London Trip

Our College trip to London on 28th January included visits to the White Cube Gallery, the Photographers' Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. We were asked to select our favourite image of the day. Here is my feedback and the image itself.

Name of Artist/Photographer: GAINSBOROUGH

Image viewed at which Gallery: NPG

Title of image: JOHANN CHRISTIAN BACH 1770s

Why do you like this image: An image of someone painted 200+ years ago and yet it looks alive and vibrant. JC Bach has a twinkle in his eye. I would like to get to know him.

How could this image/artist influence your work: I will make sure when taking any portrait shots to make sure I engage with the subject so that their personality shines out.

Studio Portraits

I have a lack of images taken in the studio to populate my portfolio. So when asked by a friend if I could take some images for future publicity ideas I jumped at the chance and booked the studio.

I took a range of images including electric guitar and acoustic and also tried out the high key ideas and then some darker and more meancholy images.

Submitting entries

Decided to enter all ten book cover ideas and so spent a pleasant half an hour uploading the images to the Fujifilm Student Awards website.

The Screen Grab below is proof that the images have been entered into the competition. I now await the confirmation emails.

Received email confirmation - my ten entries are all there safe and sound.

Continue Studying

It is my intention to continue studying after completing the ND in June - as, although I feel my photography has improved, I do not feel that my technical knowledge or skills have.

I also know that some of my fellow students still feel uncertain when picking up their camera and this is after 18 months on the course.

My hopes for the Foundation Degree are being severely tested however as I have just found out that certain pieces of photography equipment can only be used by FD Year 2 students. This means for me, and the friends I know that are thinking about continuing to study at Burton College and go to Staffs Uni for their degree, will not be able to use this equipment for another 18 months.

Perhaps I should take the advice given by Laura Pannack, our guest lecturer on 13th Jan, and find my own way to use college equipment and staff to get what I want and need from giving 4 years of my life to learn and improve my photography skills.

Missing a Trick

I really think the tutors are missing a trick with this blogspot. I have posted many questions on here hoping that a tutor will post a response or come and find me and answer my questions face to face. This has not happened. My greatest disappointment with this course is the enormous lack of feedback - to the point where I have received no mark or feedback about something I completed in mid October 2008!

I do hear tutors complaining that as students we do not complete our blogs correctly or at the right time - but when a serious question is posted and it is ignored I think the answer is clear. It cuts both ways guys.

Book Covers

As usual I prepared many, many book covers. I have narrowed them down to the 10 I like the most. I am glad I took images with the digital camera as well as the film camera because during the day I waited for the film to be processed I worked up my ideas using the digital images. Once I had the negatives scanned in I could work those up really quickly as all the tweaks and niggles had been ironed out.

Here are my ten final ideas - C&C welcome:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Contact Sheet for FILM

Have scanned in the negatives from the Film which was developed today. The images, of course, have an orange hue - unlike the digital and this is because the Canon A1 does not have auto white balance like the 5D. I will compensate for this whilst processing and preparing them in photoshop to be placed onto the book cover template.

Contact Sheet - FILM

The Shoot - Contact Sheet DIGITAL

Well that went well - contact sheet below. There were a few problems:

• I was no able to make use of the smoke machine that had been boerrowed on my behalf as it did not pass the PAT safety test.
• The idea of having my models smoking was approved - but after all the hassle I just went ahead taking the shots and forgot to tell them to light up!
• Understanding how the lights work and getting instruction on how to use them.

Contact Sheet - DIGITAL

The Contact Sheet shows the progression of the shoot - first thing was to get the light coming through the 'stained glass' correct. Once that was acceptable I then had to organise the amount of light that would be falling onto the subjects and the forground. Next I needed to tidy up the area around the 'window' which resulted in moving the black boards right up to the edge of the window and covering the lower portion of cardboard with a burgundy velvet curtain. I then experimented with focussing on each area of activity - the glasses in the foreground the people in the middle ground and the window in the background. I also tried moving the models around and getting them to wear different clothes. Finally I tried the shoot without the models at all.

The digital shots were backed up with taking shots using the Canon A1 with Fuji Professional 160 film - this film is being processed today and I will scan it in this evening and produce a contact sheet with the scanned negs tomorrow.

The Eve of the Shoot

Hopefully I will have thought of everything and remembered everything. Only limitation might the clothes available to us. However all batteries are charged, all memory cards are blank, all cameras are in the bag - so there is not much more I can do till tomorrow.

I have created a sheet for each of the three shoots I want to do in the 4 hours I have - hopefully this will help the models and the people helping me.

Fingers crossed everyone.