The Black Country; Aston Villa, Birmingham City, Walsall, West Bromich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanders.

In the Black Country you wouldn't have thought that there is a massive football following, enough to warrant at least five stadiums to be in a close proximity. Whenever I have gone to the Black Country I have always just seen the working side, the factories and small businesses and family atmosphere, so therefore going for the day I didn't realise that in the middle of all these little businesses is the giant stadiums that clearly help the businesses to stay afloat.
For my dissertation I have started to look at the political and economics of the stadium buildings. For instance in this certain area the political stance of a stadium doesn't mean anything but then when you look at it from an economical sense you can see that people come along and watch the sports and then support smaller businesses (which is always good thing)

The five stadiums I visited all have different structures and layouts, like a fingerprint.  I began the day with a trip to the home of the Wolves. Then onto Bank's Stadium which houses Walsall then back onto the M6 to West Bromwich Albion that then lead to Villa Park (which has a glorious looking stand) and I then ended the day in the rain at Birmingham City's St Andrew's Stadium. (bad accent done in my head whilst typing Birmingham, ha).

I've been sat on these images for a few weeks now and I can finally go through and edit them and draw from them. The next trip I have planned is a trip to see the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff and then the Bluebirds themselves at Cardiff City Stadium and that will be next week along with another blog post on something else.

Southampton FC

For my third year project I am starting by looking at football stadiums. Mixing my two favourite things, Textiles/printmaking with football. In the first image is a picture of the stuff I took on the trip down to Southampton. Where else would I start my journey than a fond childhood memory of every other Saturday afternoon cheering on the mighty Saints. This time I wasn't there to watch a match but to take in the sea air and take a couple of snaps, well about 100 snaps.

 The two cameras in the image above are my favourite ones as one is an digital slr which is easy for editing high resolution photos like the first image below. Then the Pentax is my 35mm film camera and the photos for that came out really well (second image below). My theory behind using the Pentax is that I can use my past experience in a dark room, once back in uni I can manipulate and print the image onto other materials and explore other things to do with printmaking other than my one favourite method of Mono-printing.

This side of the stadium is the only side you can see without driving around and having to get a ticket. Formerly known as The Friends Provident St Mary's Stadium opened in 2001 and can hold over 32,000 supporters. 

The only problem with not being in Uni and having access to a dark room is that I had to wait two days to get my film back (I chose the right film, ha) so it felt like it was christmas going to Boots and opening up the sleeve of 36 beautiful black and white photos, above.

This is only the beginning really, the next post will include images taken from another trip to the 'black country' and around that area.

Thanks. x