Planning (not family planning)
By Kevin Craske (Area 9).
When we watch the AV presentations at the open meetings at Didcot what you see is the end of what may have been a lot of planning. Our latest production finds it`s roots back in June 1991 when we had the idea of photographing the local travelling fun fair. Unfortunately we only thought of this a few days before the fair arrived so we decided to wait until the next fair in 1992. We do have a slight advantage in that Sandra is clerk to the Parish Council so when the fair organiser contacted her to arrange a date she mentioned about our project and received good reception. Another advantage we have is that I work shifts in the Television industry and thus have time off when other people are at work, this proved most useful in that I would be able to photograph the proceedings during the day and go to work later.
The fair duly arrived and as I was there, I introduced myself. This was the first good move. Everything got off to a good start. I made myself known and explained what I hoped to do - Not only were the people most helpful but keen to make me welcome. They had work to do, a lot of work, but it was clear that I would be free to photograph anything I wanted and I was able to just turn up and record the whole event. I of course respected anyone who wished not to be photographed, and there was one person who preferred not to be recorded and thus I kept my lens well out of his way and because of this I was able to still photograph around him without worrying that I would go against his wishes. Even he however changed his mind later. I did a bit of public relations in that one of the children of the fair people wanted his photograph taken on one of the rides, which I did. Within two days I was able to produce a Cibachrome print for him and gave it to him. He was really pleased and it was not until later when we went to the fair as a family did we find out who his father was - he owned the Hot-Dog stall and the Sky rockets (this resulted in some cheap hot-dogs and free rides for the children on the swing boats and the Waltzers [daddy had a go on the waltzers and was more scared than the children].
Everyone was keen to see the results and took an interest in what I was doing. Perhaps when they return in 1993 we can show them the production. Not only is it interesting now but we now have a record of the fun fair and may well be of interest many years from now - a record of life today.
At the end I shot something like 7 rolls of film for this particular project. It also had a spin off however. We realised one Thursday evening that there was an art exhibition at the local church so we decided to enter some Cibachromes. Thus at 10 o`clock at night we started and at 2 in the morning we were finished. I had to leave for work at 7 in the morning so Sandra had to hurry round, mount the photographs and deliver them to the church on Friday. They met with good reception as being colourful and very topical. As I write this we plan to bring some prints to match up with the AV.
The message in this is that good preparation can make all the difference in getting the material before you even start to put together the AV.