Below are some screenshots of the gallery presenting my photos from the photoshoots taken in the St Helier harbour. I laded them out in controlled order with photos containing wide open spaces having a larger frame than close up photos. I also grouped similar images together to make the viewing less confusing.

Evaluation of the whole topic:

the topic of Jerseys marine life was initially quite interesting to me as I have now lived on this island for over 7 years and I’m always interested in learning new things about the island. The Jersey marines was particularly interesting because it my dad has always been into fishing and I often join him, so learning about the interesting and often overlooked history of jersey cod trading was fun to learn about. Using the Jersey Archives as a research tool helped me massively to find out what was going on from over 300 years ago to now in Jersey. It helped me answer many questions about Jerseys history, like sources of income, common jobs, ext.

For the first photoshoot we went around the the St Helier harbour with 2 tour guides, one being the old captain of the marine which one of my final images has him as the subject:

I like this image as Its almost a capsule into the past, with no new items in the frame. It also has a lot of context to it, with him being the old captain of the harbour. The geometric background also complements the subject nicely, as well as drawing the eye towards the captain. His happy expression passes onto the viewer, making this a very enjoyable photos, while also making the past seem fun and exciting as well.

I have a few other photos that I like from the first photoshoot which I explain in previous blog posts.

For the second photoshoot, our school gave us a tour around the maritime museum which was a very interesting experience, as all my research was now viewable, with old boats, paddles, fishing requirement and so much more, all used to help create the rich history of Jerseys marine industries. Here is a photo from the museum:

As you can see it was packed with history, making it a valuable place for my research and understanding of the Jersey marine history. For example did you know that in the 19th century Jersey was one of the largest producer’s of boats in the British Isles. This was partly due to its very cheap tax rates and its large labour work force.

We also took more photos of the harbour after the museum, which I am very pleased about, as I tried many photography techniques like taking photos at unexpected angles, using various camera settings like a long exposure time to create a blurred effect, and more.

After the two photoshoots I am very pleased with my final images, each being very unique and having a lot of context to them.

Me and Tama Walked around the Old harbour, the English & French harbours and the Albert pier, taking a total of 263 photos along the way.

Below are the photos I flagged as pick because I felt like these images stood out more compared to my other photos. It also made it easier to add colour labels to help me select my beat images. The photos with the blue colour label being environmental/portraits and and purple having more of a topographical approach.

Selecting the best images from the shoot

After a lot of time and consideration I narrowed it down to eleven photos which I felt were the most interesting and related to the St. Helier harbour. Now I am going to begin the editing process

The editing process

I edited all my best images. Below are the ones I edited the most and experimented with. The other images I did minor adjustments such as cropping and slight changes to the colour or tone as they didn’t need much and I didn’t want to overedit them.

For this photo I change it to black and white to experiment to see if it suited the photo and it did so I kept it like that.

Edit 2

For this edit, I cropped the photo to make it more centred and did some selective colour on the yellow and blues. I also increased their vibrancy because as when I was editing this photo those colours stood out.

Edit 3

The first thing I did when editing was to crop and level my image. Afterwards I slightly increased the contrast which made the pier look better and more darker and I decreased the temperature of the image which gives it a blue tone which quite I like.

Presenting my best images

Evaluation & Analysis

Overall I found the first photoshoot I did at the St. Helier harbour was successful, it would have been nice if the sun was out a bit more, however I am pleased with how I captured the harbour life.

the photo was taken at the end of the albert pier in a small room where a harbour worker/master would have once sat. The photo is black and white and contains no colour, the photo also fully uses natural light provided by the two windows which creates a nice shadow on the table. The toy dog is in the centre of the image as it is the main subject and takes the place of where a harbour worker would have once sat, it also gives the centre of the image a softer texture, compared to the rough walls and solid desk. The photo contains a wide tonal rage with dark black areas of the shadows and light white areas where there is a lot of light, there is also a wide range of different shades of grey which is due to the contrast of all the levels of light.

This is my virtual gallery for the topic of Jersey Harbours, presenting my final edited images. I also used these images in my zine. I’m really happy with the layout of them, and I like how all of the images have a similar aspect of the reality of the harbour. I feel like I may have added too many images, as it can be seen as cramped and chaotic, and sometimes less can be more effective.

Overall, I am very happy with how this zine turned out. I was able to make it exactly how I intended when I made a mock up version. My images are presented in an order to take you through and around the harbour, ending in the maritime museum to show the detailed artefacts. My narrative, is to show different aspects of the harbour rather than one area in detail. So, I decided to add in a couple of images of different harbours/ different views of the harbours as the main images and then I added different features of the harbour to summarise the local environment. I think that the images I used and paired with each other on the pages, work really well together and makes the zine better than if I had just added images in. I used photographs which had relations to each other and which were good quality. I think I have developed this project well after making it into a zine, making me able to portray my best images.

St Helier harbour is the main harbour in Jersey, its located on the south coast of the island and occupies a large amount of the coast in St Helier. It was constructed in the early 19th century. The harbour is split into different parts given the names of Old Harbour, Elizabeth Harbour and The Main Harbour.

origins of St. Helier Harbour can be traced back to the 16th century. With St. Helier being on the south-eastern coast of jersey, it gave it protection from storms meaning it was an ideal site for fishermen. St. Helier became increasingly important as a centre for trade and fishing.

The harbour facilitated the exchange of goods with France and England, and local fishermen relied on it for their catch. In the 18th century the harbour having improvements such as expanding it to fit larger vessels to aid with the trade and fishing. The Albert pier was established in 1853 and it became an essential addition to the harbour. It allowed larger vehicles to dock directly in St Helier harbour. This improved the functionality of the harbour and increased the capacity. The harbour played a critical role in troop and supply movements during both World Wars, particularly during the German occupation in WWII. The islands were occupied by the Germans during the Second World War, and most island-based ships went to England in June 1940. Initially a number of fishing and private boats, then later smaller craft, made the perilous journey with over 200 escaping islanders.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the harbor underwent significant upgrades to accommodate modern shipping needs, enhance security, and improve facilities for passengers and cargo. Different parts of the harbour are places for personal boats and that has to dock creating excellent views of the many different boats and

The harbour increases jersey tourist numbers with its ferry services that travel to the other Channel Islands and the mainland. Many events can be held at the harbour including the boat show which is a popular attraction on the island

What was the involvement of Jersey mariners in the Canadian cod-fisheries and the Transatlantic carrying trade?

A few hundred years ago, the first islanders went to plunder the cod-rich seas of the American and Canadian coast. Fisherman travelled to these parts and, by 1580, around 10,000 European fishermen were making the transatlantic voyage to the area each year to fish for cod. between 60 and 70 Jersey vessels, manned by up to 2,000 Jersey men and boys (10% of the entire population), were involved in the trade. By 1763, Jersey was shipping more Newfoundland cod than any other British port.

Fishing out in sea was usually pretty easy to catch the Cod however, getting closer to shore was far more difficult. Though it was a challenge, this was commonly where they would be fishing since here was where the Channel Island fishermen got their biggest catches. Some men were employed to catch the cod, others carried fish to the processing site, where others cut off the heads.

The cod trade significantly impacted the economy of Jersey, opening up jobs and providing income for many islanders. The trade routes established during this period laid the groundwork for future maritime commerce.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the cod trade began to decline due to overfishing,

Jersey went through a financial crisis and the Jersey Banking Company collapsed as a result of fraud and embezzlement. head offices relocated to Canada where assets were beyond the reach of Jersey creditors, and as the cod industry went into decline.

Which ports did Jersey ships sail to and trade with?

Fisherman originally belonging to the channel islands were amongst these people and  by the 1750s Jersey fishermen participated in this lucrative trade, catching cod and exporting it to Europe, particularly to countries like Portugal and Spain. they had set up trade routes between Canada, Europe and America. Cod was traded in Europe, South America, North America, in the Mediterranean, and Africa. 

What type of goods did Jersey merchants exchange for cod-fish?

Jersey traded the cod for things such as rum, molasses, coffee, brazil and mahogany. Fortunes made through the North Atlantic cod trade were most probably the wealth for the construction of some 18th and 19th century houses in Jersey’s town and countryside.

Jersey cod-merchants also exported cod-fish to British colonies in the West Indies and later Brazil too in exchange for plantation goods, such as sugar, molasses, rum, cotton, coffee and tobacco which it brought to markets in America, Europe and the UK (inc. Jersey). 

I printed out my images from Adobe InDesign and created my zine:

To do this, I had to ensure that all the pages matched up, specifically the images that I had put onto a double-page spread so that the full picture was together. Then, I had to make sure that both edges of the sheet were aligned, then use a tool called a paper bone:

This enabled me to get a smooth and precise fold in the centre of the paper. By doing this, all my images would line up perfectly in the middle so that I could staple them easily, but it also meant that either side would be even so that my zine wouldn’t look wonky. One I had folded all the pages, I stapled them down the spine.

Then, I used a knife to slice off the white edges to get a clean and even edge so that it would look more professional and smooth.

After I created my zine, I created a virtual gallery to showcase my images using Artsteps so I could show my work in two mediums – physically and digitally.

EVALUATION AND CRITIQUE:

Overall, I am quite pleased with the outcomes I have produced within the topic of Jersey’s maritime history. Initially when we were researching the islands maritime history, I didn’t really enjoy it as I found it fairly tedious and dull, however when we began doing photoshoots I began to gain a little bit of motivation. In the first photoshoot we took down at Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive and St Helier Harbour, my expectations were that I was going to try and highlight Jersey’s fishing culture and history. Whilst some of my images were very successful (for example capturing a seagull flying), I don’t feel that I could be entirely creative with this as I didn’t particularly notice any specific details that I thought would be beneficial to my work and didn’t explore the area entirely. Due to this, many of my images were similar. However, my second photoshoot was where I think I was able to really get engrossed in my work and seek out unnoticed aspects of the harbour, leading to me having a vast selection of images to select from. Here, I was able to make the topic my own by exploring the harbour in detail instead of just taking images of the parts that were the most visible or just shooting pictures of the boats at the harbour in an unstructured way like I had in the majority of my images during the first photoshoot. As well as this, I made colour and texture the foundation of my images so that when I did go to create my zine, this would make it easier for me to form a narrative behind my images. As this shoot was taken down at the Maritime Museum, The Fresh Fish Company and around the Marina, this let me know that I had many options to choose from when deciding what I wanted my zine to be about. Despite that, while the images I took at the Maritime Museum provided a high amount of historical value and contextual importance into my work, I didn’t want to use any of them within my work or experiment with them any further because it didn’t fit in with my intentions behind this topic and were not as effective as the other photos I took, yet I am still glad that I did include them in my blogpost because this ensured I had that awareness behind what I was creating instead of doing it blindly. As a result of my images being successful, I ended up planning to create two zines with two separate After this, I began to prepare to create my zine by researching about narratives and sequencing, trying to spark a story by describing both my zines intentions with 3 words, a sentence and then a paragraph. I think this activity was really beneficial to me because it made me sit and think properly about what I wanted to produce and how I wanted to use the topic of Jersey’s maritime history, a topic that didn’t excite me at all, to create an artistic zine. Once I had figured this out, I found it quite a straightforward process in beginning to choose what images I was going to put in my zine. What helped me decide further was physically creating final selections by printing out various images in both black and white and colour. I think this activity was also really valuable because it meant I had to be critical about my work as I used process of elimination and be realistic about what images worked with each other and which ones didn’t. Once I started using InDesign, everything came together smoothly and I found it easy to show the storyline I had intended. I am really happy with how my zines came out, however if I did this again I would have liked to have made a black and white version and layout my images in a different way, with images overlapping the page or multiple on one page, or using text. I didn’t do this in my zines because I wanted each image to speak for itself, however it would’ve been good to do this because then I would have more variety in my work.

Zine

The final layout was:

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Final prints

For final prints I choose these 5 images:

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I wanted 1 A3, 4 A4s and 1 A5. For A3 I choose the landed boat. A5 was the tower and all the rest were A4.

Evaluation:

Camera Obscura

Many people believed photography began during 1822, however it actually dates back to over 400BC, where the camera obscura technique was used. Camera obscura is a lightproof box or room with a hole in one side. Light from the sun then reflects off objects outside the camera obscura and passes through the hole, lighting up the surfaces inside the room with an inverted projection of the outside view. Since the renaissance period many Artists would manually trace what they saw, or use the optical image as a basis for solving the problems of perspective and parallax, and deciding colour values. This method became the first way to make an image.

Nicephore Niepce

Thousands of years later a man named Nicéphore Niépce was born. Niépce grew up to be a French inventor and one of the earliest pioneers for photography. Within his lifetime he took the first ever photograph during 1826, he did so using his Heliography technique. Niépce created the heliograph by dissolving light-sensitive bitumen in lavender oil and lightly covering a polished pewter plate with it. He placed the plate next to a window in his second-story workroom and put it into a camera obscura which then created the photo.

Using a thin copper sheet coated in silver and subjected to the vapour released by iodine crystals, Daguerre created a layer of light-sensitive silver iodide on the surface of the technique that would later be called the daguerreotype. In the camera, the plate was then exposed. To make a distinct image, this procedure initially also needed a very long exposure. However, Daguerre made the important discovery that a much shorter exposure could produce an invisible dim “latent” image that could be chemically “developed” into a visible image. After viewing the image that he created he said “I have seized the light – I have arrested its flight!” The daguerreotype process allowed people to capture the image created using camera obscure and preserve it as an object. It became the first practical way to take a photograph and ushered in a new age of pictorial possibilities. The invention of daguerreotype was announced to the public during 1839 in a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris.

Henry Fox Talbot

These leaves are images which Talbot took, the lighter leaf is the negative image and the darker leaf is the positive image after it had been developed.

Richard Maddox

A dry plate is a glass plate coated with a gelatine emulsion of silver bromide and it is able to be stored until exposure. After the dry plate has been exposed it can be brought back to the darkroom for development at leisure. Dry plates were able to be bought in stores which allowed photographers to create photos without having to prepare their own dry plates. Negatives did not need to be developed immediately and for the first time, cameras could be small enough to be hand-held. Cameras could also be concealed, and with further research fast exposure times were created which led to snapshot photography, as well as the Kodak camera and roll film, this paved the way for cinematography. The John Scott Medal was rewarded to Maddox during 1889 and the Royal Photographic Society’s silver medal in 1901.

George Eastman

These dry plates were created by an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and the pioneer of popular photography and motion picture film, George Eastman. When travelling Eastman found that the weight, the awkwardness and the cost of the equipment required to take and develop photographs was a struggle. This led him to seek improvements. After experimenting for three years with gelatine emulsions, by 1880, he had invented and patented a dry-plate coating machine. Eastman formed the Eastman Dry Plate Company in 1881, which led to the development of easy-to-use cameras, this enabled many people to take photographs, and developed a flexible film that was a critical contribution to the launch of the motion picture industry.

Kodak Brownie

Eastman Kodak developed a series of camera models known as the Kodak brownie which were first released during 1900.

The Brownie was a basic cardboard box camera which has a simple conveys-concave lens which took 2 1/4 inch square pictures on number 117 roll film. The Kodak Brownie had an initial price of $1, which is equivalent to around $37 as of 2023, and it had simple controls, the Kodak roll film and processing also had a low price, which is why it surpassed its marketing goal.

Digital Photography

Today, digital photography is used which is a complex technological process which uses optical physics, materials engineering, and data science to transform light into electrical signals which are converted into photo elements, creating a digital image. This was initiated by the American Computer engineer, Russell Kirsch, who during 1957 developed the first rotating drum scanner and software which was able to digitally record images. Just 3 years later in 1960, two engineers George Smith and Willard Boyle developed the charge-coupled device, the precursor to the CMOD, used in fully digital cameras. However the first digital photo camera was not created till 1975 by an engineer working for the Eastman Kodak company named Steve Sasson. Sasson developed him camera using an image sensor created in the previous year. This camera weighed almost 9 pounds and took 23 seconds to capture one photograph.

Conclusion:

Therefore photography originated very early on when the camera obscura was used, however it was not as popular and easily accessed until many years later when the Kodak Brownie was invented as it was an easy way for many people to take their own photos without the need for all of the equipment necessary in earlier years of photography.

Sources:

• Camera Obscura
• Nicephore Niepce
• Louis Daguerre and Daguerreotype
• Henry Fox Talbot and Calotype , additional information
• Richard Maddox
• George Eastman
• Kodak Brownie
• Digital Photography