavy frost in 2010. Needed Transform to adjust skew on church as I have a bad habit of tilting the horizon. Also used Levels to adjust mid tones then sharpened.
9.	P4100162	. jpg	300 ppi	6.95 Mb	RGB	10.4.2010	6 x 4.5	Original image
9a.	Misty Morning	. jpg	300 ppi	11.5 Mb	RGB		8 x 5.6	Levels checked and sharpened
10.	P8261390	. jpg	314 ppi	14.1 Mb	RGB	26.11.2010	8.15 x 6.12	Original image
10a.	Winter Harbour	. jpg	314 ppi	12.5 Mb	RGB		8 x 5.54	Cropped, Levels checked, shadows/highlights adjusted, shadows of poles reduced, sharpened.
11.	DSCN_0559	. jpg	300 ppi	28.6 Mb	RGB	18.2.2012	12.16 x 9.12	Original image
11a.	Winter Coast Watch	. jpg	300 ppi	12.4 Mb	RGB		8 x 6	Cropped to remove feet on right hand side and some pavement, Levels adjusted, sharpened
12.	PC03140	. jpg	314 ppi	14.1 Mb	RGB	3.12.2010	8.15 x 6.12	Original image
12a.	Winter Beach	. jpg	314ppi	11.1 Mb	RGB		8 x 4.9	Cropped heavily at base to remove main part of road, Levels adjusted to improve light, shadows/highlights to improve exposure, sharpened.

Appendix

LYME REGIS DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

Courtesy of website: http://www.dorsetforyou.com/343602

Population 2010: Mid Year Estimates

Gender breakdown	DCC Dorset	Lyme Regis
Totals	404,790	3,570
Males	196,420	1,620
Females	208,370	1,950

Age structure (%):  2010 Mid Year Estimates

Age range	DCC Dorset	Lyme Regis
0-15	17.0	14.1
16+17	2.7	2.2
18-44	25.4	19.2
45-59	20.9	19.4
60-84	30.0	38.2
85+	3.9	6.7

2010 employment

Total number of people working in the town: 1,300
Number of Firms (excluding self-employed) 200 (2009)

Work pattern	percentage
Full-time	48%
Part-time	52%

Type of employment	%
Production and construction	7
Distribution, accommodation and food	49
Other market services	10
Public Admin, education and health	29
Other services	6

Source: Annual Source: Business Register and Employment Survey, 2010, ONS

Second/Holiday and Second Homes, 2011

Total dwellings on Council Tax Register	2,384
Total number of second homes	485
Second homes as a % of total dwellings	20.39

Source: Council Tax Register (parish figure, rounded)