#299 ASSIGNMENT: JASON FLORIO #1
Seeing double this week, well sort of. Jason Florio, photojournalist and African picture correspondent sets you a challenge for the next seven days with his first assignment. It's been wonderful to see the pictures you have been making from the assignments set so far, so please keep sending your photographs for inclusion on today's show page. Also I promote forward to my conversation on the 300th edition of the podcast this Friday with Jason on an assignment of a different nature and all-weather walker, bivvy-er, who records his adventures with photographs, Ronald Turnbull.
Send your pictures in to studio@photographydaily.show - 2000 pixels wide, any orientation you prefer; square, portrait or landscape.
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This week Jason is looking for you to make a diptych from your pictures, though listen to the show to hear further thoughts and creative ideas to help you reach your submitted picture.
An example of Jason Florio’s approach to strong documentary storytelling through diptychs.
BY JOHN MILLAR
I'm calling these two images "Walkies." What a great assignment, this one had me thinking hard, as I have never made a diptych or triptych before. The idea came to me when I was getting ready to walk Bruno, our 8-year-old red Staffy. As I was pulling my shoes on it occurred to me that one of Bruno's paws and one of my shoes would make a pair of similar things but at the same time different, but being linked in that we both need them to walk. I also thought that the inclusion of my shoe was a good idea, as A) walking the dog without shoes would be painful, and B) nobody wants to see feet!
BY JOHN GRINDLE
I heard rumours that the first of this season’s mackerel had been caught from Chesil Beach. As I cast my new set of feathers out into the sea, my hopes of catching a mackerel were not high. But wonders, of wonders after a few more casts, I reeled in my first mackerel of the season. I ended the evening catching two more, which is the perfect number for my wife and I to enjoy for supper tonight - Summer really is gaining momentum here in Dorset-Land.
BY ROBERT WEIGEL
I borrowed a geode from my granddaughter and thought a before and after - and what was inside the geode might make a good diptych.
Shot in: Castro Marina (LE) (Salento, Apulia, Italy). Part of the project "Fiata Lu Ientu - A journey through places and ancients souls carved by the wind."
Salento, the heel of the Italian Boot. Here, behind all the tourist traps and all the glamour postcards, behind the mass tourism that seems to devour everything, there are still places where people can live a simple life, in close contact with nature. Places inhabited by ancient souls. Even some of the local dialects are closer to Greek than Italian, remembering the age-old Magna Graecia. They farm a soil rich in nutrients but poor in water, surrounded by olive trees older than the Parthenon, on cliffs shaped by the sea and strong winds. And really the winds dictate time for the fishermen here. Until only a few years ago everyone had at least one fisherman in the family, and fishing was a source of the household livelihood.
Now intensive fishing by big companies, climate changes, pollution, and ever-increasing expenses, leaves too little to live by.
In the picture the expression of an old fisherman, and the tired hands of another releasing his only catch of the day.
BY LYNN FRASER
My mind went off on one of its weird and wonderful paths as these two images made me think of Steve McQueen’s jump scene and how it ended in 'The Great Escape'.
My contribution to this week's photo assignment. Some days you're the seagull, some days you're the statue.
BY GILES PENFOUND
BY MARK KRAJNAK (image one of two)
Since late November last year, as a way to shave off some extra pounds, I began a walking routine (which is when I listen to my podcasts). I don't vary the 2.5-mile loop too much but have different trails I can add or subtract as I wish. It's amazing all the new things I find to photograph even though I know the route so well. One constant are these power line towers. They seem to be my muse now, having shot them in early mornings, and in late-day light; with dramatic clouds overhead, or brilliant blue skies. They always give me a new "look". So, my diptych is a homage to my muse, these steel towers. I guess, in a way, my photos of them harken to Sean Tucker's #293 Challenge as well as Valerie Jardin's #291 challenge! Much crossover!
BY ANDREW HARDACRE
Perhaps a bit obvious, but pre-Covid, a vibrant scene of Sunday soccer. The gates are locked…… and the empty pitch. Two black and whites frame a colour centre panel and two landscapes frame a portrait. I’ve taken a lot of Covid type images as one day I hope they will be history.
BY JEREMY BAKER
A triptych of the Thames at Hungerford Bridge.
BY GERALD MURPHY
Serendipity - the future building on the past. As I listened to the podcast this morning waiting to go for my Spring Covid booster jab, I didn't think that I'd ever be able to come up with an idea for a diptych.
Twenty minutes later, as I walked from the car to the St Helens Rugby-League stadium, which stands next to a huge Tesco superstore, I noticed cranes and scaffolding on a large building site adjacent to the store. I realised as I waited for my jab, that there was a diptych just waiting to be photographed.
At the far side of the superstore are the ruins of the Cannington-Shaw Number 7 glass bottle making company which, in its day was the largest such factory in the country. It has been derelict since the 1980s. By 1917, on the land now being used as a building site, a new factory opened when Cannington-Shaw merged with two other companies to form United Glass Bottles - a huge company, now renamed United Glass and operating internationally - although the Peasley-Cross factory closed in 1999. The land lay derelict for years, but the new build is to be known as 'Glass Futures' - a research and development site into possible new glass-making technologies including decarbonising.
So, there you are, an industry's future, literally being built upon and beside the industry's past.
I include a direct quotation from the Glass Futures website: 'The proposed St Helens site will focus on the ‘hot’ side of glass production, with a large experimental glass furnace capable of producing 30 tonnes per day for windows, bottles or fibre glass. Research there would concentrate on raw materials and alternative energy sources to reduce carbon and other emissions by over 80 per cent.' I attach my attempt at a diptych for your consideration.
BY SUE SAYER
Attached is my diptych, but I do love a triptych more. Anyway, this is a lovely bluebell wood close by to Weston-super-Mare, I visit at least once or twice at this time of year. It would be a quiet, peaceful place but for the planes going in to land at Bristol Airport, which seem to be more frequent than ever. It's a privately-owned wood, luckily the owner allows people to wander freely which is super in these times. This year, I think I caught the bluebells just at their best, so I hope I have done them justice.
FROM KERRY ADAMS
From Seed to shop. Down at the kitchen garden, the Lady gardener is busy sowing for a new season. The mindful process of preparing the vegetable beds, raking over the soil, deciding which seeds to sow, and pruning the fruit trees. Months of care, attention and love go into producing such wonderful produce. I often look for those 5-day items that haven't had to travel miles and I prefer to buy what's in season. All the textures, colours, scents and flavours which await you in the shops. It's always nice to appreciate how much work and effort has gone into growing those cabbages or pears.
BY IAN REID
My daily walk often takes me past these two items, an abandoned car key and a van needing some love. Today I happened to be listening to the assignment. The idea of a diptych had never occurred to me but these two are made for each other.
BY KEVIN BEACHAM
I can’t remember if it was history or art back at school, a long time ago for sure, but that was the last time I heard about diptychs. I’ve attached my effort of a field we walk through when it isn’t filled with livestock and the two pictures show the fields, one that has the Glevum Way running through it and currently accommodates the sheep and new lambs, and the other part of the field that the farmer sold to housing and as much as providing accommodation to families also, unfortunately, takes away the view the long-standing properties opposite used to enjoy.
BY MARK KRAJNAK (image two of two)
Just a couple of miles inland from a New Jersey beach, a little burger shack, Circus Drive-In. Part of it was open-air, part inside, but it was from a bygone day - red and white paper lined boats to hold french fries, milkshakes and burgers and lobster rolls. Nothing was better than coming off the beach, hot and sandy, and getting a tasty hamburger and ice-cold soda while sitting at one of their open-air tables. My daughter, very young then (now 15) liked it as well. I did this diptych of her one summer afternoon. Sadly, they demolished the Circus Drive-In a few years ago but the memories of those summer afternoons - and burgers - live on.
BY MIKE MILLER
I went during the Golden hour and made an image of the Town Hall. I left everything as it was and waited about 40 minutes into the Blue Hour and made the second image. I then used Corel Paintshop Pro to line everything up to produce this composite image.
BY COLIN MAYER
I’ve created this little triptych I call the “Beauty at our feet”. It was taken at Breenhold Gardens, Mount Wilson. It is a popular spot for photographers this time of year, taking in the autumn colours. One of the more popular sections is ‘Bill’s Walk’ and has lovely dappled light coming through the leaves. Being autumn, many leaves are falling covering the ground and the stone walls are covered in lovely green moss, but nobody takes any notice of that. They’re too busy trying to get pictures of the trees and colourful leaves above. I like diptych and triptych shots as they really help me share the emotion of where I am and what I feel, much better than any single shot can.
BY MAURICE WEBSTER
My effort, titled “Men of Crete”. Apologies for it being a triptych rather than a diptych, I am blaming that on the rampant inflation we are experiencing!
BY CHRIS CANHAM
Not far from where I live, several years ago, a tragic car accident happened involving a young exuberant driver. The tree still bears the deep scars from that fateful day along with a memorial of the life tragically lost.
