Alcohol Awareness

As stated previously my project centers around the idea of student alcohol awareness. In order to achieve this the images need to be of excellent quality, but also with a hard hitting message. Students are aware of the fact that if you drink too much it can result in sickness, vomiting and a hangover, however I wish to go beyond that and attempt to show the longer term consequences of binge drinking - see links.
These can include the following;
Criminal damage
Domestic abuse
Drink driving
Child neglect
Homelessness
Illicit sex
Liver/kidney disease
No money
Work problems
Violence
The aim is to depict these topics and present them in book format, as well as pamphlets made available to students, A few examples are as follows;

This is typical of criminal damage probably caused by someone kicking the window.
I noticed this while walking down a street in Chester.

Drink driving. I pass this everyday on my way to work. The flowers are replaced with fresh ones every few weeks. It took quite a few visits to get this shot. The post to which the flowers are attached is in fact traffic lights. This meant that while I was positioning the tripod and setting up I had bemused motorists pulling up alongside me. It took about three weeks of returning to this spot in order to finally get an image I was happy with. There was a lot of luck involved regarding what type of vehicle was passing at the time of shutter release. This effected the height of the trailing lights. I do not know why the flowers are placed in this spot, I'm guessing someone died here, but the image gives the illusion of vehicle speed alongside flowers of respect.
I used my Cannon 5dmk2 set to aperture priority with a very small aperture. This gave me good depth of field whil also requiring a slow shutter speed. I also set an iso of 100 to again ensure a slow shutter speed and avoidnoise. I was able to use 'live view' on the camera which showed the image exposure changing as I adjusted the settings. The exposure was several seconds long which was fine as long as no wind moved the flowers or the wrapping.

Homeless This was taken in Lancaster City centre where there is a monumant around which are these park benches. These guys are two of several sleeping off a heavy night. Of course they could have just been sleeping in the sunlight, however they were surrounded by empty beer cans.I stood quite a long way away so that they would not notice. Other people did notice though and probably wondered what I was doing.

Violence. Preston high street. This could just have been a nose bleed, however as an ec CSI that is not how I see it.

Out of it

Money down the toilet. No matter what you drink, sooner or later this is where it ends up! This image took quite a while to create in photoshop. After photographing the flat ten pound note, I then had to manipulate it into the curved image giving the impression it is beng carried along by the water. It also took sevesral attempts at flushingthe toilet to get a shot I was happy with which I then cleaned up and sharpened in PS.

 Study? This is my daughter posing in her room. She wasn't really hungover, however I did not need to provide any of the props. Her desk containg lots of colourful items which I found distracting to the eye but also to the overall message, so I decided to make the image black and white.

Major Project

I have been working on a project for sometime now. My area of photography is the recording of crime scenes and so whatever I did would need to be depicted using the same methodology and approach.

I wanted the subject to be topical in order to have more impact. During research into a suitable subject I came upon the recent story of a Government chemist - Professor Nutt who lost his job as a result of publishing an article in the medical journal - The Lancet.

Although what Prof Nutt said was very controversial, he did have data to back it up however, he still lost his job. The reason was of course that we cannot have eminent scientists suggesting that heroin or ecstasy, both illegal, are less harmful than alcohol, which of course IS legal. However the point Prof Nutt was trying to make is that alcohol IS more harmful to society as a whole than other 'A' class drugs, He was not comparing the harm done to the individual by these substances.

I decided to try and find some evidence of the potential harm to society caused by 'A' class drugs and alcohol. The results were so one sided in that there is an abundance of evidence related to alcohol but barely anything related to 'A' class drugs. It could be of course because one is legal and the other one is not.

These results did not bode well for a project relying heavily on images, as it would be a bit one sided. As a result of my research however, I became aware of just how much potential devastation and misery can be caused by alcohol alone.  

My daughter began University last September. Since then I have become more aware of the drink culture amongst students - getting smashed out of your head each week seems almost a 'right of passage' through Uni! This reminded me of one of my own undergraduate students I was working in the laboratory with a few years ago, I commented on how white she looked and she told me she had recently had one of her kidneys removed. This was as a result of alcohol abuse. She had been brought up in a convent where alcohol was banned and when she came to Uni she indulged wholeheartedly to the extent of hospitalization.

This is obviously an extreme case. There are help centres and advisory groups within the University that students can go to, but these address the problem after it has happened. Everyday on my way around the University I see people handing out flyers to students promoting cheap/free drinks.

There doesn't seem to be anything that warns students of the dangers of over indulgence before it happens and so this gave me the idea of producing a hard hitting but well photographed publication aimed at student alcohol awareness.