Well, I found my third ‘at work’ subject this morning, about five minutes’ walk from my house. I’m saving my original plan because I don’t want to waste him – I think he’d make a possible multimedia piece – so headed to some small industrial workshops I remembered yesterday. This particular place makes steel parts for the aerospace and motor industries – vague, strangely-shaped pieces of metal that were unrecognisable to me. Mike, the boss, told me it has been in his family for more than 50 years but is suffering from the recession. He was forced to lay three members of staff off last year.
Having secured permission to shoot, I wandered aimlessly around, trying to decide which of the three men working in the space looked like they were doing the most interesting work and would be the least nervous of me. Then this old man walked in – he doesn’t actually work but uses the space sometimes to do some ‘forging’ as he called it. He looked like he was making the top of a hammer – heating it until it glowed amber and then walloping it into shape with a mallet.
Given the limitations of the workshop – dark, dirty and a bit dangerous what with all the sparks and equipment – I am quite pleased with the shots I got. I over-shot by a large margin because it was so interesting, and looking back at my contact sheet I can see that I have a lot of very similar images. I tried to experiment with slowing the shutter speed right down to get some blur into some of the hammering shots. I think it makes quite a nice contrast with my two previous subjects, which were much ‘quieter’ kinds of jobs.
Full unedited shoot is here.
Previous workers are here and here.