Week One Task

Photographic Journalism: Week One

The task for our first week was intended to introduce us to both the module and working with images.

The brief said the activity would help us begin to work with images and talk to other people, as well as allowing us to use our ingenuity as a photojournalist.

We had to choose one of the following topics for our photojournalism task:

Old and new snapped side by side
A day in the life of an independent shop owner
What it’s like to be a busker on Briggate
There’s a tiger in the city, but it won’t harm anyone
The story behind the man with the barrel
Could you beat Leeds’ latest escape room?
Bubble tea is blowing up in Leeds
Hot sweetcorn. Why is it a thing?
The independent shops living in the shadow of Victoria Gate
Leeds’ best-kept secret

I had a few ideas immediately, thinking that ‘Leeds best-kept secret’ and ‘Old and new snapped side by side’ would be the easiest to find an interesting story for. However, I ended up talking to an independent shop owner and getting a few shots with him as he had some interesting things to say – and worked in an attractive shop that I believed would be fun to photograph.

I found my story by going to Leeds Corn Exchange. It is one of the most beautiful buildings in Leeds and I felt as though not only could I get an interesting story there, but definitely some nice images to work alongside it.

From this I started speaking to the owner of the record store inside the Corn Exchange. It’s an independent shop and record company – and I felt as though he had some nice thoughts on independent shops and what it’s like to work in the industry.

Below are some of his answers transcribed, as well as the unedited versions of the images I took.

Liam McIntyre outside Released Records:

“It started as a record label about 5 or 6 years ago, and then this shop opened in November last year”.

“It was first opened just as a tester really, it was only meant to be a pop-up shop but it did better than we expected so they were happy for us to carry on our lease here and yeah… we’ve been here ever since which is cool”.

“Most of our stock here is second hand now really, we all have really big [vinyl] collections so that’s what it mainly is now – but we do have a new release out tomorrow”.

“Working in an independent space gives us the ability to represent who we are as individuals and our record label ethos”.

“I work in PR full time, but music is my passion really so I’d love to do this full time, that would be ideal”.

“I start at 11 so you can’t really complain can you” he laughs.

“We’d love to increase the chill-out space to make some sort of cafe area or just a place where people can come and chill and listen to the vinyl together”.