#67 PREVIEW OF THE LIFEBOAT STATION PROJECT SPECIAL
This week, the long awaited full length interview with Jack Lowe from the Lifeboat Station Project airing as a 90 minute Saturday special for Access All Areas members, and this is a preview of that story.
As a photographer, Jack has dedicated his working life to visiting all 238 lifeboat stations in the UK and Ireland to photograph the places and people that make this incredibly important organisation run smoothly. It was to be an extraordinary personal project that he thought may take three plus years to complete, although it has become an eight year enterprise that has captured the hearts and minds of thousands of supporters and the lifeboat crews and stations he has visited.
We have talked many times on Photography Daily about the benefits of a personal project. One of the oft expressed personal advantages is that of a feeling of wellbeing and there is little doubt of the cathartic nature such projects brings.
Jack’s project is born of his childhood fascination in the Royal National Lifeboat Institution but when coming to make his photographic study, chose a route that involved slowing down the process considerably in terms of method. He also needed to ensure this was a project that could not just fund itself, but provide an income for his family.
Jack has gone several steps removed from the nostalgia of film, to the Victorian process of producing pictures called the Collodian process. It involves Jack adding a soluble iodide to a solution of collodion (cellulose nitrate) and coating a glass plate with that mixture to make a picture before the very subjects he photographs. You might wonder why he chooses to work this way, but it plays very well into a long tail project about a charitable organisation about to celebrate its 200th anniversary, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
The RNLI is a bench mark for similar lifesaving organisations around the world. But it isn’t simply a series of disparate boat houses across the UK and Ireland. It’s a £405,000 a day charity project, with 40,000 volunteers who risk their lives in all weathers on whatever day of the year they’re called and at whatever time of day.
The episode is told in seven chapters across the 90 minutes.
Chapter 1, launching a project that is long tail.
Chapter 2, the technical process of photographing this project by hand making the images on glass using a Victorian process. Doing that on the road, and in two countries.
Chapter 3, his photographic subjects and what it’s like to be included in the project.
Chapter 4, Jack’s use of sound, being a sound recordist and why this is an important skill to embrace even in a world of stills.
Chapter 5, the subject of money and how he has funded the project to become his main source of income.
Chapter 6, social media, its role in the project, his personal and mental battles with the currency of likes and how they eventually led him to keep just one active outlet in social media terms.
And Chapter 7, planning for the future, what happens as the last station is photographed, the crew remembered and Jack makes his final image on glass?
This episode is a real journey to understand how we as photographers with ideas, creativity and a sense of mission can launch our own personal projects and elevate them to be more than a simple wish list of intentions.
For Jack, it starts with a few words on a piece of paper.
If you’re a subscriber to the members zone ACCESS ALL AREAS, then you’ll hear the episode in full and make sure you use the portal provided when you joined through the website. Members support this podcast by providing a modest donation of £10 per month, and gain access to feature episodes like this, the cutting room floor editions and the business of photography editions – but more than that they help the show become a full time part of photographers’ lives. To find out more visit this link.
