I have taken some test shots for my final project and I know what vision I want for my images. My article is a sensitive story so I want my images to replicate that. I want to use singular shots with not too much going on but allow the image to tell a story.

These are some of the tester shots I have taken. As you can see they have not been edited but I want to make Keith and his leg the focus of the image so I am going to edit the depth of the image and use effects that hight light Keith

Riding a motor cycle can feel exhilarating and create an amazing sense of freedom, but do the dangers to this thrill seeking hobby outweigh the adrenaline endorphins it creates?

There is a massive stigma with the dangers of driving motor cycles. 14% of traffic deaths are caused by motor cycle accidents and 9.1% of motorcycle accidents result in amputations to limbs most likely lower limb amputation. Motorcycling gives people a huge sense of freedom and has a huge community behind it. Hundreds and thousands of people share passions for motor bikes but there are also thousands of people who have lost their lives of limbs from the accidents these vehicles cause.

Losing a limb due to accidents can be a distressing and dark place. It is a difficult trauma to go through and something that only a minority can relate to. 15,312 people have amputation from motor accidents in 2020 and 70% of them were lower limb amputations.

Keith Hulme is 57 years of age and when he was 30 he ended up in a motor cycle accident that wasn’t his fault. A car didn’t check their blind spot on a motor way and pulled in front of him and this accident caused him to lose his entire leg. He was on the back of the motor bike and his friend was driving and she unfortunately lost her life.  Keith loved riding motor cycles and also cycling. He regularly competed in city bike races as well as riding motor cycles. After the accident his life changed forever.

After Keith lost his leg his world was turned upside-down, it was a huge readjustment to his life. “When the doctors told me I was going to lose my leg my world crumbled. It felt like everything I knew had been taken away from me. My life was so close from being taken from me so it was a big adjustment that I was thankful for. I felt guilty for such a long time because my friend had lost her life and I was lucky enough to be alive. It is something that will always live with me. It created a whole new perspective on life and made me value everyone in my life even more.”

“I have always been a very active and keep fit type of person so I knew it was going to be a long journey of rehabilitating and hard work to even coming close to the life I was living before.”

Keith was in the hospital for 2 months after his accident and in the space of 2 years he underwent 7 different surgeries. he was given a prosthetic leg and he went through over a years’ worth of physical therapy programmes to regain his strength and getting him to adjust to a new way of life.  

“When I was fit enough to get my prosthetic leg I remember thinking it was going to be a difficult time. I looked at the leg and immediately thought what am I going to do with this. I had no idea how I was going to adapt to a so what normal life with a fake leg I didn’t know how to use. I was in physio therapy for a year and had weekly appointments to learn how to walk again. What I struggled the most with was regaining my balance, because my whole leg was amputated this meant I have a prosthetic knee, I felt like Bambi on ice when I first started to walk because my balance was completely off, it was hard to bend over to pick things up. I just wanted to maintain my balance more than anything.”

“It had taken me a long time to accept that life had taken me down a new path and I needed to embrace the second chance at life that I had been given. I wanted to integrate as much of my old life into my new way of life. For the first year of having my prosthetic leg I found it difficult. I became less social and stayed in because I felt I was treated differently and that is something that was hard to accept I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me I just wanted people to treat me the way they always had.”  

“The hardest part of the accident was accepting the loss of my dear friend and having a huge weight of guilt on my shoulders. I know there was nothing I could have done but I found it hard to accept that my friend was gone and made me realise how lucky I was.”

“I have always been a person like that likes to be a part of the community and I loved doing my bit in the sports part of the community. I didn’t want my disability take that aspect of my life away from me. Once I got into the swing of life with one leg I wanted to share my journey with as many people as possible and to spread the message of to not let struggles in life hold you back.”

Keith decided to do a ski season in the French Alps to help children with disabilities learn how to ski and show children that anything is possible. He taught skiing lessons in France for 2 years and inspired so many people that it doesn’t make you any less of a person by having a disability and that you can still do anything that a regular person can do. Keith wanted to share his journey with as many people as possible.

“Going to France was one of the best things I have ever done in my life. I wanted to take my trauma and show children that have either gone through the same situation or have another form of disability to not let it stop you. Seeing so many children believe in themselves skiing motivated me to want to help more people. Hence why I stayed in France for 2 years it was the most rewarding thing I have ever done and changed the way I view life.”

Dealing with such traumas can massively effect a person’s way of life some people like Keith feel like they can make the most of the life they have been dealt however many struggle as it can take years and years for people to accept what has happened to them. Losing limbs through road accidents go through trauma and stages of PTSD.

Keith loved the freedom and buzz that riding a motorcycle gave him but after his accident he never wanted to ride a motor bike again. Keith was also an avid cyclist and that passion he had for being free on the road was something he still wanted to have in his life. So he decided to learn how to ride a bike with a prosthetic leg.

“Learning to get back on a bike was a lot more difficult than I anticipated. I felt like I was back being a child learning how to ride a bike again but I was determined to be back on the road. Once I got to grips with my balance I was off. I missed that feeling of riding. A lot of my friends and family thought it was crazy that I wanted to be on the road after my accident but it was such a big part of my life I just missed feeling free and the feeling of the wind pushing against me whilst on my bike reminded me of what it used to feel like before my prosthetic leg.”

After falling back in love with cycling and feeling confident on the road it gave Keith a new sense of life and he started competing in cycling races in Manchester and hardly drove anywhere he always cycled. Keith wanted to share his journey with his community. He grew his Facebook profile and started to write daily posts about what he gets up to in his day to day life in the hope to motivate and spread awareness to those going through the same journey as him.

“I decided to be open about my life with a prosthetic leg to show and help people who have missing limbs and people who are struggling to adapt back to life. I just want to help as many people as possible and show my followers that it is normal to go through tough times but when life pulls you down that there is always a reason to get back up and try again. I grew a small following and started going into schools and give small talks to children with disabilities about the dangers of the road and to always be proud of who you are no matter what life throws at you. I organise cycle rides in the Cheshire community for people with missing limbs and disabilities to build a small community. I want people to know they are not on their own and there are plenty of others that have gone through then same situations.”

“People always ask me when they see my leg and what happened and I am very proud of my story and how far I have come. I try to be a glass half full type of person and always see the best in what life brings. One thing that still helps me to this day is speaking to a therapist. After the accident and with the loss of my friend it was difficult to fight the thoughts in my head. Speaking to someone did me the world of good and helped me understand that my trauma will come in waves and not every day will be good and when I am having a challenging day that it is normal. My biggest message I give to people is that losing a leg, arm finger or toe it doesn’t define who you are and it doesn’t make you any more or less of a person. What is important is that you know you have got this and no one is ever alone. The only thing in your way is you and how you want to see your new life. Finding the inner strength to say yes to things, going out of your comfort zone and not letting your traumas hold you back is the best mind set to have.”

Keith lives a normal day to day life he works at his family’s butchers and carries on with his weekly cycle runs and keeps his Facebook up to date with his journey. He has now had a prosthetic leg for 27 years and continues to give back to his community and help those who are going through the same challenges he has faced over the years.  

Raw images are types of uncompressed pictures the camera takes all the image data and saves it straight to the memory card. Raw images are beneficial because the provide a better quality of image compared to a JPEG. they are also better for larger images as they capture more information which is ideal for photo journalists.

Edited image:

This is the edited Raw image. compared to the first image it is a lot more balanced and the saturation is a lot lower. I have brought the exposure down to -10, the contrast to +5, changed the highlights to -2.

Unedited Image: This is the unedited RAW image as you can see this image is not as vivid and comes across more dull than the edited image above.

Before: This image was taken on a DLSR camera with a medium range aperture. As you can see this image is a little dull and doesn’t grab a viewers attention. This image doe not enhance anything and is a boring image.

This is the same image and I have edited the picture. The tools I have used are the brightening tool and enhanced it by 6 this creates brighter colours and creates more definition on the persons face in the image, I have used the exposure tool and increased it to 7 by doing this I have added more light into the picture and this extenuates the fair ground rides in the back ground.

I have chosen this second image because it has an array of different colours and depths. I thought this image would be good to edit because I can use tools to enhance the sunset to create a more vibrant atmosphere to the picture.

This is the edited image. As you can see the image is more vibrant and the sunset has come to life. I used the brightening tool and increased it to 8. I enhanced the vibrant tool to 6, I used the colour lookup tool and added more pink into the image. I used these three tools to bring the image to life and create a lively and energetic sunset.

This image is bright and has a lot of features than can be used to bring it to life. I have chosen this image because i think it has great potential to be enhanced.

This is the edited version of the previous image. The image instantly looks more intense and vivid. I used the brightening tool and increased it to 8 this immediately brought out the depth in the flowers and the grass. I used the sharpening tool to enhance the outline of the dog because when I increased the brightness the focus of the dog became lost. I also used the colour balance tool to even out the variation of shades in the flowers compared to the grass.

The ISO controls the the amount of light by the sensitivity of the sensor. ISO is a way to brighten photos if you can’t use a long shutter speed or have wider aperture. By using ISO it controls the sensitivity of a cameras sensor. With digital cameras, ISO is used to set the light sensitivity of your camera instead.​ The higher the setting, the more light sensitive your camera is.

The shutter speed controls the amount of light by the length of time and exposure. Getting the correct exposure is about balancing the ISO with shutter speed and f-stop settings.

This image is with a slow shutter speed as you can see due to the shutter speed being lower it captures more movement in the image and has very little focus.

This image has a hight shutter speed than the previous image, as you can see you can see the focus on the building more and see the outline of the person in the image.

This Image I used a faster shutter speed to capture the dog catching the frisbee due to the shutter speed being faster my image I could capture the dogs action and freeze the movement with out seeing movement in the image.

When you are taking images there are a lot of components that are important to know and remember. Focus, aperture and depth of field are important techniques that create a better quality of image.

Focus ensures that an image looks sharper or blurrier, aperture ensures how much light is in a picture, the higher the aperture the more light that will be in the image, the lower the aperture the image has less light in it.

This image has a aperture of F4 this setting has allowed more light in the image and this has made the image brighter and creates a more depth for the brighter parts of the image, such as the fair rides in the back ground and brightens up the persons face.

This second image has an aperture of F16 this image is a lot darker than the previous one, the image is not as bright and this creates a more eerie, dull atmosphere in the picture. The lower aperture enhances the persons coat and reflects the weather in the image.

This image focuses on depth of field. The image is in F8 by using this feature it has captured and enhanced the bee in a high quality and blurred the object in the back ground.

Illustrative photography is a term that refers to taking a photograph of something and editing the image to create a whole new perspective of the image. This type of photography is used in advertising, covering the front page of a book, marketing and even journalism.

Famous illustrative photographers are Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin, Illustrative Photography started in the 17th century. The image below is an image of one of the first examples of illustrative photography ‘illustration of camera obscura’. The image used geometrics, artillery and mechanics to show the depths of the world at the given time period.

A lot of techniques used in illustrative photography consist of drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, montage, digital design, multimedia, 3D modelling. These techniques give images more meaning and more depth into the story the image portrays. By using these different techniques it allows viewers of the image to understand the message of the image in a deeper level.

The energy crisis has hit the world by storm. It has effected house holds, establishments and now huge businesses in the city of Leeds. Latest data shows that 17. 4 percent of street shops were closed in Leeds city centre in 2022. Huge Franchises such as House of Fraser, Debenhams, Victoria Secret and various others stores.

Jenna Stansfield ” it is so shocking to see all of the stores that have closed down in the past few months especially over the winter. It is such a shame because it is what fills our city with life and seeing all of these closed signs really highlights the struggles our country is going through during this cost of living crisis.”

The country has hit such an economic bump the publics beloved franchises are suffering and the high street is now on the demise as the cost of rent goes up, the prices of products are going up, imports and exports rise and the public simply can’t afford to spend as much due to the cost of living dramatically increasing.