Commission Unit. Waste food. Blog Entry.

Introduction:




First thoughts were to go and do something quite obvious with regards to waste, waste on the streets, litter that people discard, waste and abandoned buildings and so on. After a lecture on E-Waste, i was amazed at what we as a race throw away without any further thought for where or what harm it can and does to other human life and to a country.

Every time we use and get rid of an electronic item/gadget it doesn't always get recycled just shipped off (sometimes illegally to other country's one of which is india.

As I thought more bout it I thought upon the idea of what I waste as a single human.
I then set about researching into what people waste and what commercial waste adds up to.

Ideas & Initial Research on waste;

E waste is what is basically old/used no good electronic items that we no longer need or want.
hundreds if not thousands of tons of this e-waste is being dumped/shipped to 'third world' country's sometimes legally sometimes illegally.

These are supposed to be 'recycled' but many of the products cannot be recycled and due to the materials used within them, they become very harmful to the environment and humans also.

These are some of the people who get what they can from the E-waste to sell what they can to make some money for for food.
they dismantle parts to separate bits for burning, this is hazardous for a main reason that it releases Mercury and barium into the air and soil then polluting the ground and any potential drinking water.

  Women in Guiyu, China, sort wire that has been torn from 

discarded computers. The wires are sorted during the day 

and burned at night, releasing carcinogenic hydrocarbons 

and dioxins near areas where many families live.

Photo courtesy Basel Action Network 2001

Research:


Martin Parr - British Food:

When I began thinking more about shooting food for my project I thought of Martin Parr's work, I had seen a documentary about his book entitled 'British Food' where he travels all over the country shooting various types of foods, even asking people if he can shoot their lunch/dinner whilst they have been or where in the middle of eating.

Most of his images, are shot at a close up range, so cropping in tight to the food putting more emphasis on the foods and not the surrounding table or cloth etc.
equally he shoots at a slight distance thus showing us the fuller picture, where the food is, what its sitting on.
This gives us a small clue as to where each plate or dish was shot,  A Restaurant or a Cafe, the types of food also play a part in this too.

After walking along a river bank with my Girlfriend Lauren, I was talking about thinking outside the box and what I could shoot for my project with regards to waste and recycling, after watching the BBC 4 documentary on a London Bin Man who travels to Indonesia to do the same job but in a different country I thought maybe I could base mine around that concept somehow but then Lauren had an idea on showing food wastage, more so my flatmates food wastage, over a period of time, say a week or so and as some gets left for a day or to I can show the decomposition of each plate at various states of decay.

People in richer country's who have access to food as and then they choose or whenever they become hungry and they can discard it as soon as they have had enough regardless if they are full or have eaten enough or not. 

They don't need to worry about where they next meal may come from or if they will even have one.

The image to the right, has left over food on non biodegradable plates and uses the same in cutlery, yet so much of this is just discarded by many people once it has served its purpose and forgotten about, but it wont be as it will sit in a land fill for many many years to come then once that has reached its capacity it will be back filled with dirt/soil and councils/governments will move on to another location to repeat the process once again.

These are Potatoes that have been discarded for cosmetic reasons, the farm suppliers supplies Tesco supermarkets.

This is unbelievable that we in the more developed western countries can pick and choose what our vegetables look like. I live on a farm that supplies Potatoes to many big supermarkets and the have a grading system the ones that don't make the grade are then put in a separate box to be either discarded or sold off to crisp factories to be turned into, erm crisps.

It just amazes me that we as a society can go to any supermarket in the UK and pic up and choose what our food looks like, if its a slightly wonky Carrot we would then put it down in replacement for a straighter version.

There is no actual difference in taste, texture or colour just the shape and possibly the size.
This is ridiculous considering that there are still around 4 Million people in the UK suffering from food poverty!

Marks and Spencer's requires their sandwich makers to discard Four slices in each loaf, The crust and the first slice at each end. This amounts to 13,000 slices of perfectly good, edible bread thrown away every day in one single factory. 

The bread and other cereal products thrown away in UK households alone would have been enough to lift 30 million of the world's hungry people out of malnourishment.

This is a second World War poster campaign during 1939-45 in the UK, its aimed at everyone and implies that we need to be more resourceful in what use, how we use it and ultimately what we waste.


















Scanned Contact Sheets:

My Contact sheet of the 12 images I took for my shoot.
These hadn't come out in the way that I imagined but, I could have re done the contact print better but regrettably left as is. I thought that my images where underexposed as It suddenly dawned on me that I have made a cock up, I left the ISO on 200 on my light meter and not 160 as per the film speed! this is slightly less but enough to have an impact on my prints. I managed to get enough prints out although I have re shot my images again but due to work/other project commitments I haven't be able to print or develop my film.










Final Images:

F22 / 15 Seconds / C-0 M-64 Y-79

Evaluation:

From the project I have come to the conclusion that as humans we waste a ridiculous amount of food and inanimate objects each and every single day, some through carelessness, some because of cosmetic reason but some also because it has served its purpose and we no longer need or require it.
From my minimal research i have a good understanding of waste and myself I try to reduce the amount that  I waste.

I would place it in a exhibition as more of a documentary style photography, explaining through use of visual language how much food I waste as a human.

The reasons behind the idea are because i believe that as a society we waste way to much in terms of food but as a single human its crazy the amount each person can waste. The visual choices translate my ideas but simply showing each meals waste, i.e. the amount i would just discard after i have eaten enough to satisfy my hunger or to move onto another type of food.

I think that this time i am getting a little better at managing my studies but that said its still quite evident that I'm not putting in 100% due to time management issues and other work commitments, also having a major project that does require a lot of time an also money doesn't help much but that is all part of the course

I think that i would need to re shoot or at least re print some if not all my images again and spend a little more time on each one printing wise, as I feel that I could have done a little better and these images don't necessarily show my ability to control lighting and colour casts on the images correctly. Having said that, I am learning more and more, every time I do go to print I find myself more confident at getting it right or at least looking like it should do all be it, with a few tweaks of colour here and there.


Again I seem to struggle with managing to time manage all my projects and work life. I find that I am still adjusting to the way that we have to do things i.e. this blog, which to me is or it was a foreign concept but slowly I'm getting the hang of what it, I think.

The most challenging thing on the project for me was one coming up with an idea/concept and being able to fulfill that.

Commission Unit Presentation