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.

 

Bradford Visit - Impressions Gallery

We visited the Impressions gallery in Bradford and looked at the Liquid Land: Legacies of Oil and Power exhibition by Rena Effendi. The images were about the Chernobyl disaster and shows the aftermath of the nuclear disaster and the women that went back to live there where the food still contains dangerous levels of radiation. Other images show communities living amongst oil spills in Azerbaijan where Effendi was born.

I really liked the exhibition as you could see the devastation of what the radiation did and she captured the sadness in the ladies eyes. It was quite sad to look at to see the people living in those conditions. The oil spills were also very sad to look at as you see the small children living in such ruin and the pictures of the oil in the sea were very powerful. I like documentary work and this exhibition was like a report in the news of what was happening in those places.

 

Liverpool Visit - Open Eye Gallery

We went to the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool and one of the exhibitions that we saw was the Eva Stenram, Drape. The photographs were of women being covered up with curtains. Stenram had looked back and found old negatives from old magazines of pin up and centrefold girls to use which she scanned in and manipulated herself into new photographs by covering the women’s bodies up with curtains. She did this so that when the images were being looked at the viewer cannot see the naked bodies and can just see parts of the flesh and is saying that the women were being objectified.

This exhibition wasn’t something to my taste as I believe the images would have been much better to look at and appreciated if the hadn’t have been put together on a computer. I think they should she should have shot actual models and covered them up with the curtains so that it actually looked realistic. The images weren’t real enough for me and just looked like parts of photographs stuck together to make one which I didn’t really like.

Liverpool Visit - Caravan gallery

We went to the Liverpool International Photography Festival. One of the exhibitions that stood out for me was the Merseystyle: Photographs By the caravan Gallery. It wasn’t just about what the photographs actually were off but the fact that they were all displayed inside a tiny caravan made it different to anything else and made you want to go in and have a look. There were more than 40 photographs inside the caravan. The images were all about the people, places, architecture of Merseyside. The images were quite humorous and reflected the everyday life of Liverpool. It was a very real account which I liked and nothing looked like it was set up for the camera.

 

Liverpool Visit - Glam!

We went to the Glam! exhibition at the Tate in Liverpool which was great to see as it was not just photographs but memorabilia, clothing, jewellery music and videos too. There were pieces from different artists including Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol.

It was all about the extravagant pop style in Britain during the 70s. There were glitter jackets and flared trousers hung on the wall and leather outfits in glass cases. There were different rooms to go in with different things being exhibited. In one room it was installation art with disco balls and light all over the floor and music playing. In another there were pictures on identity with drag acts being photographed. Another was about eroticism with surreal images and mannequins.

I really liked this exhibition as it was a variety of different mediums as you walked through which kept it interesting and fun.

Natural Beauty Exhibition at Leeds City Museum

Natural Beauty at Leeds City Museum

We visited the Natural Beauty exhibition at Leeds City Museum where Sara Porters photographs were on display. Her work has been exhibited in France as well as the UK and has been published in the national press. She was born in Liverpool and was originally a science teacher but then turned to photography. She used to work in black and white film but now digital.

This exhibition was photographs of what Sara had taken of the collection of animals that the museum had.

I liked the exhibition as some of the images were very good especially the fox, as they were very crisp and clear. The close up shots she took of the animals skulls were good as they showed lots of detail.

What I didn’t like about the exhibition was how in-between all of the photographs they was a random picture of birds which looked just like a print and not an actual photograph and there was no explanation why it was there. Also there were some stuffed animals in the middle of the room which looked ok from far away but when looked at closely the glue was visible and some stitching was loose and visible. This made the exhibition less appealing I thought.

 

Flash Fiction 1 day brief

We were set a 1 day brief to pick out a random a short story, then we had to go out and take pictures to try and tell that story. I chose "In the flesh".

 In the flesh

It was in a café that we eventually met. All those hastily scribbled notes between strangers and now she was here. In the flesh.

She was sipping coffee as I approached. She looked up, eyes unreadable. I told her who I was. She nodded, gesturing to the chair beside her.

 

 

I went out and decided that my setting would be in a coffee shop so I went to Starbucks. I shot all my image there some inside and some out. Then I went back to Uni to edit them and choose my final shots.  I showed my images to the group and I think they were understood well and that each image told the story.

I enjoyed the 1 day brief and would like to try doing more like this as it made me think faster without delaying my ideas and trying to come up with something else. As I think sometimes you can overthink ideas instead of going with your first thought.

 

 

Fashion Editorial group brief

Fashion Editorial group brief
 

We were set a brief to work in groups of 4 to produce a fashion editorial piece. I was with Flo Connor and Holly. My group chose at random the magazine Wallpaper and the brand All Saints. We had to go out on location and create images that could appear in Wallpaper magazine, so had to fit with the theme of the magazine and also promote the brand All Saints.

We firstly did a bit of research on the magazine and looked through past issues and found that mostly there were interior shot and that the magazine had a more interior design feel to it. Although we did find some shoots that were outside and had some kind of furniture in them. When looking at the All Saints website we found the clothes to be white, black or grey mostly, with lots of denim and leather.

We asked Flo’s housemate to be our model and she had lots of the type of clothing that we needed which worked out well as us in the group didn’t have any All Saints items. She did her own hair and makeup so we didn’t need to contact stylists or artists.

My group worked very well together and we planned everything before we went out on the shoot. We called around a few churches as we decided that the interior would go with the magazine and the clothes seemed to be quite spiritual, but didn’t hear anything back from them so in the end we decided on a graveyard.

On the morning of the shoot we all went up to Uni together to get all the kit out. We took dslrs, flash kits and reflectors with us. When we arrived at the graveyard we began walking around the grounds to get some ideas of where to set up, we found lots of different locations to get different scenes. We shared everything out between us and everyone had a chance of photographing and positioning the model. We didn’t have to use the light kits as it was a very sunny day and so we used natural sunlight with reflectors.

When we had finished the shoot we all went back to Connors to upload our images and make them into a magazine format on In Design which we would then present to the whole group.

I enjoyed this brief as it was the only one we have done in the space of 2 weeks which made it exciting to quickly have to come up with an idea to get it finished.

 

First blog

hayley's first blog (PPP)

My name is Hayley Backhouse and this is my first post. I am a student at Leeds College of Art studying Photography in my first year.

The first book i ever read on photography was a book called Understanding Digital Photography by Bryan Peterson the commercial photographer. I admire his work for his great use of colour in his images. He prefers to use natural light rather than flash lighting for his photographs which i think makes the photographer have to do more to get the image just right.

On the opposite side to this i am interested in fashion photography and admire the work of David Bailey who was fashion photographer for British Vogue.I particularly like the black and white images of celebrities he took including The Beetles and Johnny Depp.

White cloth gallery

Response to White Cloth Gallery visit

The White Cloth Gallery opened earlier this year and exhibits photography and film. The space is used for established artists to exhibit their work but also to showcase new up and coming artists.

The gallery isn’t very big, just two rooms and also has a cafe/bar. It has a very relaxed feel to it and welcomes anyone to go and take a look at the art or to sit in the café area and read the magazines and books which are available.

The exhibition we looked at was England’s dreaming by Ewen Spencer. It consisted of different images focusing on young people. They were shot in places such as youth clubs and showed the things young people get up to when they are socialising together. Ewan Spencer shoots with flash and the images are all in focus showing everything that is happening very clearly and documentary like. The photographs were quite large and weren’t framed. They reminded me of posters or pictures that young people would take and pin on their wall. The print quality was good but the way they were stuck to the wall was messy. This was intentional to have folds and lines in them. I think this gives a reference to young people casually pinning up photos not in a formal way. I did think that there weren’t a lot of pictures to look at seen as they were taken over 15 years and maybe some of the images showed young people in a bad way. But then again the images weren’t acted out they were a true account of what he saw.

The exhibition wasn’t my kind of photography just because I like photographs to be pleasing to look at and that tell a story, and although those images were telling a story of youth I thought it wasn't very nice to look at the photographs.

 

Leeds gallery

Response to Leeds Gallery visit

Leeds gallery is an independant commercial gallery which specialises in photography, fine art and illustration. It opened in September 2011 and has exhibited local and national artists of all different styles. The work that is shown in there is available to be purchased by the viewing public.
When we visited, the exhibition that was being shown was the Sun awards. This is an annual judged competition highlighting the photography generated in the northern regions of the UK.
 I liked the exhibition beacause of the different variety of work from people, lanscapes and still life. The way it wa set out was not too cluttered but there was still a lot of photos to look at. All the images had white frames around them on white walls and everything looked really clean and new. The images were a mixture of black and white and colour. They were all shot differently, some were more documentary style, others had more of a fashion feel.

The good thing about this gallery is that they welcome anyone to submit their own artworks to them and maybe they would choose to display the work in their next exhibition.

 

Duke street studio

Response to Duke Studios visit

Duke Studios is a creative space offering a photography studio, wood workshop, offices, creative courses and meeting rooms for like minded artists. It opened early 2012 and is run by a photographer and designer. It is an open plan space for people to come together and work on their art and to collaborate with each other. A business can be run from there or you can hire out rooms on an hourly or daily basis at competitive rates.

On our visit to Duke Studios it wasn’t quite yet finished, there was still a lot of work to do. Although what was already up and running seemed to be a great an idea and working very well. There was a lot of different people with a varied range of businesses working in the offices. The office space themselves were made from cardboard with big plastic windows so that no one can be shut away. This idea is to keep everyone together and create exciting new projects with each other using different forms of art and talent. I think the key aspect of this space is that anything can be done from there and the two people that run it have both done different things and between them they can offer help and guidance.