Evaluation

I feel I have really benefited from doing this unit. I have learnt many skills that I can take forward to my professional practice and develop. I have learnt to use different formats such as black and white and colour film instead of just using digital. I am still learning how to use the appropriate cameras for each format and I will continue to do so, for my own benefit as well as the benefit of module work.

The biggest change since doing this unit is having the confidence to try to new techniques and formats and be happy to make mistakes. At times I may have been over confident and set myself goals that weren't necessarily realistic, but I think I will continue to, as I am trying to push myself further and this is one of the best ways to do it.

Rebecca Parker

Recently, we had Rebecca Parker, a photographer based in Lichfield, come in to talk to us about her work. I have been interested in Rebecca's work for while. I cam across her whilst looking for possible mentors locally to assist me in my studies. I found her work very interesting and fairytale like, with a certain whimsical and innocent feel to her images.

She told us about how she started as a photographer; by working with Adobe Photoshop as a hobby. She used stock images to create her pieces and was advised by friends and family to take her own. She started off by using a compact digital camera and then once she was confident with the final outcomes of her images, she then invested in an SLR.

She started by taking images of paid models, who were unfortunately more interested in the money rather than the final outcome. After building up a portfolio, she posted it to online photo sharing sites such as flickr to get her work noticed by the public. From this, she found models who were interested in her work and understood her vision. This made it easier for her as she was sharing a vision with the model, creating more of an understanding and therefore has the opportunity and versatility to create more dynamic images. Her post production work on Photoshop is often very subtle retouches and generally doesn't affect the entire composition of the image.

I was very interested in her work and the general aesthetic of them. I really love the charm and beauty each of her images have, an effect I am striving to convey in my current practice.

Fascinated by her work, I contacted her to thank her for visiting our college and talking to us and also to ask if she would be interested in seeing my work as well as a possible opportunity to work on a shoot with her. She replied:

"Thank-you so much for your feedback, it means so much to me that I was of some use.  

I do indeed love your photographs, especially the one of the little boy looking out of the window! Your images show skill and confidence. Indeed keep at it!

Indeed I will keep you in mind for some shoots.

Thanks so much, I love coming into the college, I feel so at home there. I love meeting people like yourself.

Keep in touch! 

Rebecca"

I am very pleased with the response and am very excited by the thought of working with her.

Carpaccio Magazine Submission 2

For the submission for Carpaccio Magazine based around the theme of fear, I wanted to use an image I did a few years ago at school that I thought would fit the brief as well as be visually pleasing. When I found the image, I was disappointed with the composition, as her arms take up alot of the frame as opposed to the face. I tried cropping the image but it didn't have the same effect. As I didn't have enough time to recreate the image, i decided to use a completely different image that I did a few months ago.

This is the image I chose to submit to Carpaccio magazine. It was part of my BTEC National Diploma Final Major Project based around the topic of suffocation. I chose this as it could also be read as meaning fear in different ways. For example, it could mean that the figure has a fear of water, small spaces etc. Also, as it is a more recent work, it reflects my current skill better and is closer to my style of work.

I am annoyed that I didn't give enough time to the submission but I had to prioritise my university work, but instead of not submitting anything, I chose to submit some past work as there is a chance it'll be published and noticed by others.

Update on Projects

Project 1

So far with project 1, I have taken the images using the black and white film and to save time, I have developed them at a high street photo developer. I am pleased with the results but unfortunately, with the deadline for this unit so close; I will not have the chance to experiment with the negatives in the darkroom. Although this is a disappointment, I have learnt more about my film SLR and I am happy with how the images came out. With some of the images, they were out of focus as I had forgotten that I set the focus to manual with some of the frames so I can focus on a particular part of the composition. Also, because my camera was set to automatic, some of the images appear washed out and blurry. In these cases, I found that I actually quite like the way they are washed out as they have a more nostalgic feel to them.

After setting myself this mini project, I am more confident in using film photography and would like to use it more in the future to progress in new and different techniques and experiment more with different camera settings.

Project 2

In project 2, I wanted to experiment with double exposures on colour film. To do this, I was waiting to use my new Olympus OM10, but unfortunately it didn't turn up until yesterday, therefore I am not able to fulfil this mini brief before the deadline. Although I would have liked to present my images that I would of created, I will still do this and add to the blog at a later date.

With the submission, I had an alternate idea that would use some of the experiments I have been playing around with. A few years ago, I took a photo using black and white film of a friend of mine with eyes from a magazine ripped out and placed over her own. The image turned out very well, with a surreal feel to it. As I cannot find the image, I would like to recreate this image using digital photography so it can be manipulated. As the submission has the theme of fear, I would interpret the image as meaning fear of ones self and fear of fear itself. I think the connotations of this image would be very interesting and in keeping with the magazine submission. As the deadline for the submission is tomorrow, I will work on it today and send it to them tonight. I know I have let it very late to submit the image and come up with an idea but I thought it would be more important to create work that would contribute to this module and my other images rather than magazine submissions.

Project 3

With project 3, I used a small compact panoramic film camera I bought from a charity shop to create images of peoples eyes and would present them similar to how the holga images were presented in the news article I found. Upon developing these images, they were all very dark and had next to no contrast and weren't identifiable as people's eyes. This is a disappointment, as I haven't fulfilled any of my mini projects I have set myself so far to their full potential within the deadline. Although it is frustrating, I will continue to experiment with different techniques and ways of presenting my work and will add them to my portfolio on my website.

Richard Billingham

"Family photos depict smiling faces... births, weddings, holidays, children's birthday parties. People take pictures of the happy moments in their lives. Someone looking through our photo album would conclude that we had led a joyous, leisurely existence free of tragedy. No one ever takes a photograph of something they want to forget." -One Hour Photo, 2002

With some of the images I took in the black and white film project I set myself, I found that there was some relation in subject matter to the work of Richard Billingham.

Richard Billingham photographed members of his family, particularly his father Ray, to use as a basis for his paintings. The images depict scenes from his everyday life. Although the images I created are more optimistic with natural smiles in my family's faces, these images are just as real. As a collection, they build up a family photo album like nobody elses, leaving out the fake smiles and posed family shots. I think this work is very different from typical family shots and therefore can be considered art.

Community Project Idea

After watching the film "One Hour Photo", I came up with an idea for a community project. Even though One Hour Photo is a thriller and often haunting, the main character played by Robin Williams says some interesting theories on photography. In a scene where he is looking at some images taken by a child, he says:

               "Most people don't take snapshots of the little things. The used Band-Aid, the guy at the gas station, the wasp on the Jell-O. But these are the things that make up the true picture of our lives. People don't take pictures of these things."

This quote gave me the idea of contacting a local school or specialist school and giving a collection of pupils a disposable camera and ask them to take pictures of things that are important to them. I would then collect the camera and develop them. The intention of this is to investigate the mindset of a child. As this project wouldn't benefit me particularly, I suggested the idea to a class mate, who is interested in going into teaching. I felt this would benefit more as this project would possibly help her in the understanding of children and she could maybe take a different approach to teaching.

New Camera!

Today, I received my new camera, the Olympus OM10. It is a manual SLR. I have been playing around with the functions, something which will take trial and error as I am used to cameras that are largely automatic. Instead of wasting too much film, I will research the functions in downloadable manuals and by watching demonstrations on youtube.

I wanted a manual SLR as I think the images they create are more nostalgic and have a certain charm that automatic cameras lack. It will help me develop skill and knowledge on cameras overall. Also, I wanted to play around with double exposures.

I chose the Olymopus OM10 because I used it for a photography project whilst doing BTEC First Diploma at school. I felt really comfortable using the camera and I was pleased with the results. Before purchasing, I checked numerous reviews of the camera and with everyone I read, they were positive overall. I was lucky enough to find my camera on ebay for only £16, so I grabbed the opportunity to buy it.

Although I am eager to experiment with this camera, I will not be able to take and develop the results before the deadline of this unit. I would have liked to include them in this unit as I feel they would show greater understanding in the subject and continue my journey of experimenting with different cameras and effects.

Project 1 - Black and White Photography

These are the results of my experiment with black and white film photography. As I was not overly familiar with my camera, I set everything to automatic but sometimes used the manual focus to focus on the right subject in a more cluttered composition. For a majority of the frames, I chose to depict my family and friends. This is mainly because I have taken lots of pictures of them before and have started to ignore me taking photos of them, therefore I could get some nice candid shots.

I also took some other images of different textures such as clouds, trees and brick walls. I did this so that I could experiment in the darkroom with overlapping negatives to create a double exposure. Unfortunately, because I didn't have time, I was unable to get into the darkroom to take these images further. I would have also liked to play around with photo grams whilst exposing these images but in most of the images, the background is very pale and wouldn't of had the same effect.

Even though I didn't get to fulfill the brief that I set myself, I still feel I have learnt how to use my camera better and I am pleased with my final images.  

Bokeh Experiments

After watching Experimenting with Bokeh on youtube.com I was inspired to test it myself. First I made my cut out shape out of think black card. I drew around my lens, so I could get the correct size of the circle and then folded it in half and in half again to determine the centre. I then drew a small heart in the centre and cut it out with a fine craft knife. Once I made the cutout shape to put over my lens, I went outside to take some images. These are the results:



I set my camera to aperture priority mode with a 18-55mm lens. I set it to the lowest aperture I could get, F3.5, and raised the ISO to 1600. As I didn't have a tripod I had to rely on a steady hand to create clear images. Unfortunately, not all the shapes appear clear for numerous reasons: some because the light was moving and therefore made the shape blurry and some were simply because I didn't have a steady enough hand. I really like this technique and with more experimentation I would like to contribute them to a portrait because I think its would create a real interesting aesthetic.

Disposable Camera Results

After researching Tamara Lichenstein and looking at the Disposable Camera experiment, I was inspired to experiment with disposable cameras myself. These are the results. Overall, I am very disappointed in the results. They have turned out very washed out and some are hard to tell what they are. This could be because I bought an unbranded disposable camera, therefore the quality isn't likely to be as good as a Kodak disposable camera. Below are the images I am generally happy with and feel are the most successful out of all of them. The two on the left were taken using the flash option and have captured more detail in the faces. Even though they aren't necessarily technically good, I really like these images as they are fun and would look great in small magazines such as Oh Comely, who love homely and creative images. The two images on the right were take in a supermarket and because I didn't use flash, they look dull but because there was enough artificial light in the composition, the scene is lit enough to be identifiable. Although it is dull, this creates a more surreal and unsettling look.

Now that I have experimented with disposable cameras and am generally disappointed with the results, I will work more with film SLR cameras in the projects I have given myself and play around with disposable cameras at a later date, remembering to use flash to get better results.



Over the past couple of weeks, I have had many ideas involving new techniques that I want to experiment with. As I have found many that I would like to try and had many different ideas for projects I now need to be clear of what techniques I am going to apply to what project to prevent confusion and muddling ideas.

I have already started experimenting with disposable cameras as used in Tamara Lichensteins work. I have started by simply taking images without any effects such as double exposure and expired film. With this, I am simply testing whether I like the overall look of the images and whether I want to do further experimentation. I suppose in some ways the future of my projects depend on how they turn out because I may want to use this media for an idea I have.

Project 1

So far, I have three ideas for projects. The first is to work with black and white film and take portraits, both posed and candid and whilst developing them I would like to add photograms. This was inspired by the work of Edmund Teske but instead of exposing two negative frames at once, I would like to expose one but with objects on top of the paper, blocking the light to the photo paper and therefore transferring the shape to the print. I will expand on this idea by looking at others photograms. I may also experiment with ideas for my next submission. If I feel the images are successful I may use them for my submission. I have no deadline for this project, but as the term ends in a few weeks, I would like to have the images taken in a week so I have enough time in the darkroom. I may also save time by getting the negatives from a specialist instead of developing them myself.

Project 2

I would also like to use colour film and experiment with double exposures on one frame instead of using Edmund Teskes technique and expose to frames at one time. This is a lot more experimental and may not work but I think it is important for me as an artist to take risks and be prepared to not get it right first time. This is something I really want to work on as in the past I have been so focused on the final product and not the process; I feel this will help me develop my own style. I will most likely use a film SLR for this project as the quality of the image is much better; I still want the images to be identifiable and may not develop as clear on a disposable camera. Again, this depends on how the disposable camera images develop. If they are successful in my eyes, I may consider using disposable cameras again. In terms of subject for this project, it will not be the main focus of the project. I want to concentrate more on the technique and idea, but I will most likely try out ideas for next submission. As the deadline for the next submission is 15^th December, I have less than a month to create my final pieces. As I am more concerned about developing my portfolio and not submitting, I can take as much time on this project, but I would like to submit the work to see other people’s reaction to my work and whether it is successful to other artists.

Now that I have established what project I am doing for what media, I will now plan out what images I am going to take for what project frame by frame. As a lot of the frames will be improvised, I will only create a few frame ideas and when I am shooting, I will improvise more; this is how I have worked in the past and has generally been successful.

Reflective Writing

My tutor has recently looked at my reflective writing to see whether it serves its purpose and is successful. I showed him my first piece I did entitled "Start of my Foundation Degree Journey". As it was my first piece, I established what my strengths and weaknesses were and what I would like to get out of this course. As there was a lot of information to take down, I was fairly vague on what I was writing about and could have gone into more detail. I have also become aware that I have a tendency of not being aware that I am writing reflection within my annotations, again making me write generally without going into detail. To prevent this and improve my quality of writing, I have decided to take a conscious decision to write a in depth piece of reflective writing each week looking back on the happenings of the week and what I plan to do in personal practice.

Each piece I am writing needs to have a clear purpose, so I know why I am writing this and will avoid general writing. In my writing I need to identify an event or incident that can lead to reflection. This could be a technique I have seen or an article. I will then explore this further through artist research and develop my own ideas to help me create my own work and experiments. I can then reflect on the outcomes and whether they were successful and why. I can then attempt the idea again after reflecting on initial results. This technique of structure of writing will help me develop my reflection and in turn help me look at my work in more depth.

Black + White Photography Magazine Assignment Revisited

I revisited the Black + White Photography magazine assignment I had a go at a few weeks ago. This time I took the idea of shooting nature in the autumn but felt the images were more powerful in colour because of the vibrant warm tones that I captured without any editing. I have recently been playing around with settings on my Canon EOS 450D DSLR and have been experimenting with aperture priority mode. For these images, I set the aperture to the lowest possible F.5 and -1. Although the lowest aperture is the widest and lets more light in, I wanted the images to look like there is plenty of sun and bright. I am pleased with the results, they're are bright and colourful without losing any detail. I would like to play around more with aperture settings and experiemtn with different settings in different light situations.

Disposable Camera Experiment

I found this video on youtube.com and thought it was a really nice idea and relates to what I want to do. The concept of this experiment is to get the general public to take one frame on the camera of whatever they want and fill the camera in one day. I really like this idea as it is engaging with the public and they got some really beautiful and interesting results, which can be seen here. Instead of asking people in the street to take an image themself, I think it would be a good idea for me as a photographer to take portraits of people that are okay with the idea in one day. I would then post the results onto this blog and give the address of my blog to the people I took a portrait of. I think this will mainly help my confidence in photographing people as well as develop communication skills. Also, in theory I should get some interesting portraits. And providing people actually look at my blog, its also self promotion. I would really like to do this one day in the future, once I have more experience with working with models and feel confident enough to actually go out and take photos of people.

Tamara Lichenstein

One of my favourite photographers at the moment is Tamara Lichenstein, a photographer I found through Carpaccio Magazine. What I find really fascinating about her work is that all her work is film based. She mainly uses disposable cameras, which I find unusual as she isn't bothered about having a clear and perfect image; her priorities lie in the content and connotations. Because they are all film-based and it is a dying medium, there is a certain nostalgic and naive quality of the images she creates, something which I try to recreate in my digital photography and post production.

I really love this image, mainly because of the vivid colours, and the fact it was taken on expired film; a medium most photographers wouldn't run the risk and spend the money on using. This just shows that she is willing to take risks with her art, which is something I think is very important in order to find an identity as an artist, something I don't do enough.

These two images were created by not winding up the camera, therefore creating a double exposure. I particularly like the second image as the colours of the flowers in one exposure and the water in the second make a really bright interesting portrait.

After admiring Tamara's work for a while now, I have decided to be more experimental with my photography work and am going to experiment with disposable cameras and possibly double exposures with the cameras allows it. I bought a couple of disposable cameras from a pound store near where I live and I plan to take images of whatever I see that I find interesting. This could be nature, still life, portraits anything. With one camera I just want to play around with effects and taking interesting portraits, preferably with different people each time. The other camera I plan to use for my next submission for Carpaccio Magazine, based on the topic of our fears. This will be an interesting subject for my film based images as they will have a naivity about them yet still have the fears in the subject, creating surreal and haunting images.

New Website!

Because I am now developing a portfolio of photos I am very happy with, I decided to create a website so others can see my work. This will be useful when showing my work to clients as well as adding to my CV when applying for a photography related job.

I made the website by using wix.com, a flash web design website. You are given a vast choice of layouts and you simply select a template and apply the information you want on the website. I divided my work into three subjects: projects, black and white and other. I am not happy with the current subjects as they don't really relate to each other. Once I have more work to put onto the website, which should be fairly soon as I have two shoots coming up, I will be able to make a better division in my portfolio.

With the projects section, I would prefer to have each project on another page with a link to that page on the current projects page. Once I have figured out how to do this, I will make the alterations, making the website clearer and flow better.

Click here to see my website

Matt Writtle

On Monday, Matt Writtle, a professional photographer came to Lichfield Campus to talk to us about the current exhibition in the Wedge Gallery 'Portraits for Posterity' and his other works. Matt has worked for many national newspapers including The Times, London Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph, and Financial Times, along with a number of commercial, charitable and PR clients.

Portraits

Matt has photographed many stars including: Jamie Oliver, Usher, Pete Best and Johnny Rotten. He explained that most of the time, he does not have much time to photograph the celebrities, having on average around 15 minutes. In this time, he has to assess the light in the room of the shoot, set up his equipment and take the images. Now, he has an assistant that can help him with these things, making more time to shoot. He said that he found it much easier to shoot celebrities as they've been in that situation many times before and know the score, so no time has to be wasted by directing the celebrities into each pose; they know what to do. In most cases, he has to shoot both portrait and landscape, mainly for editorials in papers and magazines, because they may be unsure of the placement of the image on the page. With portraits, or any of his work, there is no distinct style. As all of his work is commissioned, so he is required to take the image that is requested. In many cases, Matt and the commissioner may differ in opinion as to which image should be used, but he explained that take one image for the commissioner and one for yourself, one that your completely happy with and let the commissioner have the image he wants.

Documentary

As he works for newspapers, Matt has been required to travel the world to report events such as the tsunami, orphan HIV babies and child prisoners. The purpose of these images is to create an unbiased observation of the event. This is done by having no post editing to the image. Unlike the celebrity portraits, these images have many props and are on location, giving the image a context and narrative, which gives a visual representative of the article it is taken for. These images are digital-based, as they are often needed very quick after they've been taken for print. If these images were taken on film, it would take longer for them to be processed and selected for print.

 Portraits for Posterity

The exhibition Portraits for Posterity, currently at the Wedge Gallery in Lichfield, is a collection of portraits taken by Matt of the survivors of the Holocaust that live in the UK. There were very few survivors of the Holocaust, as 6 million Jews and other inferior groups were killed in the camps and ghettos. These images provide a permanent memorial to those who survived and were lost in the Holocaust.

These images were taken on film, as it is the media that Matt started his career with and shows every little wrinkle, reflecting their experiences in the camps. The set up was one lamp from behind Matt onto the figure, with a reflector by their chest as well as a prism of reflectors that Matt took the photographs through. The prism prevented the survivors from seeing Matt, which helped him take better images as they couldn't react to him. As they were nervous and didn't really know what to do, Matt would wait a while, sometimes over a minute, until they had relaxed and he could take a more natural image. He gave them very little direction, making them even more natural. Even though each survivor had their own individual story, he purposely didn't research them prior to the photo shoot as his feelings towards their experience may have influenced how the viewer portrays the image. Initially, his idea was to photograph each survivor in an environment where they would have worked, but decided to simplify them to a plain black backdrop, because their faces depicted their experience. It wasn't until he saw them all together in an exhibition space that he realised why he did this; the black background represented the Holocaust.

I really enjoyed talking to Matt about his work and his experience and have taken a lot from it. I asked him how he launched his career as a professional photographer and how he got himself recognised and he said that he did so through who he knew. He advised us that we network with as many people in the industry as possible, so we are more likely to get recognised. He also explained that when we started out, he would go on work experience with newspapers every holiday he had, gaining knowledge that is still useful to him today. He also said that it is very important to surround yourself with images, enabling you to get inspiration and know what is currently out there.

I have already taken on board his advice and have started to network by joining many online forums for photographers as well as models and make up artists and have started to contact them to organise photo shoots, in order to build up my portfolio. I have also made a professional looking website with my best work on it, and hopefully with have new images to put up soon. I am also looking into work experience with studio photographers.

Carpaccio Magazine Submission Images

These are my final three images that I have submitted for Issue 21 of Carpaccio Magazine. I think they really fit with the brief, especially how I've edited them to create warm tones that reflect the warm sound of the song.
I took the images in the woods in Atherstone. With this setting, it has no real sense of place but does have a sense of time with the autumn trees in the background. The models are my boyfriend Thomas Kuchta and his sister Helen Kuchta. I chose them because I know them both well and would be easier for me to work with. Saying this, they still felt nervous so when I was taking photographs, I gave them a few instructions and reassured them that they were doing well. I also took a few candid shots whilst we were talking as their nervousness doesn't come over in the photograph. I took a few images with inspiration from Aaron Feaver's compositions that I put into my sketchbook. Although I found them useful, most of the compositions were spur of the moment and down to the surroundings.
Before I came to these final images, I played around with adding illustrations but they made the images looked cluttered and distracted from the main focus. I also played around with saturation levels,lowering the saturation to create a more sombre look. By doing this, the point of the warm tones were lost, losing the connection with the warmth of the song, so I decided to stick with the original saturation. I edited the images by adding a subtle warming photo filter and altering the curves to create a cross processing effect. On the main image of both Tom and Helen, I darkened the edges slightly as the colours in the corners were very bright and distracted from the main focus. I consulted my tutor before submitting as he specialises in photography and I wanted a second opinion on them. He looked through the magazine and the artist's featured works and asked me if I had done enough editing to the images. I think my work is edited enough to fit in with the other works from the magazine but still be distinct from the others. I read issue 19 and there are pages where all the work looks like theyre created by one artist when theyre are a few artists work on that page. This isn't what I wanted.
I really enjoyed this experience and would like to do more briefs from Carpaccio magazine as this one gave me a good starting point to create some beautiful images. If my work doesn't get selected for publication, the task was still productive as it contributes to my portfolio.
I would also like to work with other models, so I have joined an online forum called Model Mayhem to make connections with local models who want work for their portfolio. This would benefit my portfolio and hopefully get me some commissions.

Long Exposure Experiments Continued

After experimenting with long exposures, I wanted to play around with the technique on a busier road. So yesterday, I went to the roundabout down the road from my house. As it is getting darker earlier, I went down at half past 5 to catch the most of the traffic. These are my favourite images from the shoot. Because the area is well lit with street lamps, I had to alter the shutter to a maximum speed of 4 seconds, so that the street lamps didn't drown out the composition.