Batterie Lothringen was a World War II coastal artillery battery in Saint Brelade, Jersey, named after the SMA Lothringen and constructed by Organisation Todt for the Wehrmacht during the Occupation of the Channel Islands. The first installations were completed in 1941, around the same time as the completion of the nearby Battery Moltke in St Ouen.
The batterie site is located at the end of Noirmont Point, a rock headland which overlooks St. Aubin’s Bay, Elizabeth Castle, and the harbours of Saint Helier. Its was a part of The Atlantic Wall system of the coastal fortifications, and most of the concrete structures remain today. The 3rd Battery of Naval Artillery Battalion 604 were stationed here.
In 1950 the states of Jersey purchased the headland at Noirmont as a memorial to all the people of Jersey who lost their lives during the occupation. A memorial stone was unveiled at Noirmont on 9th May 1970 to mark the 25th anniversary of liberation.
Our Visit:
On our visit to Battery Lothringen we were lucky enough to meet with Tony Pike, who took us round some of the bunkers and Gun Points and discussed with us the history surrounding Battery Lothringen. We were lucky enough to be able to have one of the bunkers opened for us and to be able to go inside and explore the bunkers. It was a very informative and useful visit, I was able to produce lots of photographs of not only the bunkers themselves but also the landscapes surrounding them.
Photographs Produced:
A selection of my taken photographs at Noirmount
Black and White Experiments:
Using Lightroom I began to experiment with Lightroom and turning the images I produced on the visit into black and white to see the different effects that this has on the photographs and how it changes the way the images are seen and perceived. I went through and Flagged in Lightroom the images I wanted to use and I thought were my most successful and then I selected a small number of them to produced into black and whit, I chose 6 images and selected them all and then went into the ‘Quick Development’ part of Lightroom and chose to go for the high contrast of black and white as I feel these sorts of images look good and work well in black and white and the high contrast gives them a dramatic effect.
Final Outcomes Black and White
These are my outcomes from the black and white experiments that I have produced in the black and white experiment, I feel they have worked and turned out well and that it has had a good effect on the photographs. I feel it creates more atmosphere and emotion in the photographs and gives them a dramatic effect that I feel works well with these types of photographs. I feel by having them in ‘high contrast’ black and white it has created a large tonal range and this creates more drama in the photograph and works really well with the really deep darks and very light whites.
Cropping Experiments:
For the cropping experiments I took some of the images that I had previously turned into black and white and trialled out some of the different ways I could crop them. Some being more extreme cropping and some less, for the example below showing my process there was a slight blur in the image in the top left corner, I experimented with just cropping this out and also cropping even further down to just having the gun in the frame.
Final Outcomes Cropping:
These are my outcomes for the cropping experiments, I feel that some of them have worked and turned out well to give a different perspective on the photographs compared to how they originally started out, whether that be just by cropping out blemishes but keeping the rest of the photograph all in frame, or by completely cropping down to just one part of the photograph to focus on, for example the gun point or the tower. I feel that these cropping experiments will work well and become useful to trial out further in the project when looking at people as I feel that would create a larger impact, however I do feel these images have worked well and it has added nice effects to the photographs and gives different perspectives.
