JUNE 2023: SCOTT CHOUCIÑO
“MAKE A SIMPLE HERO IMAGE”
This month Scott Couciño sets an assignment where he challenges you to find an item from your childhood and make that item ‘sing’. This assignment was set initially in episode #383.
THE ASSIGNMENT BRIEF
From Scott: “A lot of my work is about nostalgia, it’s about bringing something down to its pure essence. If you look at my work, a lot of it will be a single item on a solid background. So, the assignment this month is to find something that represents your childhood in a single item, and to ‘hero’ that item in a photograph.
Maybe it’s a tape cassette, a type of sweet/food, a book, but the more mundane or ‘average’ that item is, the better, I think. In my line of work, everyone tries to record the fanciest food possible, but the subject for me that takes the most work is something like one Jelly Baby! Find that one item that just sums up who you are as a person and photograph it. The simpler you can make something, the stronger the image will be.”
HOW TO ENTER
Send your entries to stories@photowalk.show, pictures should be 2,500 pixels wide if possible. Feel free to provide text too, to support the feeling, story and even technical approach behind the picture.
Entries are shown below and good luck!
Neale
SCOTT COUCIÑO
Two examples from Scott Couciño of hero-ing something that represents your childhood.
PAUL FRIDAY: flask winner for JUNE
This is the penknife I won as Best Scout on camp, sometime around 1975. Those were the days when giving knives to children was an accepted and ‘good thing’. I should perhaps explain the pale splodge and tape: the splodge is luminous paint and the tape is reflective, as they make it easier to find the knife if you drop it. Ever the Boy Scout.
WALEED ALZUHAIR
Behold, my first SLR… It was my father’s, and I started using it when I was 12. I thought shooting it on its old bag would give it some contrast. Excellent memorabilia from my father, especially because it was handed over to me when he was still alive.
JOHN GRINDLE
Here is my, make a simple hero image for Scott’s assignment. It’s a photograph of my Mother’s lemon juicer, which I still use now. It brings back happy memories of me helping my Mother cook when I was young. Especially pancake day, when she would cook mountains of them for us. Our only choice of toppings, was lemon juice and castor sugar, no fancy syrups or chocolate sauce back then. I’m off now to make some pancakes. See more of John’s work on his Instagram grid.
JAMES STOCKS
BMX FLYER, by the toy maker Grandstand.
This was my game back in 1983 aged 9. To me, it represents a moment on the timeline of life growing up in the 80s in Nottingham, a Raleigh Chrome burner was the key to my freedom, so long as I was back before it got dark. BMX posters on the bedroom wall, every wall! BMX quilt covers and pillows, BMX Bandits showing at the cinema, with Nicole Kidman starring in it.
BMX was everything to my friends and me at the time, bunnyhops, wheelies, dodgy ramps made with random house bricks and plywood from the back of the shed, occasionally getting the younger kids from the street to lie down at the back of the ramp and jump over them, or attempting a 5, 6 or 7 brick ramp with no helmet or any sign of safety gear, not always successfully!
I refrained from cleaning the game console because it’s old, with history, not clean and perfect like Scott’s wonderful images.
Photography is a hobby at the moment, I have worked in the construction industry since the age of 16, which enabled me to move from Nottingham to Brisbane, Australia in 2009, I started some photography work on the side in 2017, second shooting for weddings, trying food, fitness, fashion and product photography, as well as street portraits, where I chatted with the people I took portraits of about life advice, with the initial goal of 100 people taken during my lunch breaks in Brisbane CBD, and way out of my comfort zone.
Alas, the work-life, photography-life, family-life with young kids balance was off so it has remained a hobby since, mainly capturing family moments which is probably the most important when looking at the bigger picture (no pun intended).
As the space on the cake for the words 'Happy Birthday’ is taken up by more and more candles, I will be looking towards shooting more and finding a lane to head down, trying more things along with video and dabbling with AI.
VICTORIA ROBB
This may technically show more than one item, but the main childhood item is the Seashore book in which I found the postcard when I looked it out. Exmoor Devon is where we went as a family for seven years on summer holidays between the ages of 6 to 13 and it brought a love of rock pooling and rocks which I still enjoy collecting to this day. Hence them in illustration.
JOHN KENNY
(Pictures up and below.) I grew up in the 1980s with frequent spells living overseas as my Dad was in the RAF. Some of my earliest memories are from living in Belgium. We were based in a place called S.H.A.P.E. (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (which actually sounds very Marvel now I write it down!)). I am sure there were a lot of other nationalities there, but I do remember a strong cultural influence from the USA. This was particularly felt through the television. Whilst my parents enjoyed Cheers and Roseanne, the cartoon space seemed to be dominated by animated depictions of good vs evil. We had Thundercats, M.A.S.K, Visionaries, Transformers, GI Joe, and Masters of the Universe. A lot of TV shows are designed to sell toys.
My brother and I were recently clearing some boxes from the attic and found some of our old toys, including the 2 attached. Toy manufacturers back then had a clear idea of what a hero and a villain should look like. The strange thing when I look at them now is how aggressive the hero appears to be with his accessories in comparison to the more Gandalf-like villain. In either case, these toys represent a nostalgic memory of growing up and deserved a hero portrait for surviving my childhood and the attic for all these years!
MICHAEL MIXON
A significant portion of my childhood is associated with the game Dungeons & Dragons. My best friend was obsessed with it, and so via the transitive properties of friendship, I became obsessed with it as well. Hours spent dreaming up characters who dwelled in faraway lands, followed by campaigns that would stretch across weeks and months, to the point where these imaginary worlds often seemed more real to us than the one our physical bodies inhabited.
A natural part of the obsession involved buying and painting figurines that we would use during our games - little pewter statues that would act as physical avatars for both our characters and the many strange creatures we would encounter. Over the course of my childhood, I purchased dozens of these figurines (all from the same store in the mall, which had them in a locked display case, adding to their allure) and would devote many afternoons and evenings to the slow application of paint to these tiny canvases.
I know that this particular hero image isn’t made against a solid color background, but my nostalgia dictated that I place my little hero into an environment that resembled the many adventures he went on, through forested landscapes in search of magical treasures and even more magical experience points.
DAVID HIGTON #1
This is a picture of Dad's camera, he passed away last November. Dad introduced me to photography probably before I was aged 6, as I have images in my collection of my gran who passed away when I was that age. At first, he didn't tell me that I shouldn't open the back of the camera to “check that the film had wound on.” It did give some interesting light leaks. Although he used Kodachrome 64, he also introduced me to the joys of using B&W film, and how to develop this when I got older. Although the image shows his colour exposure calculator, I never saw him use this as he had memorised the exposure recommendation in the film pack and he didn't have a separate light meter. Most of the time, the images he took were of family holidays and correctly exposed, however in later life Mum did comment that he needed a new camera as more images were not correctly exposed. In his possessions, I also found photos he made whilst on National Service in Kenya. Although we knew about his national service, he never showed us these pictures although we did know that National Service powdered eggs meant he now couldn't stand eggs. The camera pictured was the only film camera left in his possession and is now part of my small collection of cameras. Unfortunately, the shutter doesn't work correctly so I'm contemplating a trip to the Real Camera Company in Manchester to see if they can repair it.
CASEY SISTERSON
It has taken me a few weeks to get the idea that immediately popped into my head while I listened to Scott talk about his challenge. What could be more of a hero than Luke Skywalker? Of course, what is a hero without the villain, Darth Vader? These are my original Hasbro Star Wars toys from my childhood. They’ve spent many decades in a box and they were more than willing to help pose for this challenge. I went for the Good on black background and Bad on white to hopefully increase some contrast in the image, with the good (bright) and bad (shadows) bleeding into the fore and background. Either that or I didn’t have time to play with the lighting to stop the shadows! I’ll go the artistic route on this one I think. I meant it to be that way!
GERT JAN KOLE
As a child diagnosed with a congenital heart defect, I was not allowed to go outside during the play breaks at primary school. To compensate for that, my parents made sure there was a big box of toy cars in the classroom so I could spent these breaks inside, driving around the world in my imagination. This was one of my absolute favorites, a 1974 right-hand drive (which was extra special for a boy in the Netherlandsland) Datsun 240Z Rally made by Matchbox. It proudly wears the scars of intensive (ab)use… and now, almost 50 years later, my grandsons enjoy playing with them. See more of Gert’s work on website.
JAY ILLIDGE
Please find attached my photo for Scott's current photo challenge. As I've been living away from my home country of the Uk for over 14 years now, I was thinking there's no way I would be able to take part, seeing as it's not easy to get hold of Monster Munch, Top Trumps cards or Spud Guns, all of which were dear to my childhood. But whilst out walking my two woofers this very morning I found this little tin chap, discarded in the park where very few others seem to tread. I took him home, cleaned him up, and named him GrubGrub. Although this has little to do with my own younger years, here in China these wind-up metal toys have been popular with children since the 1950s, and in some more rural areas still are to this day. I've shown him to a few friends today, and they've all beamed with happy-faced smiles and recalled having them as children.
P.S. If by any chance I happen to ever win the much coveted Photowalk flask, I promise to fill it with Irish coffee, take it to the Great Wall, and do a little jig with it.
DAVID HIGTON #2
Sprained my toes, I've not been able to get out… so I've made another image. I was trying to think of a true childhood image and remembered my mum had given me all my toy cars many years ago. They are languishing in the garage in a cupboard so the new toy car had to come out of the garage and I sorted a few out to photograph. Decided to emulate Scott's style and here's my favourite.
EWAN MCNEIL
Last-minute entry for June’s photo assignment. Where I grew up, the house was within spitting distance of the beach and we had a little stream running through the garden. I am now more landlocked living in the middle of Yorkshire, so greatly miss access to water. One of my first interests when I picked up an SLR, which was given to me by my grandad was macro photography, including trying to photograph the water droplets on my mum’s flowerbed after the rain. I never achieved too much in this respect with the film SLR as a teenager, but I am quite pleased with how this one turned out. The subject of my composition is water in the form of the droplets on the end of these rhododendron stamens. Taken exploring a bit of the local park I do not usually venture in to, handheld after a very heavy day of rain while waiting for my eldest to finish his youth club. I find much of my interests, activities and photographic compositions are drawn to water in its various guises.
DREW BROWN
So glad I can share this image, story from my childhood, my son’s childhood and our 4 grandchildren’s childhood.
I was born in June 1963 and in the late sixties I was fascinated by the Apollo missions, and of course the moon landing. I had an Airfix kit of the lunar module and Saturn V rocket, collected Apollo cards that came with chewing gum and played with Mattel ‘Matt Mason’ space toys, a collection of astronauts, space sleds, jet packs and the occasional alien…so much fun. My dad, extremely keen on woodwork, agreed to make a spaceship for the Matt Mason gang. So off he went to his shed and using an array of offcuts came back with the attached. I played with these toys for many years and my son and our grandchildren have all had and are still having so much joy with the spacecraft, first built in 1967.
The jpeg phone shot fits in with the subject I feel; a little rough around the edges. I’ve really enjoyed this nostalgic visit to my childhood.
