Tag Archives: photography

Casting Call- Personalised Portraits

Posted on by
Reply

Bonjour!

One of the projects I’m hoping to start this year is a portrait series which focuses on an individuals creative interests/ past-times and hobbies, course or creative careers. To express their passion as well as their personality, in the environment where they feel most creative or inspired- be it the garden, studio or spare room. This project is a celebration of what we love- of doing what we love- an imaginative, crafty, artistic and expressive activity or outlet that makes us happy; something that makes you who you are.

This is a casting call for anyone interested in sharing their passion, documenting their work/ work space or even if you just want an image of yourself at work for your website etc

The final piece will consist of two images from two types of photo shoots. One will be of the subject at work in their work space, involved in their hobby or profession, be it a staged or candid shot. The second will be the traditional portrait itself; it will be discussed beforehand how this will be made as personal as possible to the subject- be it their outfit, preferred colour scheme, their chosen location or style.

I’d love to experiment in multimedia in this project! Especially with the portrait itself- I’m more than happy to collaborate so that others artists work can be incorporated :)

I’m also interested to see how people work in different areas of the creative fields and the process or path people take in a project from conception to completion, so this could be another route to go down :)

Please get in touch if you are interested! I’m also looking for a few models for other projects; I need a dancer and a couple of princesses and a couple! If you know anyone who would be interested in any of the above please pass it on :)

Optic Apparel “Milk” photo shoot

Posted on by
Reply

Hello again blog, lots of new images for you today :) this weekend I had my first fashion and product shoot for Optic Apparel, and then the second shoot as well :P which will be my next blog!

This one was for Optic’s first t-shirt design; “Milk” which you can check out here :)

Okay so I’ll just dive right in again, my first image for Optic is a homage to Philippe Halsman’s series of “Jump” portraits- that in particular of Salvador Dali:

This original image plays with the idea of suspension, reflecting one of the surrealist’s own pieces, which can be seen in the above photograph; “Leda Atomica”:

But I’m focusing more on halsman’s piece; particularly the jump motion and the liquid flying across the image. It made sense to me, seeing as I had the designer at hand plus the fact his product is called Milk, to throw some milk at him and his t-shirt. Now that’s putting two and two together :P and here’s what we got:

Yes, it was fun :P this is what I do with a weekend off work. And why not. I didn’t even waste any milk, that’s water mixed with talcum powder. Genius I say. Oh and a big thank you to Graham for editing it! And for attacking a canvas. And jumping approx 100 times…

I should probably explain why I picked the Halsman/ Dali image in the first place. My initial idea ended up as the second photo shoot (again, that’s the next blog) which is more of an  editorial piece I guess. Either way I wanted to do something a bit different (seeing as the designer’s work and illustrations have been described as different to the graphic design clothing out there at the moment) it seemed fitting to create a staged image seeing as that’s what I like to do :P this image popped into my head as I was thinking “what can I physically do with some milk that isn’t drinking, pouring or spilling?” obviously the answer is to throw it, of course. Especially seeing as no one would volunteer to bathe in it and my tub isn’t big enough for swimming either. I figured Graham would be happy with the idea as he has an interest in the works of Dali anyway (stay tuned for Optic’s next design for more surrealism).

I attempted to keep the same stark contrast between light and shadow, highlighting the t-shirt design and the floating flowing “milk”. However, to my annoyance, we had to split it into two photo shoots; one capturing Graham’s jump (difficult considering my lack of studio and space in this location) and the next the throwing of the liquid. Ok, I didn’t mind doing this, I just would have preferred doing it all one go- the jump and the throw. If you have read about my work before you’ll hopefully know I tend to keep my editing to a bare minimum; I much prefer to do it all in camera with lighting and on set/ location than having to photoshop it all… but that’s just me. Next time I’m hoping to shoot on medium format as well :)

Finally, here’s a couple of out takes of our photo shoot day one and a clearer image of the design :) stay tuned for mooorreee:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Absurd!

Posted on by
Reply

oo some pics of the 2012 olympic torch for you in my next blog :) but until then I’ll have an update on some work in progress. The first project I’ll talk aboot is a staged series of a children’s poem called “Fancy That!” or otherwise know as There Was An Old Woman Who Swallowed A Fly. If you know it you’ll be aware that involves a multitude of animals.. animals that I don’t exactly have access to at the moment.. So I’m making do with what I can and may actually be completing the series with toy/ model animals and there’s also been talk of using illustration and digital manipulation. I am determined to do this project again with the real animals before I die :P but for the time being I have done a test shoot of one image only- specifically the part of the poem where the old woman swallows a bird, how absurd to swallow a bird! She swallowed the bird to catch the spider that wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her, she swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don’t know why she swallowed the fly, perhaps she’ll die.

Anyway here it is, I will be doing a re-shoot very soon (the final series will be on medium format as well) as I need to make myself look a lot older, and I was kind of sunburnt on this shoot… but you get the general idea:

  The bird was found on ebay, I don’t know whether to find something a little more common looking though- a sparrow or something with brown feathers instead of blue. We’ll see. It’s not real by the way :P it’s a clip! Either way this whole series has been heavily influenced by Sarah Small.

 

Next is the “Breaking Point” idea that was born through an Ideas-generation scribble in one of my sketch books. It stems from one of my old tableau ideas of looking into moments of people in their relationships – their situation, personality etc and it was literally just a side note until Graham noticed it and picked up on it’s potential as a series of it’s own instead of a situation for a couple in a staged piece. So we’ll be collaborating on this series which revolves around annoyances that are encountered in the home and with other people and as it’s title will suggest, it will capture the moment just before the protagonist breaks.

These annoyances will range from the little, everyday things that build up until you crack to bigger things that happen in the home or with your partner and will explore themes of pressure and patience in a variety of situations and with different personalities/ characters.

And as you can see here this is a very big annoyance. A roof leak is probably one of the biggest and most difficult situations that we’re going to tackle on this project (and may return to this a well) as it required a lot of editing to get the drops juusst right. As for the character, I wanted it to look like he had been sat for a fair while- almost like he had sat through the whole process of the rain falling in and the heaviest of the leaks in his ceiling, as you can see by the half filled pans and glasses, and was now just about to, well, let go. As an added frustration I also wanted it to look like he was just getting ready for work when this incident occurred which is why he is dressed in a now damp shirt and also why the morning sun is so bright on the curtains. In actual fact we shot at night, I got to use my new flash kit for this :D so once I got the composition and the light right it was quite a fun shoot, I got to spill water and everything haha :P and Graham and I have always worked well; he knew what expressions I meant for his character to have, the most difficult aspect of this was getting his reflection right in the mirror and even that wasn’t a strenuous task. Which I why I’m now thinking we will do some more bigger annoyances/ situations.

 

I picked these two of my many projects to start off with because a. they require next to no money, b. I have everything I need ready available- location, people, props etc and c. because it means I have one narrative I can create myself and one that is already written for me. I generally stick to creating my own stories but currently I have a few on the back burner that are interpretations of scenes from novels etc which I am looking forward to getting on with. Whether you re-invent an already existing story/ idea or go out and find your own story is a never ending debate for me, and I hope now I’m beginning to find the right balance.

The Lincolnshire Show

Posted on by
Reply

My first experience of the lincolnshire show was not disappointing at all, in fact there was a lot more to it than what i was expecting! Usually I plan days out to the extent of I know exactly what’s there, where i want to go/ what i want to see etc but with this i just kind of winged-it, partly due to not knowing whether i would be working or not so when I found out I was free to go, I just looked up bus times and went.

It was a brilliantly sunny day which I’m very thankful for, as my images came out great :) it was one of those occasions where I just picked up my camera before hand- it wasn’t an event that I planned to document; I just wanted a few shots of my day out and of my first visit to the show. Instead I came home with a full memory card of everything from horse riders to vintage steam engines and everything in between: Such as wooden sculptures crafted my a man with a chainsaw in less than 20 minutes, target practice with air rifles, sleepy pigs, combine harvesters, a marching band and a jousting tournament. The only unfortunate aspect of my day was my little sunburnt nose.

   

              

These are the highlights anyway, there’s more on my flickr and facebook pages.

Other than this, the usual cinema going :P working and crafting. I am also looking into getting more exposure- not just using competitions but looking at selling landscape prints, where I can exhibit, funds/ grants I can get etc so saul goode :) and I’m planning on photographing the olympic torch when it arrives next week too!

Bonjour blog :)

Posted on by
Reply

Last time I mentioned another photo walk I took and here are the results:

I’ve planned to take another night time one after it’s rained, trying to squeeze it in around work and everything else I want to do: cycle more, test shoots, write, draw,  have days out etc and more recently there’s the jazz festival and beer festival hehe.

However I did get some film developed :) these are from work and I’ll post the rest from the other rolls this evening:

               

The Perfect Lemon

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been going through some old ideas over the past few days- you know the type; scribbled notes, rough drawings, basic research references and a final concept that needs a bit of tlc, but at the time this idea was either put on the backburner, panned or unfortnetly forgotten about. Personally, I try to keep track of all of these small or initial ideas until there is time to look back, but this time I needed to look back to gain little inspiration from my work, more like a re-vamp as I had started to doubt my current ideas for one reason or another, and this gave me a chance to revive some lost ideas and go back to the foundations of others so that I now have a fresh, restored ideas that I hopefully have improved! So they’ll be getting started on very soon :) I think it can be important to go back to initial research, methods and ideas to recuperate current work, and I now believe that  more than ever- there’s nothing quite like going back to your roots.

 

This is photography work I’m talking about, but my roots do go back to my gcse art and design days which stem to the influences I have gained from then from exploring the art world. College work was even brought up today, and me being me keeps a list of practitioners and ideas from these sketch books to look at when I need to, the sketch books themselves are nice to go through now and then just to see how far you’ve come. However it occurred to me that I never really look back to anything before gcse and today remembered how I originally  stepped my pinkie toe into the art world.

It started with a lemon.

Not this lemon, this is an example lemon. The original lemon was done in pastel, one of those bowl-of-fruit set ups in year 8 when we were being taught about form, texture, shape, tone etc etc and i was desperate to move up in the sets- I loved art class and wanted more- I’d been practicing drawing at home and the teacher nearly always recognised that I was doing well but I still wanted top set, and this lemon pushed me up there all because of the shading. I’d added extra shading and colour and my teacher literally walked me out of class there and then and into the set one class room. weeeeeeeeeeee!!

Awesome :P I did have a lot of catching up to do though, I remember that first lesson and everyone was line drawing glass wine bottles.. mine felt inferior to the others I could see on the table I’d just sat at and I felt like a it of an intruder. So I worked at my technique and before I knew it I was going into an early Art GCSE with the rest of the set one’s. Yeeahh, Fast-Track Art. I still often felt like I wasn’t good enough to be there- I had a bad habit of comparing my work to others- but that just gave me more drive to do more work and take more time to do so. I think I’ve always been like that- I even did it in uni and in the end it paid off;  it was worth those moments of doubt when the outcome was better than what I had in mind at the beginning. Except for that lemon, that lemon was perfect in every way shape and form :P I didn’t get it back though…

Getting it Together

Posted on by
1

One blog post down :P my first one ended up in the “me” category as it was generally a look at what I’d been up to and some images from a couple of photo walks, so I thought I may as well carry on and do a general update about my projects as the “photography” category will be for my professional work and ideas.

So since I’ve recently moved house and city I wanted to talk about an ongoing project that I started a couple of years ago documenting my surroundings as I moved each year whilst at university, I was interested to see where everything would go in each house, what possessions came with me, where they were placed and what I felt was important to have in my immediate surrounds, not tucked away in a box. As I’m coming to the end of this project I can safely say it varied from year to year, sometimes due to the size of my dinky student room.

This all stemmed from a documentary project I started about my Grandmother and her move from her home to a nursing home. Again, I looked at what initially went with her, where it was placed, what was left behind, what her house looked like when she left and her new bedroom in comparison. Honestly, it was a bit weird to see her house and her left over possessions placed somewhere to replace an item that had gone with her, it didn’t look right, it wasn’t really her house anymore and it saddened me as I could still remember what it looked like when I was a child spending a few weeks per summer there.

Her new room is a lot better now than what it was. I think it was important, especially to my Mother, to make her new surroundings feel as homely as possible, with some old objects, photo albums and new cuddly toys bought for her every so often.

Thinking back, Mari Mahr was a big influence for this project:

http://www.iniva.org/dare/themes/space/mahr.html

There were a few other names I looked at but I can’t remember them right now.. I may go away and research this project on my hard drive then come back to it..

Either way, my surroundings projects will be released in a few weeks and it ties in with a couple of other documentary projects I did whilst I was at home for a few months after University, which consisted of my memory box project and my “routes” projects which you can find on my flickr. At the time, I was a little obsessed with documenting everything- my thoughts, my room and everything in it, my walks, old haunts, and I think this was due to the fact that I knew I was leaving home so I wanted to get it all down, but I did start to document desperately at one point- staying up at night to write down things to photograph (it didn’t help that my room now had aalll of my old books and toys in it) and staying up to capture perfectly the refections the windows made on the wall and the pattern the rain drops made, I just wanted everything to be recorded, all the little details. I can safely say I’m not that bad anymore :P but I still understand this urge to reserve the past, to record everything as it was and as it is now.