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.