Tuesday
Contextual Studies with Mike De Vere
Mike's session this week concentrated on the new brief. We were provided with a new handout with covers in detail the new unit and timetable. I am confident I can complete this brief to a high standard and will begin work on this at the weekend.
The first thing to tackle will be my presentation to the class. We must present the work of a photographer who we are particularly interested in or inspired by. Doing a presentation such as this is nothing new to me as we covered this in the first year. I still feel this will beneficial in building my confidence and talking in front of a group of people. I will use Powerpoint to present my findings.
Another section I will look at is the Introductory Writing. This will involve writing around 750 words on the history of my chosen field, i.e. Photojournalism. I think it will be a good for me to get a head start and begin writing a draft this week. Also, there is a section on building a CV. This is something I already have established from my previous work experience and an easier section to complete.
Wednesday
Large format photography with Lee Garland
Lee took us out around the ground of the college to take our first photographers using a large format camera. Each student was given the opportunity to compose their own image using the camera. I found this session very useful in building my knowledge and confidence in using large format. Lee talked us through each stage to ensure we didn't make any rookie mistakes (we only had one exposure each!).
I am very much enjoying exploring large format. It's a media that I have never used before and I'm discovering that it is making me consider what images I've taking. It takes a lot longer to set up large format rather than the throw away medium of digital photography.
Lee then set us a brief which we will complete in small groups to take photographs of our own subject matter.
Photographic Theory with Sian Gouldstone
In this week's session with Sian we discussed semiotics and semiology. This is a subject which I am familiar with from Contextual Studies last year. We discussed as a group several photographer's work and applied semiotics to attempt to deconstruct the images and help us understanding the meaning behind the photographs.
Thursday
P&DI with Max Bamber and Dan Morgan
In this weeks session with Max we presented our mini briefs which were set last week. For my project my subject was crime with the word 'home' as a PO. Using this lateral thinking technique I came up with the idea of 'what is considered to be a crime at home?'. We all experience irritations and annoyances in our home lives. For example, when someone else eats the last biscuit/piece of cheese/packet of crisps etc. I researched in scenes of crime to gain inspiration for my own image and came across the idea of doing a police lineup with 5 different 'crimes' These were, leaving the plug switched on, a missing battery in the TV controller, an empty biscuit packet, empty toilet roll and leaving the top off the toothpaste.
It took me several hours to build a small set in the corner of my living room in order to get the shot that I wanted. I chose to light the set using flash directed from behind to create the effect of very bright police lineup lighting.
This is the image I produced from the shoot
I explained to the class the idea behind the image and how the little, petty things can sometimes lead to a bigger crime, i.e. ending up in a police lineup.
The feedback was generally positive and the class found the image quite amusing as they can relate to these situations in their own lives. I think my idea of linking these little 'crimes' with something more serious did not resinate through the image. The image would have worked better simply as an amusing take on household irritations. Max didn't like the lighting I had used in the image but I explained that I wanted to create the very bright lighting used in real police lineups.
This experience of using PO and lateral thinking techniques has helped me to explore ideas that I would never had come up with before. I think if I am ever struggling with coming up with ideas I will use this technique to explore different possibilities.
In Dan's class in the afternoon we talked about the importance of having our own website and ways of getting a higher Google ranking. I have started to produce strips of photographs as content for my new website and will be working on more strips next week. I already have my domain name but I will need to purchase webspace soon to get my work online.
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