Assignment Five: Narrative

Introduction

I don’t know if I could have found a more interesting subject for this assignment.

When I started thinking some months ago about how to spend my 8-week my summer holiday, I knew I wanted to do something to extend my photographic practice.  I began looking around the internet for classes, most of which seemed to be rather expensive and not in the direction I would be travelling, toward my in-laws in Japan.  I found a few organizations offering internships with newspapers and magazines in several developing Asian nations, but it seemed fees were too high for unpaid work experience.  I then came upon Unite For Sight, a US-based NGO supporting eye clinics in several developing countries and offering volunteer opportunities to photography students.  Three of their network hospitals are in India, east of and very close to Dubai.

With a reference from my OCA tutor and other supporting documents, my application to the program was accepted and my plan set in motion:  to do this narrative assignment on some aspect of life at Kalinga Eye Hospital.   Besides meeting my own needs, I wanted to do work that would be useful to the hospital, but communication from India was sparse.  The NGO claimed the hospital staff was busy and would be able to discuss things with me once I arrived. 

With several weeks remaining before my journey, I looked around for opportunities to arm myself with plans and ideas in order not to be entirely dependent on the hospital.  By reviewing the blogs of previous volunteers I was able to get an idea of some of the routine activities in which volunteers engage and to which they have access.  In Dubai I attended a two-day seminar on Photojournalism organized by a photography editor of one of the UAE’s English language newspapers.  This included a practical exercise requiring students to shoot a local news subject.  In addition, I attended a half-day seminar on exposure and a four-hour introduction to Lightroom from locally based commercial photographers.

As part of my training to participate as a volunteer with the NGO, I spent two days at Dubai’s Moorfields Hospital, one in clinic shadowing several doctors as they consulted patients, and a second day observing surgeries.  While Moorfields has far more technology than the rural hospital in India, the principles are largely the same.  The diseases and conditions certainly are. 

When it was finally time to leave Dubai, I still had no idea exactly what I would be shooting, but was well armed with hospital experience, journalism principles, a general idea of what to expect, and the idea that I would have an opportunity to shoot surgery and perhaps one rural vision camp.

On arrival in India I was met by a ranking officer of the Indian NGO that operates the Kalinga Eye Hospital.  But as this officer was assigned to field work unrelated to the hospital, he couldn’t help me much in terms of outlining the hospital’s photographic needs.  This left me to work out a plan on my own.  I didn’t meet the hospital manager for this kind of discussion until my fourth day on site.

   

The Assignment and Surgery

The brief calls for 6-12 images that together tell a story.  One image should be illustrative and suitable as a magazine cover.  The subject can be of any theme with a narrative element. 

The Kalinga Eye Hospital routinely visits isolated villages to conduct vision screenings.  I was hoping I might be able to shoot one of these, but this was not to be.  I discovered soon after arriving there would be no outreach camps during my stay.  My next best hope was surgery, but I hadn’t yet met with the hospital manager to make such arrangements. 

Fortunately, the staff was willing to help and didn’t object to me lurking with my camera.  I found out about two scheduled surgeries only a couple of hours before they took place, so the most I could do to prepare was to make sure my batteries were charged, my lens cleaned, and that I had an extra memory card.  I wasn’t planning on shooting the details of a particular procedure, so didn’t need to work out where and how to shoot in order to illustrate one.

I was allowed to go in with the nurses to observe and shoot the set-up, at which time I learned these would be cataract surgeries.  Altogether I was in the operating theater for about 75 minutes and took about 300 images.  This turned out to be excessive.  Many images were small variations on the same composition.  Perhaps I was anxious about missing opportunities and over-compensated by snapping repeatedly without thinking much about how one shot differed from the next. 

In order to demonstrate to the hospital manager how my photos might be used (as well as to prepare a presentation for this assignment), the same evening I edited this set of images and did the following layout in Scrib (which I began learning after wrestling with layout problems in a previous exercise).  The layout is included here.  Individual images will be included in materials submitted to the instructor. 

The Images

Discussion

There doesn’t seem much to say about these images individually.  There was no planning for certain types of shots, though as a result of my visit to Moorefields I had some idea about what a surgical theatre looks like and what kinds of shots I might make.   Even so, this was the first time I had shot in surgery, the first time I had been in this theatre, the first time I had worked with this group of people.  The process was spontaneous and on reflection a suitable challenge to the skills and knowledge acquired over the past 15 months on this course. 

I shot largely on Auto as I really didn’t see much advantage shooting otherwise.  I didn’t feel like I had the luxury to spend time fiddling with the camera.  When shooting tight on the surgery I needed to take advantage of spot metering and so switched over to Aperture Priority.  I found my experience shooting the supermoon the week previous - exposing for a small circle of bright light - to be quite similar.    

The workflow went something like this:

1. Create new metadata file and import images to Lightroom while simultaneously copying to laptop hard drive. 

2. Review all images, flagging interesting ones, deleting the obviously unusable.  At this stage I have only three ratings:  good, delete, and everything else. 

3. Flagged images adjusted for lens, crop, and tone. 

4. Review flagged images to conceptualize a story, color coding those images usable for the story. 

5. When necessary look for additional images that might best fit the needs of the story, adjust and color.  

6. Export all usable story images to jpg into an export folder nested within the RAW folder.    

7. Import jpgs to Scribus and allow the images to suggest a layout. 

8. Once everything looks like it hangs together, begin the tight layout. 

9. Add text to document.  

10. Export finished layout to pdf/jpeg. 

11. Once all revisions have been completed, move files from internal HD to external HD via Lightroom.

The next day I learned that I had missed important aspects of the surgical process and arranged later in the week to follow one patient from beginning to end, including check-in at the hospital, measurement of blood pressure and intraocular pressure, a vision screening, pupil dilation, eyelash trimming, a consultation with the doctor, and the administration of local anesthesia.  While I was happy and excited to be able to capture all this, I ran into unexpected problems.  The process included a large number of steps, all of which couldn’t be shown or explained within the confines of the project.  Even more problematic was that taken together the series was rather unimpressive.  Many images were repetitive, head shots of someone doing something to the subject’s eye.   

Looking back I was happier with the results produced that first day of surgery and found the story more interesting.  Perhaps there was something about the freshness of the experience that inspired a certain perspective.  Or perhaps it was simply that I shot more on that first day and probability took care of squeezing out a few extra usable images.  It may also be that the first day images were more appealing because they were a record of my experience of surgery, rather than a more clinical document of surgery. 

The one aspect of these photos I now find lacking is the absence of multiple perspectives.  With the exception of the image from the foot of the bed, and the over-the-shoulder shots of the nurse and doctor, the remainder is from my standing height.  I now wish there were a bit more variety.

Additional Images

After meeting with the hospital manager, I learned of his interest in producing a photo book for illiterate patients to demonstrate patient workflow.  To that end I produced two additional documents for use by the hospital that are included here as evidence of additional work in a narrative mode.

A collection of images from Kalinga Eye Hospital and the neighboring village can be found at Flickr here. 

Prints

After communicating with my tutor regarding prints, I have decided not to submit them for this assignment. 

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Tutor Comments & Revision

31 August

The tutor finds this “an excellent final assignment” with planning “more akin to later levels.”  The original submission consisted of two parts:  1) a series documenting eye surgery compiled specifically for this course and 2) two series documenting conjunctivitis and eye trauma produced for the use of the hospital.   The tutor’s suggestions for revisions touch on both parts. 

Part 1:  Surgery

Most of the suggested revisions have been implemented.

The opening shot has been changed to something more expressive of the series content.  In the original submission I did not discuss my rationale for the layout, assuming what I thought might be obvious.  But perhaps I should note here that the intention was to present a document of the operation in chronological order.  I was fortunate to have what I thought was an intriguing photo, in sequence, that could serve as the opener.  The nurse with her arms in the air invites a bit of puzzlement and speculation, but does not summarize the series.  The surgery image better meets that objective (while violating strict chronological sequence). 

I would very much like to use the blurred capture as an opening image.  I thought it was interesting enough to use to open my blog entry on this project.  But I couldn't use it in the assignment as it was taken on a different day with different nurses and a different surgeon.
  

I didn't conceive of the layout so much as an article for publication as something that might be used by the hospital to demonstrate to potential patients what happens during the process of cataract surgery.  The two supplementary layouts submitted as part of this assignment were done specifically for this purpose.  On the tutor’s suggestion, I have added introductory text to make the series more appealing to a general audience.

I have not, however, taken the suggestion to modify the layout.  I looked into the possibility, but it didn’t seem to help the movement of the story. In fact it might have made it a bit more confusing.

Neither have I added additional captions.  I could contact the hospital and gather additional information but I think the series as it stands serves its purpose. I can see how more information might be required if the intent were to publish.  Additional text might keep the reader on the page longer, but it might not necessarily make the series more informative.    

Part 2:  Conjunctivitis & Trauma

The two suggestions regarding layout and text justification have been implemented.  In addition, the layout for both has been revised to create better flow, a circle staring at top left, moving to the right, down and then to the left.

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