Alternative Research Methods: The Research of One's Environment

In breaking with traditional methods research, such as spending hours "googling" different photographers and concepts, I went out to Whitworth Park off Oxford Road in South Manchester on Thursday 21st March 2013 at 2.30pm, armed only with my mobile phone, an A4 lined pad and my photographic sensibilities (1). The Aim: to practice a different type of research that was reliant upon acclimatising myself to the surrounding area, and using all five senses to get a feel for the place before photographing it with my mobile. Why mobile? Answer: to further break out of the mindset of using the same old devices to photograph our surroundings.

I used my mobile phone (Samsung Galaxy S2) to-not only take snapshots of the area- but to record its sounds. Unfortunately, this phone has long since died, meaning I have lost the sound clips. Luckily, though, I still have the images I took, thanks to my amazing foresight in emailing them to myself for safekeeping. Below are the pictures I managed to keep from the day, along with written annotations of what was going-on around me (2).

Desolation. After sitting here a while, the cold made my head tense. I needed the toilet 

Suffering for my art in the cold. Took a few shots of this slide at different "focal lengths", but this seems 

As I was walking around to keep warm, I could feel the brittle feel of twigs and leafs underfoot. Whilst sat on the swing later-on I could see a single leaf blow passed me in a very poetic fashion. Felt like I was fully drinking it all in here. This is what the exercise was all about.

I was sat on a two-seater swing to the right of this thing, and thought  it'd be good to frame a tree through it. Birds were singing intermittently, but I was beginning to feel the cold, and feeling quite uncomfortable with it. I needed the toilet while I was sat there too. This added to it.

Would have been nice to just hear birds and other natural sounds. Unfortunately there were workmen interrupting this, which could be heard quite prominently on my sound recordings. I thought one of those pompous thoughts that do my spirit no god here. It was this: "workmen, bane of a poet's life". One to work on this. At one point one of the pick-up trucks dropped something (ironically). Thought this was a good shot, mind. Perfectly framed.

Nice little winding path. I went up this at one point. Or as it down? There were also a few joggers and cyclists goinf passed while I was sat there.

After this I left the park and took myself home to get warm. Actually, I got warm walking to the bus. Then even warmer on said bus. But, more to the point, I was a lot warmer once I got in the house.

 Its just a shame I lost some of the other pictures and all of the sound recordings whilst transferring phones.







1) Strictly, this is not true: I also had my main camera, three lenses, a flash-gun, a set of close-up filters and a spare battery, but for the sake of this post, I'd like readers to suspend disbelief at this point. Or at least bear with me.  
2)  Obviously, I'll be putting the images on straight from my phone (save for resizing for web-use), for anything else would surely be defeating the object.