Week 18

So having emailed various other photographers asking for work I have had a reply.

Stephen Gill one of my favourite photographers has emailed me back asking for help on a project. This is a great opportunity and one I welcome with open arms, this will start on the 18^th May and will consist of me helping out in his studio and putting together 125 small books. This is a fantastic opportunity, it will help me understand the way a true professional in the field of photography works and will be priceless information to me and help me. Stephen has been extremely professional and  succesful and will be a great photographer to work with for the week and as a bonus he has said he will pay for my services.

The portfolio is done and ready to hand in, I have printed the images at a photographic lab called palm based in Birmingham, I am extreemly happy with these and feel this was the best for me If I am to go to any future employers. I feel a hard copy with prints is better for me as images never look as good on a website and by either taking prints by hand or by post I can have complete control over how the image is seen as monitors all over the world vary so images may appear to dark or to light in some places.

Week 17

Currently ordering my images into the way that best suits the images and how others read them. I also went to Phil Draycott on the Thursday of this week, Phil analysed my CV and motivational speech and showed me areas where I can improve, this has been extremely helpful, I now intend to change these a little and make the suggested improvements. This will make me more prepared for leaving university and provide me with a better CV than the one I would have had if I hadn’t seen him.

Week 16

The deadline is getting very close now and I have almost all the photographs I need in order to produce my final piece. With most of my work done I am planning an action to help me progress into my preferred field. I have decided to email various photographers who appeal to me, when talking to Jonathan Worth he told me to email photographers that really inspire me to take photographs in order to ensure I get something out of the experience if they were to give me any work.

Week 15

A few days ago I helped my friend Rhys on his fmp film called clearing. This is something that I really enjoyed, although I have been focusing mainly on my photography this year and term I still have an interest in Television and Film. I was the boom man for one of the location shoots, it was great to see another student and how they go about getting their work done. This has given me a little bit of extra eperience and taught me how to act proffesionaly on a film set.

Week 14

A photogrpaher I have been looking a lot recently is William Eggleston. Although I have known Eggleston’s work for a long time I feel as though I am truely stating to understand his work on a completely new level.

Eggleston looks at his surroundings and photographs on a daily basis of things that he sees givng us a perspective of the world and his interepretation to this. Here are some of my favorite Eggleston Images that I have been observing recently.

Week 13

My final project is coming along very well at the moment and I am still learning a lot of aspects of photography, I am currently observing with my lens the destination on the train route between Maidstone and Coventry as this gives me the chance to explore placesI have never been. This week I have been to Milton Keynes, while in this place I set myself a challenge to get a portrait of a person I do not know. As a result of this I made this image of John a local at Milton Keynes who was out fishing. I aim to do this on a regular basis now in order to set me up for the future when I may be asked to meet a person at a certain location. When approaching the subject I just started by talking to him about what he was doing and if he had caught any fish, we then got talking about photography as luckily for me he has been known to take a photograph in his time. When I felt I had become compfortable with him and him compfortable with me I asked if I could make a portrait of him which he had no problem with. This has increased my confidence and is something I will defiantly be doing again as the more used I get to photographing strangers it will become easier and easier and by the time I get to my first portrait commision I feel I will be able to do this with great confidence for myself and the subject to be compfortable.

Week 12

I have recently been trying to do on location portraits, I have tried this before however this time I am using artificual light with a bowen travel pack. This is something I have tried to achieve before however I think I have reached a new level and really achieved an images I am extreemly happy with. This image is my housemate Nick, I achieved this backlight effect by putting a light behind him while I have ballanced the light to the front using another light coming across from the right hand side. What I am very happy about is how the lighting does not look silly and works well and could be made from natural light. I have also made a few others as you can see that I am extreemly happy with aswell however these were made using one light and were not as hard to do as the other pieces. Although I do like this effect and believe I have made good images using the lighting equipment I have to say I prefer using just natural light.

Final Video

Filming went very well and although we lost I  provided the Cov telly crew with some good footage of the game that was used for the highlights package full of varsity day clips which can be seen here.

When discussing with the team how the piece was to be edited we decided to make it very quick and because of this the editing was decided to be very short, although I filmed nearly all the game we decided it would be better if we just kept it very short. With so many sports clips being gathered there was only limited time for my footage however it does fit in well and makes the overal piece flow.

Week 11

I have recently been researching photographers who are working succesfully in portrait photography. I have done this as I intend to produce a website where I can showcase my work to the world as this is eaily accessable from anywhere.

Photographers websites I have been looking at include:

www.jonathanworth.com – Jonathan Worth

http://www.pyke-eye.com – Steve Pyke

http://www.peterdench.com – Peter Dench

Although these 3 websites contain photographers who have been extreemly succesful in their field and taken on many commisions over the years they do all vary in style but it is clearly evident they have a great passion and love for photography as well as being focused on how to achieve the goals they want for themselves.

Week 10

As a result of continuing to shoot I have decided to look at my two homes one in Maidstone and the one in Coventry. I am going back this week to Maidstone in order to shoot my home and show the familiarity of homes in general.