Lockdown Local Project

By Nigel Javis

Exploring my local area recently with my trusty camera phone was most enjoyable; exercising my physical and creative needs. Although you do get odd looks when taking pictures of everyday things, a rubbish bin, the back of a road sign or a post box but after a while you get used to it.

The walks started with me leaving home in a different direction each time, keeping the time to just over an hour to limit the area which I was exploring. Thankfully the weather during this project was good, the area a mixture of different types of housing surrounded by fields and farmland.

My approach is very simple. Walk and capture anything that catches my eye. I suppose the type of images I am drawn to is what you would call my individual style which has been influenced by the photographers I have been exposed to.

The Zine

I am sure I am not alone in having gigabytes of photos sitting on multiple hard drives. In the old days we would have prints made but now it is more tailored to social media and sharing on various platforms, so having something physical you can hold and flick through has become less common.

The App. (Popsa) has a good selection of layout templates. The first decision to make: overall layout colour, I keep it simple with white as it looks good with my black and white images. Next layout decision: what spreads do I go for, as all the images are square in format, in the end I went for two images per page.

Now for the hard bit, editing and putting the images into the spreads. I had an idea for the first and last image, the rest were trial and error. Moving the spreads and changing images is very easy and I must confess I didn't agonise over the choice of layout or images, I am a believer in, if it looks good it’s ok.

Upload and order.

The images in the zine are varied, as the intention was to discover and document my local area. Whether I achieved this, who knows, but I have something I can hold, flick though. Most importantly I now have the confidence to take this forward into a much larger project.