Exercise 4.5: Proposal for the self-directed project

I  have been looking at the work of Gilpin and his landscape images within his "Observations on the River Wye and several parts os South Wales". Its very interesting to me as these are places local to me, some in my immediate area. He even mentions 'Ogmore river' and 'Bridgend', which is where I live.

As I have previously mentioned amongst my learning log notes and as is evident through this particular work of Gilpin, South Wales is avast with castles and  ruins and I would like to use this as an idea for my personal project.

My proposal is to take all that I have learned so far, and in previous assignments, to photograph the area local to me with inspiration from this work of Gilpin. I would like to focus on the castle and ruins, not only in my immediate area but travelling along South Wales and visiting and photographing some of the scenes in his work.
This means I will explore Gilpin's work in more detail to find specifics of areas, towns and particularly castles that he noted about or sketched. Gilpin was always sure to make his sketches 'picturesque' and so this will be an important focus for me while collating my scenes.
I need to be sure to take a tripod for these images and will take both my Canon 1000D and my Canon 20D. The scenes will obviously be a lot different to those depicted in Gilpin's work due to the fact that towns and cities are likely to be more built up and modernised, so I need to take this into account.
My first thought is to use a wide angled lens and then maybe experiment with angles and focal lengths when I see the locations. I have visited some of the sites before and some I have not, so I will have to evaluate the best way to achieve my images on the site.
I would like to visit local castles, that would still have been on Gilpin's route, yet not ones that he himself comments on, as these are the ones that have been part of my subjective view over the years but then also include some of the more common ones that Gilpin acknowledges. Most of these castles charge a fee for entry so I will have to choose a select few to into if needs be (eg Tintern Abbey) but attempt to photograph the rest from outside. This will be a factor in my budget as well as travelling. As the furthest castles are only an hour away but there are a few I would like to visit, I may decide to stay overnight as to not rush my work and try to squeeze all of them into one day.
I am aware that I am coming to the end of my 'year' to complete this module so I can see me needing to complete this assignment by the end of August, so I am hoping to have all the work completed well before then at the latest.