01/10/12

Another day another lecture. This lecture was on making the personal public with photographer Paul Hill. This for me was a very difficult lecture to attend and contribute too, for many difference reasons. The purpose of the lecture was to discuss and undertand how we could create work that is highly personal and make it public. For this lecture we were asked to look at Pauls work and bringing two images of our own that were personal. One image was to be and image that we wouldn’t mind people seeing and that we would be happy to put in the public eye. The second image was to be an image that we didn’t feel as comfortable showing to people. However this image had to be an image that we didn’t mind talking about to the rest of the class.

This was a highly emotional lecture as everyone had rather depressions and personal reasons for the images. My two images were no exception. The first image that i chose to show was an image of my second year National Diploma Final Major Project. It was personal because it was a picture of my disability and how it effects me. The reason that I felt that i could show it was because i already had. I wasn’t afraid of peoples reactions because i had heard them before. Some people didn’t like it when it was originally showed, others did, and some just didn’t get it. I completely wasn’t bothered about what people would think because I’ve already had negative feedback for it. At the end of the day I was proud of what i had achieved with this image. The second image I showed was form a project that I started over the summer before coming back to University. It was an image that i was uncomfortable showing as it was a photograph of my bedroom when it was a mess. This for me was very symbolic of a particularly time in my life that i was struggling. I dont really want to go into too much detail at this moment in time as I’m not ready to discuss this project, but im sure at a later date I will be.

Overall, I felt that this lecture was really interesting and in a strange way enjoyable as it helped me to not only talk a little bit more about a project that i had shelved because i didn’t know what to do with it, as well as discussing different ways of developing the original idea. I think that for the module Contemporary Themes I will undertake making the personal public as a second project out of six.

As well as this lecture I had a tutorial for Finding Your Place. This tutorial consisted of us discussing any and all ideas that we might have for developing a previous theme from the stage 4. The two themes i wish to explore are Still Life and and Narrative form my first year. With the Still Life project I want to continue with the theme of Memento Mori and Vanitas. However I want to create a series of stills that are very grand and almost over the top. Originally i kept the images simple and i wasn’t sure how to take them the extremes, however now I do. With the Narrative project it changed form a project about me into a project about my mother and the memories associated with her. I want to expand the project more and make it completely about her.

27/09/12

Today was the first seminar for the Contemporary Themes module. It was a seminar on Pinhole photography with Justin Quinnell. This seminar was an amazing seminar. justin Quinnell is so very passionate about what he does and how he uses pinhole that you as a viewer cant help but want to get involved with pinhole and give it a go. It was a very quick seminar in the fact that it only lasted a hour. Personally i felt that it should have been longer. Not only because I was enjoying it but i dont feel that i learnt as much as i could have it was longer. But at this stage in University it has become more self directed than it was before. So i guess its up to me to find out more about Pinhole photography if im interested in it.

Justin Quinnell is mad. His work is completely strange and odd, yet completely engaging at the same time. It is just of things that he things of photographing, there isn’t a real pattern within his work other than that he just experiments with anything he wants. This is something that I find very appealing as there is a sense of freedom and spontaneity to it. This is something that i would very much like to respond to for the Contemporary Themes module. However at first i was not very sure how to do this.

After looking at the the different Pinhole images that Quinnell had on his powerpoint, i noticed that the majority of the images, although they were in focus had a softness to them. This was something that i found very appealing. At this point i then remembered a project that i had shelved that was to do with light and creating optical illusions. I thought that the images would be enhanced by the use of pinhole and the soft focus as it were. I guess i will have to experiment to see what i can create.

26/09/12

First tutorial of this year. This was quite a big deal as we hadn’t really been told much about our assignments or our timetable for University. It started as most tutorials do with us being split into smaller groups and different tutorial times throughout the week. This year is already very different from the first year as we are more split up and everyone has different times and days that they are in University. But the most important part of this tutorial by far was that we found out about our project and received our module handbooks. My two modules this semester are Finding Your Place and Contemporary Themes 1 – Discourse and Technologies.

Finding Your Place is a 20 credit module that asks us to continue with a theme from the last semester in our first year. I instantly liked this project as i felt that it was great as I was unhappy with how some of my projects ended last semester. I knew that i wanted to continue with my still life studio project and my narrative project form last year as I had spent the summer thinking of ways that I can continue with this project and develop it further as i was, not unhappy, but felt that these projects deserved more than what i gave them originally.

Contemporary Themes is a 40 credit module that asks a lot more of us than Finding Your Place. For this module we have been asked to create six smaller project in response to seminar and lectures that we will have over the next couple of months. At first this project didn’t seem so bad as it was creating images or pieces of work in response to different themes. However once i saw the different seminar and lecture titles i began to feel a little uncomfortable. This was because I didn’t really know what i was going to do or even how to begin.

24/09/12

So first day of University, second year. Nice that they start us off with a lecture from 3pm til 8pm. Anyway, that aside, this actually turns out to be a really interesting and enjoyable lecture.

The lecture itself was by photographer and magazine contributing editor, Peter Dench. In the lecture Peter talked about crowd funding/sourcing as well as his own experiences with it. For me this was a very interesting lecture as i had never heard of crowd funding or Peter Dench for that matter. Peter Dench is a documentary photographer who specialises in photographing the english and their drinking habits. Dench’s work is often humorous and funny to look at and even understand. I think that i personally admire him a little bit as i have never been able to, or had the guts to document people as closely as he does. It is something that I dont really feel comfortable doing, but i commend anyone who does it.

Peter spoke abut crowd funding and how it worked for him. Dench was trying to publish a book of his images of the Uk and its drinking habits. As his theme was very english orientated he wanted it to be published at the specific time around the Queens jubilee and the Royal wedding. However this didn’t look like it was going to happen with conventional publishing. There for Dench turned to crowd funding/sourcing. Crowd funding/sourcing are websites that help you to promote your project and what you want to achieve to a wide audience. The purpose of crowd funding is that people who like your idea/project will invest money into your project and help you to reach your target inorder for your project to succeed. Usually if you dont reach your target then you dont get any money, but this differs from site to site. There are many different sites that can be used for crowd funding. The ones that Dench talked most about where: Empas.is, Indigogo and Kickstarter.

overall this lecture was really useful as it kind of opened my eyes to other ways of funding and achieving my goals within my projects.

Updates on last years projects…

So form the last blog update in february I had four modules that I was undertaking. The first being Introduction to Narrative. This project for me was very challenging, I was attempting to recreate family photographs form my childhood but using myself as an adult. It was understandably difficult to do, not only technologically but emotionally as well. I found that whilst I was undertaking this idea/theme certain concepts began taking shape. What i mean by this is that as the project evolved it became more about my family than me and in particularly my mother. At the time that this project was completed for the purposes of the module, i realised that the project for me hadn’t finished. It had evolved into something else entirely.  (But this is post for another time) For me it is very difficult to explain what this project was or is actually about as it has never really been that clear to me. All I know and feel is that it was unfinished in some way by the end of the module. All I can really say about this project is that it was comparing my life as a child to my life now as an adult, how the differences are both physical and mental.

My second project was a studio themes module. This was broken down into two parts. The first was to create a Still Life image with a studio environment. The second was to take the studio environment outside into a location. With these two project I felt it was easier and more productive to create a theme between them both and link the projects together in some way. What I came up with was an idea that was inspired by the more traditional Still Life paintings of Memento Mori and Vanitas. With the still life images i was focusing on creating a very simplistic version of the more traditional paintings as i felt that i wasn’t capable of creating a completely over the top and as decadent. As well as this I was far more interested in the simpler images. I felt that they were perhaps more suggestive subtle in there own way. With the location images i was interested in combining the Memento Mori and Vanitas theme was tableau and portraiture. This was a little more tricky as I didn’t find a lot of research that dealt with this theme directly. However I took more inspiration from victorian photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Henry Peach Robinson.

The third project was a written piece of work that evolved keeping a blog… Yes i know… I already did that… As well as write a review on an exhibition that we went to. This i found was a nice contrast form the other photographic heavy projects that I was undertaking. It was almost a nice break from making pictures, in order to focus on improving my writing and analytical skills. With my review i found it to be an interesting process. I went into the project thinking that i could detach myself form the work in order to analyse it. However that was not the case I found that writing the review almost hindered by ability to enjoy the work as i was constantly thinking about analysing it. This made it a slightly confusing process of understanding and enjoying the work that I was evaluating. For all of those who are wondering, I went to see the FABULOUS Gillian Wearing retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery.

The fourth and final project was called Advanced Processes. This was a landscape project. If you have read my previous posts about this project you will already understand that landscape is something that I rather detest. And that is putting it mildly. This project for me was the most challenging of all the projects and i thought that the best way of dealing with this project was to make something fun and interesting. Therefore i decided that i would create something that reflected my opinion of landscape. I came up with the idea that I would create images that were generic landscapes but place pieces of rubbish within the frame, obscuring the view in some way. Its not that i think Landscape images are rubbish its just that I am very bad at taking them. I guess its just not for me.

So overall, these projects worked really well and I enjoyed creating and developing them. For me the main element that connected these projects is that i challenged myself if different aspects. This for me is very important as I want to become a better photographer and feel that by constantly challenging myself I will get better.

20/02/12…

Erm well today was interesting. Not really. Today we had our timetable changed around and my lesson was in the afternoon instead of the morning. This really bugged me as I had just got used to the way it was and then it gets changed. Also I can never really do much work as I am constantly checking the time and making sure that I have done everything that I need to before I leave. Its infuriating!! Anyways back to the lecture, which was just as infuriating. We had a catch up on the camera movements of the large format view camera. This for me was boring. I knew about the movements becuase I have spent the past 4 weeks playing about with the cameras to see what they do and how I can use them better. Although this was undoutable useful to some.. alas not for me. At least I now I have them burned into my brain I guess.

Thats was it really for my day.. I have been trying to do workbook development but it hasnt really been moving along fast enough and I keep getting distracted. I dont know why but this semester has become so much mroe difficult that the first. Im not focused and I cant concentrate on anything really. I need a massive kick up the backside to get my work done right now. Here’s hoping i snap out of it!

Week 4 of Semester Two.

This week has been undeniably busy. I have never been so exhusted as I am right now. It started with lectures as per the norm, they were as ever useful and interesting to take part in and I learnt alot. But the most interesting parts of the week were undertaking test shoot after test shoot and seeing how much work I can fit in, in one week. As it turns out I can do alot. However I still dont feel like I am doing enough to get everything do. Some of my projects are slipping and I really cant afford for that to happen. Also all this blogging that I do takes up alot of time and it is very distracting!

I dont realy know what else to say about this week it has just been busy and there have been lots of different things that I have enjoyed and not so enjoyed. The weeks are becoming more and more similar and this is a problem when blogginf because I dont want all my posts to be the same thing again and again. I shall have to think of something..

Location Photography – Images from Test Shoot 1

Here are the images from my first location test shoot.

 

Location Photography – Test Shoot 1

On tuesday I undertook a location test shoot for Location photography. This was a very busy and interesting day and I was also assisting on a friends location test shoot as well. For my shoot my main inspiration was continuing the theme of Memento Mori but turn it into portraiture as well as still life. I wanted to do this as I hadnt really seen it be done before and I was interested to see if this would work as a concept. I wanted to create a piece of work that explored the same concepts as Memento Mori but use that as form of portraiture. This was one of the goals of the test shoot, The others were to experiment with lighting on location to see what I could create outside of the studio. This was a very interesting thing to experiment with as I have never really done it before. The location that I chose was a plain wall in my flat. I had done this because I wanted a plain background as I wanted the person and the objects to be the main focus of the images. This worked in that sense as the only real thing to look at was the person and the objects.

Overall this test shoot went realy well and have given me the confidence to continue with location lighting outside of a studio situation, it has also highlighted that I need think more about the locations and maybe experiment with different camera techniques to higlight and emphasise what I want and when I want it.

17/02/12…

So today I was in the darkroom catching up on some printing. I was producing contact sheets for both location photography and studio work. I did this because it was the only time that I could get into the darkroom to print the images form tuesdays photoshoot. Overal I was simply after getting a clear contact print of the images, however this was a little bit more difficult thann I originally thought as the contact boards are covered in scratches and coffee rings. This ruined my images, even if the only purpose of them was to see what they look like, it was still very annoying. So after this session in the darkroom had finished I went into town and brought a cheap picture frame that was scratch free and I intend of using that instead and the contact boards at uni are terrible. After all thats all a contact board is.. A sheet of glass.

At least my images wont have scratches on them!