RECOGNITION

Sheila Haycox ARPS MPAGB/AV EFIAP

It was in February 2017 that a few of us visited Wester Ross to do some landscape photography. We had very mixed weather and on a particularly wet and windy day we drove up the Gairloch and Loch Ewe Peninsula and ended up at Cove Light Anti Aircraft Battery. Looking over the gate I spotted some gun emplacements which looked interesting and decided to come back another day not knowing this would lead to the idea of doing an AV.

The next day we drove by Loch Ewe where I took a few images and noticed the Tourist Information material on Wartime in Loch Ewe so naturally took some images but gradually the idea came to me that there may be a story to be told about the Convoys to Murmansk. Although born before the war I never really knew much about the Murmansk run, just heard stories about how men had a terrible time going across the Arctic Sea.

Recognition continued …

The return trip to the Gun Emplacements was denitely a worthwhile trip. I took not only the derelict emplacements but some different sea shots as you never know what you may need for an AV. I even looked for debris and concrete bases just in case they were needed.

During the next few days in the area I also made sure I took images of buildings, again just in case. I am glad I took the bird ying over the water, and felt it was quite signicant when the AV was eventually put together.

On arriving home I did quite a bit of research into the Arctic Convoys and it was obvious that I would need third party images to show the conditions the men endured which were not easy to nd. So many were such poor resolution I had to use Photoshop quite extensively to make the images look OK.

I am glad I took the bird ying over the water, felt it was quite signicant when the AV was eventually put together.

To get the narration for the AV right was quite an operation. My rst draft was much too factual and boring so I made up a Grandfather and got a mail voice to pretend to be my Dad so that he could tell the story and relate the good news that the Ushakov Medal had been awarded posthumously. I searched for letters, certicates and images of the medal on the internet so that I could use them in my AV.

I didn’t have an image of my actual Dad so found someone amongst my accumulation of images and put him into a room from a country house I had taken. Photoshop has been a big part in creating suitable images for the sequence.

Recognition continued …

The music was fairly easy to nd. I searched for dramatic war type music and eventually used Ryan Taubert’s “Soul Battles” and “Journey to Glory” but felt I needed some ambient sounds like wind, guns, stormy sea and even used a hovercraft for an engine sound to make the AV a little more dramatic.

At the time of taking these images I was using a Canon 5D Mk III but I don’t think it matters which camera you are using. I now use a Sony A6500 or Sony MX100 which for me take images equally as well as my Canon equipment.

As I previously indicated I used Photoshop quite a bit to get the slides needed for this sequence. As quite a lot of downloaded images were of poor quality or low resolution it made sense to montage these images in an appropriate way so when I talked about campaigning for years I searched the internet for images of letters, downloaded them and montaged them together to make a better image (below left). It was difcult to nd a decent image of the Ushakov Medal so I decided to make a plain background, cut out the medal and place it in a suitable position (below right).

At one point in the narration I stated that Loch Ewe is now used as a fuel depot for berthing nuclear submarines but did not have an image so again tried to nd a German nuclear submarine and had to try and t it into the image I had of Loch Ewe which showed a berthing dock. One of the images which showed the Ushakov Medal being presented had a background that didn’t suit so again had to cut the people out put them against one a background of campaign letters. With the image at the bottom of page 14, I found a couple of ships which were rather small so cut them out, found a suitable sea image and tted them into the sea using layer masks, but I then need to add some sea spray to make it look more effective. Obviously I had to shorten the whole of this event otherwise the sequence would have been too long so I got my “Dad” to tell me how my Grandfather was on the Arctic Convoys, the conditions the sailors had to endure and indicate where they were stationed, where they went and the lack of recognition they received. The AV ends with the sailors being at long last recognised, after 70 years, being awarded the Ushakov Medal.