The Story behind the Margate Documentary photography project.

On the 8th of August I spent a day in Margate with follow photographer, photojournalist Rob Johns documenting the town and surrounding immediate area including the old town adjacent to the harbour and beach. We were met by a former student of mine Matt Bates from the City and Guilds level III certificate in photography course that he’s just completed with me and since I knew he was going to be in the area I asked if he would like to join ass for the day.

We arrived at the railway station via the express train from King’s Cross, St Pancras London. It was a real contrast from our originating train station, when we arrived it with overcast but sunny and remain this way all day which helped us with our lighting and depth of field issues when creating documentary images using street photography and documentary approaches to creating images.

 

All stories come from an idea and the idea for the Margate story, came from Rob he had been reading about how the town was changing and that it was still a deprived area so we decided to go to Margate together as we thought it would be interesting to see how two photographers would do working collaboratively, we originally thought that we would split up and meet at various points though out the day but in the end we spent most of the day together working as we felt it was still going to give us different images. I am still to see Robs and he has yet to see my selection. It will be interesting to see how differently we have approached the subject. I was keen to do this with Rob as I think he is a great photographer and I learnt some things from being able to observe him working while I was also making images.

We might do some more together in the future, as it was both good to work with someone and helpful to be able to bounce of someone for the energy that it creates.

Rob on the Terrace at The Sands Hotel, Margate.

First image with the 28mm lens that I was trying out that Matt had just given me to use for the day.

Rob and I had lunch here, the food was rather tasty.