Conclusion of first year blogging

Conclusion of blog.

Looking back on my blog and seeing the places I have visited and the work I have seen it is a good way off remembering and an easy way to view past images. All the exhibitions have been very informative on different styles of photography and give me something to think about in terms of where I want to go from here into next year. It’s good to go to galleries to see the work displayed on a wall rather than in a book sometimes as you get a different kind of feeling from it.

After finishing a year of blogging I don’t think it is something that I would like to carry on doing. Although it is a way of getting your work seen it is not something that I have found easy to get in to, probably just because I never blogged before and am not very used to it. I may try it again in the future and see if I can get into the habit of doing it.

Richard Mayfield - Visiting speaker

 

We had Richard Mayfield come in for a visit and to do a talk. He is a beauty, fashion and portrait photographer who always uses flash. This was the first fashion photographer we had seen as other speakers have been of more documentary style.

He showed us lots of different projects that he had worked on and went through the process of doing it. This was great to see as other visiting speakers have just showed us their work and explained why they did it and what they wanted to say about it, but Mayfield actually told us how. He had slides that showed diagrams of his kit set ups so we could see where his lighting was positioned for each photograph he showed us. He went through some of his images and talked about lighting techniques such as hard, soft and diffused lighting and then showed examples of his work that used each method.

One of the shoots he showed us was for a wedding dress designer who wanted to start selling new gothic style dresses in her collection, unlike anything else she had and so wanted a photo shoot done for her advertising. We got to see the final images but also how the whole day was brought together, he showed us this by filming the day and playing us the video. This was interesting as usually you only get to see the final product and not the process. He also showed us the original raw files from the shoot and then the photo shopped images that he eventually used, you could see that he makes just about everything right in camera and only touches up slightly to make the image more striking.

 

 

 

 

 

Walker Art Gallery - Alive: In The Face of Death

At the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool that we visited, there was an exhibition by Rankin called Alive: In The Face of Death. There were lots of different elements to it and I really liked the whole exhibition.

It was quite saddening to look at the images as there was a section of portraits which showed everyday people who have different illnesses and know that they are running out of time. Next to the photographs there was an account of the person’s life dealing with the terminal illness for people to read. I thought this was very moving and inspirational as the people in the portraits were smiling and looked happy and yet when you read their story it forced a different emotion. As well as portraits of people with illness there were others of people who had pulled through against all the odds and had the all clear. So it wasn’t all doom and gloom, it was a celebration of life also.

Another part of the exhibition was rather strange as it was photographs of lots of different celebrity’s faces in a “life mask” (subverting the idea of a Victorian death mask). There were stars that had passed away and stars living now Such as Holly Willoughby, Joanna Lumley and Michael Jackson and also a self portrait by Rankin. The images were great to look at as they were quite eerie and they didn’t really look like the person who it actually was because it was all in a greyish colour.

 

Kodak Gallery - National Media Museum

On our visit to the National Media Museum in Bradford we had chance to go look around after seeing an exhibition. I wanted to see the Kodak Gallery which was a history of photography throughout the years. There were lots of different cameras to see which were made throughout the years, which was amazing to see. There was also a daylight studio set up so that you could see what it was like to have your portrait taken years and years ago.

There was a camera which was the first ever made by William Henry Fox Talbot, which was called the “Mousetrap” by his wife. Next to it was a replica of the earliest surviving camera negative which was taken by Talbot in 1835. It showed a latticed window at his home in Wiltshire.

Thijs Wassink - vising speaker

My favourite visiting speaker that we had this year was Thijs Wassink who came in to tell us about his career. Before he did his talk he came into our session with Adrian when we were showing our book dummies for feedback for the Printed page module. I was put into Thijs’ group and gave him my book to look at. I explained my concept to him and he seemed very interested in what I had to say. He looked through my images and took them all out of the folder to see different sequences and gave me advice on what to do next. He advised me to use more images with more content in them and said that I had a lot of singular objects so the balance needed to be right. I took this on board and later added different images. He was very easy to talk to and wasn’t scary as some people had told me he was.

When Thijs did his talk it was very inspiring as he told how him and his friend Ruben Lundgren from University decided to work together when they left and make images together. It is a strange partnership as Thijs lives in London and Ruben lives in Beijing but they work together and speak on the phone and Skype all the time and share everything. He said this works well for them both as they can be in two places at once. It was good to hear that he had so many rejection letters from the people he sent his photographs to but kept sending and sending until someone wanted to use their images. He showed great determination and was confident in the work he had produced. He talked us through different projects and brought in books that he has had published. I liked the Tokyo Tokyo book where he and Ruben both took a photograph at the exact same time of people in Tokyo but from different angles. The images looked so different even though they were of the same person which was interesting.

 

 

White Cloth Visit - Brian Duffy

We visited the White Cloth Gallery and saw the Brian Duffy exhibition. It was photographs shot on 5 different sessions between 1972 and 1980 of musician David Bowie. The work is being shown for the first time ever in the UK after the release of Bowie’s new album this year.

I liked the photographs as they showed different sides to the person which was interesting. He looks like a different person in each of the images. Some were in colour and others were in black and white which was good to see when walking around the gallery as it broke it up a bit and didn’t get boring. I liked the images of him having his makeup put on, as it was good to see the process then the final result.  It was also good to see the real person before the character. All the images were different sizes which for this exhibition I think works well because all the images are of different kind of characters and so the sizes reflect the difference in the images rather than just all being the same size.

 

 

Bradford Visit - National Media Museum

We had a visit to the national media museum in Bradford. I had never been before but was keen to go as I had looked at the website and saw that it has 8 floors so there was a lot to look at.

The exhibition we saw was Tom Wood: Photographs 1973-2013. It was a big collection of his work from over the years. The “looking for love” collection was quite funny to see as it was shot between 1982-1985 inside a night club that was familiar to Wood and showed mostly couples kissing and dancing together. I did like the photographs but thought that I have seen quite a lot of this kind of night club photography and they are all pretty similar. It was good how it was displayed as they were hung on the wall as well as smaller post card size photographs in glass cabinets which looked more personal as if being taken on nights out by friends.

Another one of his collections was “bus journeys”. These were taken over a period of 20 years in Liverpool where Wood would travel on the busses across the city and take photographs of the people. The images were good to see hung on the wall in a gallery because the images are all of people going somewhere and moving around so as you moved around the gallery it was like you were there with them.