Second one day brief

Last week we also did a one day brief but with a completely different concept. We had the same amount of time as last time and were allowed to digitally enhance the images. This challenge was to choose a 50 word fiction from the one's provided and to illustrate the piece of writing in five images. The challenge was to how successfully everyone could tell the story through your images. The images had to be presnted via six images on powerpoint. My story was the following:
"Close up"
"Her eyes lit up "chocolate ice cream" she said
"But that isn't the answer" he said sqeezing her arm
"Listen to me more carefully and you may learn something."
Now she felt tears on her neck as he pulled her close. She breathed in his nicotine breath
"Silly" he said.
Initially  when i read this story i thought there was something dark behind it, her innocence about the ice cream appeared quite a contrast to the males words. Also the lack of detail hinted that the reader does not know the whole story. I wanted to therefore to create photos where they too did not reveal or suggest to much and therefore allowed the reader to interpret the story in their own  way. I decided the best way to do this was to make the photos quite simple and literal.

This was my first image in the series, i wanted it to be of ice cream because those are the first words of the story. I used a flash and i red background to make the ice cream look more interesting.

 



















































I wanted to start with and finish with the ice cream tub to create a series and also so the photos reflected a book front and cover, this is why i also decided to vary with colour and black and white. In conclusion i really liked the one day brief, it was brief i had never even done anything similar to and i really enjoyed the concept and coming up with the new ideas

One day brief

For the last two ppp sessions we have been set one day briefs.  The first one involved us considering we were working for  a client and they wanted us to photograph shoes to be sold to the Christmas market. Things we need to consider were the people age group and genre or person we were selling the product towards, how we were going to present the footwear and we were going to sell the product via an image. In my group we decided to work with the shoe Ugg because the two of the other members in my group were wearing uggs and therefore they were easily resourceful. Uggs are for all generations and for both sex so we decided to use this to our advantage. For the end result we had to have three images and the images had to be completed by three. The images could be altered with photoshop and could be black and white or colour. 

     We decided to create three images that would focus on different generations and that displayed Uggs in three different ways. Our captions we came up were with First, Favourite and New. The first was directed at children, first being their first pair of shoes/Uggs. We positioned the shoes in a way that made them look small ( as we did not actually have any baby uggs on us!) and turned the boot down so you could see the fur enhancing the idea that these shoes were for children. We set the shoes up in front of a white background and then edited in on photoshop snow surrounding the boots with childrens footprints walking up towards the boots. 

   The second shot was the "new" shot. We set the Uggs up behind a black background (to allow variation between the other shots) and also put in the background a pile of other "old" shoes, highlighting the idea that these Ugss were new. We used a honeycomb lighting device so that the shoes would be the first thing the viewer would be drawn too. 

  The third shoot was the "favourite" shoot. We decided to keep this shoot quite simple and use both sets of Uggs suggesting that they are the favourite shoe because there are more of them. We tried to style them in a way that you cold see all angles of the Ugg.

   Unfortunately we did run out of time and were not able to put "first", "new" and "favourite" on the images. We were then judged by a selection of staff from the college. The panel agreed that they liked our idea and the way we had styled our images, however we did not do as well because we did not complete the brief. Also the panel thought our "favourite" shoe was a weaker shot than the others as it was such a symbolic shot. 

 In conclusion the day brief was really useful learning experience as we again got to experiment in the studio, work with others and also got to come up with new concepts and experience how it would be to work under pressure, for minimal time for a client.

Yorkshire competiton take two

I have taken and selected my images for the competition and i am quite pleased with them however i feel i could have achieved more with the brief if i had know Yorkshire better and had had a little more time.

This image i chose for my hospitality picture, i chose this image because i think the high street sums up the people of Leeds pretty well, having not been here long i don't really know much about the general hospitality of Yorkshire but if there was a place to get an idea of it, i think Leeds high street would be it. I wanted an image the people staying in the hotel could relate to, could recognise as Leeds and visit whilst they themselves were in Leeds. I chose black and white because i thought it was more atmospheric

This image i chose o b or my icons of Leeds because it is an image of the most iconic building  in Leeds the city hall, but it is an lesser known aspect of the building. This sculpture/frieze is found just by the main entrance of the doorway to the city hall. I didn't notice it at first, but when i saw it i was amazed by the detail of the sculpture. I wanted to experiment with viewpoints and so i tried this angle and i think it worked. My only concern with this image is that when blown up, the orginal detail may lack and the image would no be as effective.

This image was for the wild yorkshire. With this image i tried to play on the word "wild" because when i was photographing this tree from this angle i noticed how the branches sprawled ouy everywhere and tangled and i thought the tree itself looked very wild and therefore i decided to enter this photo for this category.
  With my images i said in my previous blogg that i wanted to use the simple and make them my own i think i have done this, however with more time i think i could have improved the quality of my images.

Hotel Competition

All photography students are Leeds College of Art have entered a competition that involves taking photographs for a hotel situated in Leeds, if the student wins, they recieve a weekend away free of charges some where in Europe.
    To win f us much submit three photos for certain areas of the hotel that reflect different parts of Yorkshire and Leeds. One must be for the corridor of the hotel and it must depict the people and hospitality of leeds, the second is for the rooms and must be of an iconic land mark of leeds and the third is for the suites of the hotel and must be of the yorkshire countryside and wild life.
   With images i want to keep the whole thing quite basic as the images if won, would possibly be repeated several times within the hotel and therefore if too complicated could be overwhelming. I want to photograph the obvious subjects but in a unique and obscure way. This way i think that images will reflect Leeds in a traditional way but will still be innovative. At the same time i don't want the pictures to be to dull and flat so i think i will experiment with angles and view points.

Donovan Wylie and Daniel Meadows

Also showing their work at the festival were Donovan Wylie and Daniel Meadows. Wylies work concentrated on landscape, observation and control, he grew up in Belfast and ever since has been interested in military structure. For this exhibition he photographed in Afghanistan

and the images are really quite moving and emotional and yet at the same time very masculine and strong. The presntation of the show really worked, it was a very sterile white room, no distractions and reflected the images well.
   The last room i went to was where Daniel Meadows work was being held. His collections were all in the same room including "The real Corenation Street" and "The bus", the collections i think really worked well together all in the same room, they bounce off each other and show the photgraphers interests.

Bradford photography festival

I have previously blogged about going to the Bradford photography festival and today i made it to Bradford. I blogged previously about wanting to see Red Saunders work. Red Saunders is a political activist and a commercial photographer who took the festivals theme "evidence" and related it to the past. He chose events in time that are not as well know such as the chartists of 1842. The people of the past Red chose to depict appear to be lesser known hero's of their time and also quite rebellious characters which is fitting as the photographer himself is quite a rebel! The photos themselves were very impressive, dramatic, bold and with great atmospheric chiaroscuro lighting, really good stage scenes. I personally am really interested in history paintings and therefore i loved the references to paintings within the pictures. However the way the picture were presented was a little disappointing for me. They shown loose, not framed, able to see the folds in the paper.This was done apparently to prevent the photos having hierarchy over the viewer as that would have contradicted the messages of the images. However i thought it looked a little unfinished this way and took away some of the awe that could have been in the image. This image "William Cuffrey and the London  Chartists" 1842 is my favourite of all of the images as it has an amazing story behind it and the composoition is just perfect and looks like a still from a film set!

Robert Winstons personality questionnaire

In our first pppl lecture this year we were looking at what type of person we are and what we would be like to work with. Bridget March our lecturer made us do several tests to discover what type of person we are, the most interesting one was the Myers and Briggs theory which questions you on whether you are a introvert or extrovert type of person. To discover this we also looked at sensing and intuition, thinking and feeling and judging and perceiving. For each section there was a type of feeling or emotion that most suited you, u write down this emotions letter and when you finished the questionnaire you had a row of four letters, these four letters reflect your personality. My our letters were esfp which means i am a performer and live life for the moment apparently! Since then we have been asked to do the Robert Winston personality questionnaire found on the bbc website. You have to answer 73 questions all quite random, mine resulted in me being a people person, which is true i like to be around people, quite agreeable to  get on with as i am bad at arguing which again is probably true, but it also said i was very organised and always on time, which i would like to think is true however this is not the case!

Red Saunders "Hidden" series of photographs depict historical events. Saunders has chosen events that are not so well known to the public, when talking about his new project he says " i recreate important moments in the long struggle of working people for democracy and social justice. History has been dominated by kings, queens, war and  "great men"".  The picture above "Leveller woman in the English revolution" 1647, 2011 focuses on women s activism during the 1642-1651 English war, a lesser known event in history. What makes Saunders work particularly interesting is that they reflect his own personal views. Saunders is a keen political activist and supports many campaigns ( he is a founding member of Rock against Racism) these images he has taken show people struggling with the politics of the time and fighting against them, they possibly show how Saunders feels about certain aspects if politics today.
    This image above is really interesting to me because of the structure of it, the composition appears to be rehearsed and is composed to guide the viewer around the image. I also really like the lighting because the fire suggests that the image is lit up with natural light, yet there is some artificial light as well and it creates a very dramatic atmosphere.