Kellingley Pit

Finally headed to Kellngley pit this afternoon and by my point of view it was a very successful shoot. Going with my dad he filmed the ‘tour’ we was given in a silver pick up truck by a miner named Mark. We had access all over the top of pit, getting rather muddy in the process as well as seeing inside the control rooms, showers and work shops. Took around 550 pictures with about 250-300 coming out in pretty decent quality I must say. A sad shame that all this historic industry will finally come to an end on the 18th December. 

Time to get editing it would seem now. 

Tomorrow I shall be going to the last working coal mine in Britain at Kellingley Colliery, it is an exciting time as the mine will be shut in a matter of weeks. It is an exciting opportunity/once in a life time as i doubt there will be coal extractions within the United Kingdom in my lifetime. Thus for this to get going its taken about a month and half of phone calls to finally get this going, more mind set is to record everything with photographs, digital and film so that it in the edit of my eventual photo book for this project, every page will be different and offer plenty of strategies. Consequently the weather is set to be sunny, hopefully everything will go swiftly and be able to produce some historically photographs.

Paris

  It’s been a week since I took this image on a trip with university. Unbeknownst to me and the rest of world was the events that would happen a couple of days later whilst still present in Paris. Consequently it really does makes one strive to success and be the best that they could possibly be. I know it has shaped my mindset.

Ended up at the national coal mining museum on Saturday. A bleak rainy day to start, however the sun emerged which provided some aesthetically pleasing shots of the rain on the ground, sun in the background and my father as the subject matter in the center of the frame. 

   

A mining mural in my home town of Featherstone, 4 massive stone panels make up this impressive artwork. However I need to reshoot these set of images, as although I find the composition of the image as I intended, it is just a bit too soft for my liking, thus the reshoot shall be made.

Finding my fathers old mining helmet within the deep depths of our garage, covered in bits of coal, dust and god knows what else. Il be wearing this in a matter of weeks for a self portrait .

Managed to get into contact with a current miner over at Kellingley Colliery. Hoping for a shoot to be completed on Saturday. A rare oppurtunity one might add.

Archival material is an important asset for this particular body of work, consequently the edit itself of the photo book that I shall produce in a few months will be a major importance, deciding on which photos to use for the narrative.