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.