Tutorial

My first tutorial was helpful but left me quite confused. Showing Chris and Julian my research folder from last year was really useful because this is similar to how they want us to do it on this course, I was slightly wary on how to do the research but this has definitely helped me.

As I haven’t come up with any other ideas for the card assignment, I’ve decided to go with my initial idea which is flowers. Even though there isn’t many photographic cards in shops there are lots of cards with drawn, artistic flowers so there’s some market out there for them.

The type of photos I’ve taken are close up of the flowers which I prefer, but Chris and Julian advised me to make it look simpler by photographing an entire flower, maybe in a vase, in the studio. I will experiment abit further before I finally decide in which direction to go.

Overall the tutorial definitely helped as it answered questions that I’ve been worried about for a while, so I’m going to try and book a tutorial slot quite often.

Martin Creed - Ikon Gallery

Martin Creed’s work…well what can I say.. it’s not art.

I just don’t see the point in it, it just seems to me that he’s got a bad case of OCD. The best bit of the exhibition was the lift and that was only because it was humorous, but with the rest I just can’t take it serious at all. People will look at his work and think I can do that, all you have to do is explain why you’ve done it and then it can be taken serious by the art critics.



Is this what contemporary art is meant to be? Simple, unstructured work. I didn’t learn anything from this experience, only that this man is probably being paid a fortune for producing something that anyone could do, it’s just that he did it first.

Halo

The studio’s been booked for Tuesday 4th November for me to photograph my ‘halo’ character, my costumes arrived and it’s not as good as I expected, its going to need a lot of work doing in Photoshop but at least I’ve got the base and structure of the character I need. I wouldn’t be able to work without a costume so its not an entire waste of money. There’s certain aspects of the costume that I will need to work around because the mask is only a half mask so there’s no back to it, so this will affect the angles I can work from.

Things are going well so far in this assignment so I might take a back seat on this and concentrate a little more on the other two assignments as they are due in sooner than this assignment. I’ve realised that I’m going to have to set myself deadlines on when certain parts of the assignments should be complete, as I am getting a bit behind on parts of the course. Otherwise I’m going to leave everything till the last minute and never get anything complete to a high standard.

Shugborough Hall

The trip to shugborough hall was the first chance we had to work for

clients, but to me the woman who came to speak to us wasn’t particularly clear on what she wanted. She asked if we could photograph the characters and she said all the staff knew that we would be about, but whenever you came across a character they didn’t have a clue what we were on about, even so they were all very polite and willing to participate.

When it came to working with and photographing the characters, I realised I need more confidence as I’m abit scared about leading and directing, but hopefully this course will help me gradually grow in confidence as I would like to do portraiture in the future.

Certain parts of the day flew by before you even realised what time it was, so this is something you definitely have to consider when working with clients. I did notice certain people hanging around taking pictures of the same item for probably 20 minutes instead of exploring the rest of the surrounding around them. I decided to explore myself and I found some interesting features.

I personally don’t think I did very well at this exercise, I think I would have tried a lot harder if it was just myself producing the pictures. Everyone’s going to have similar photographs as we were set a ‘loose’ brief so there isn’t much fun in it. But I suppose if you want to work for clients then its something you’ll have to get used to.

Digital Media is...

I’m going to find Lance’s assignment the hardest which is to research and evaluate what Digital Media is. I find starting an essay like this very difficult as I just don’t know where to start and I’m not the best at writing essays either. I’ve researched in many places what digital media is and its so vast, I just don’t know where to begin with it all.

Instead of writing an essay we could present it in other ways such as a single image, but to me even though I hate essays I think an essay will be the easiest to get the point across. I’m still abit unsure about this assignment but as soon as I get my head around it hopefully I should be ok.

Photographic Composites

For steves assignment we have to reproduce a film or game poster/ front cover. The idea of this assignment is to photograph the different layers such as the character, the background or the other various layers, which are needed. I’m going to find this assignment really interesting to do, as I haven’t really worked much with Photoshop, so it’s going to fun to learn and edit the layers. I can see this being fairly hard work but I’m up for the challenge.

The game that I’m going to base my project around is Halo 3; I feel that this will be an interesting idea to do. I haven’t worked in a proper studio before so I’m going to need help setting the cameras and lighting up. I’m looking forward to working in the studio, as I would like to do more studio work in the future.

I’ve found the costume on ‘EBay’ that is the most affordable one that my model will be wearing. I could spend £500 on an identical outfit but that would just be stupid when I can just Photoshop the costume I’m buying to make it look better. I’m excited about this assignment, as I kind of know what I’m doing and it’s something I’ve never done before and I can learn a lot from the techniques that we will be using.

Card Publishing

We’ve been given our first assignment which is to produce a series of 6 to 12 images which is appropriate to use on retail cards. I’m slightly worried about this assignment as I haven‘t really got any great ideas to use. But seeing Ian Shipley was a fantastic experience and has made me be a little more open minded about the whole thing. I would love to produce such a unique idea as himself with his ‘Violent Veg’ series of cards and other various items it has gone on to produce. But thinking of a unique idea is a difficult job. I’ve had a look on the website ‘Moonpig’ but it really didn’t help me at all so I’m going to have to go else where for inspiration.

I really like the idea of this assignment as it’s not just a pointless project that I’m used to doing, we’re actually going to experience what card publishers are thinking when having to produce fresh new ideas which will sell as cards. If all assignments are as creative as this assignment I know that I’m going to really enjoy doing this course.

Meeting Ian Shipley was interesting and it would be a great experience to be able to work with him as I can see him teaching us a lot about the real world of photography.