Update!!

It's been a ridiculously long time since I last blogged. July has been a hectic month. It started with me quitting my job at Subway and moving out of my flat in Portsmouth. Soon after that my brother came to visit from America. After that it was my 21st birthday and my graduation!! That was followed by my boyfriend's graduation and immediately after (the day after) driving to Belgium, spending the night in a chateau, and then driving to Holland. Only to continue the hecticness and celebrate my parent's 25th wedding anniversary and my grandparent's 50th! We spent some time at the "3 landed punt" (three country point) where Holland, Germany and Belgium touch. We then celebrated my brothers 23rd birthday, drove back to the UK and now I'm spending some time with my boyfriend's family before we leave for Australia. Phew. Crazy!

The first thing photography wise that happened is my time-lapse! In my previous post I mentioned some scenes from my Portsmouth time-lapse video and I finished it soon after. I absolutely loved creating the time lapse and was overwhelmed by the response. It was like my dissertation coming alive! It reached 1000 views within a week. It's now stalling at 1600 views. It got mentioned on the University of Portsmouth Alumni Association on Facebook and later got featured on Strong Island. After that it was picked up by "Shaping the Future of Portsmouth" who also featured it on their website.



After that I graduated!! I'm super happy with the marks I got, I would have obviously wanted to graduate with a first, but I did get at least one first in every single unit.

I'm also not sure if I've mentioned this before on my blog, but I sold some work! After the Eldon exhibition, way back in May, I was contacted by someone from the University interested in my work. I got contacted by three different people, but only one ended up buying my work. They were interested in my 7591 Miles project, and asked about prices. It was really difficult to come up with a reasonable price, because I spent SO MUCH money on it, and did want to make a profit. I gave the buyer some options and they ended up wanted to get it in A2 and mounted on MDF instead of diabond. I got it printed in Brighton, so had some more lovely day trips to there, and gave it to them the day before I moved out of Portsmouth. I'm so happy to have received such an amazing response to my photos! It's really boosted my confidence and I'm excited to continue in this style of photography.

Portsmouth Time Lapse

Over the past month or so I've been wanting to do a time lapse of Portsmouth. I was inspired by Will Rudman's 24 hours in Portsmouth video which he created in the winter time. As we were editing our Portsmouth show time lapse we had a chat about it and now I finally got round to starting it! I've been going around Portsmouth for the past couple of days taking time lapses as well as videos and putting them all together in Windows Movie Maker. I don't really recommend using windows movie maker if you're using more that 3 files..... it's constantly freezing and muting the sound..... not ideal!! But anyway, with a lot of patience and restarting laptops etc it's ok.

I started off shooting at Southsea Common, near the beach. It was an absolutely beautiful day, and just busy enough to make the time lapse interesting. I positioned the camera so that you look straight down a path leading to the sea. There is also a lovely dog in the photo. I stayed in this location for about 5 minutes and took a photo about every 10 seconds.

I next strolled to the actual common and war monument. It's a huge field and I really wanted to show that in the time lapse. Since it was such a great day, there were quite a few people walking their dogs and having a bbq. There is a lot of movement in this scene, there was one moment where a whole load of birds went crazy, but unfortunately that was only captured in two photos so you can't really see it in the time lapse.

After that I went to the sea front. It was quite busy, so finding a spot where people wouldn't be in the scene was difficult. There were a lot of little sail boats everything as well as the huge ferries. The photo to the right shows a little sail boat that stood out against all the blue and white. It went ultra slow, and is then very quickly overtaken by a ferry! It's hard to explain but it looks great in the time lapse, I promise!

I then strolled to Albert Road. Not much was happening at the time, so I mainly took videos instead of time lapses. I did take this time lapse looking straight at the King's theatre. It reminds me of the framing of the first scene, with a road leading the eye toward the middle of the photo. I also like how on the top right you can see the sign "Albert Road".

This is a scene from quite while ago when I started the Portsmouth project. It's a scene from outside the bedroom window. It sounds a bit lazy... but I love it! In the time lapse you can see the shadow on the building to the left slowly rising. It looks really interesting. In the background you can also see a few ferries come by.

Towards the evening I went to the historic dockyard and took some really beautiful shots there. This first one is of the back of the spinnaker, a view that isn't as stereotypical. The sky is starting to turn a bit pinky/purpley which looks really nice. In the foreground there are some boats, which adds to the whole Portsmouth is an island concept and just behind that is Portsmouth Harbour station.

This shot is taken from the same location as the previous photo, but turned into a different direction. The pink sky is incredibly throughout this whole time lapse scene. I actually shortened the time lapse of the spinnaker because of the pink sky, but also because I love the way boats look on time lapse videos! I like the contrast between the little boats and the HMS Warrior. You can also see the little ferry going back and forth between Portsmouth and Gosport. This is definitely one of my favourite scenes.

I completely forgot to add this in. I also went to the Guildhall (obvious). I despise the fact that straight across from the Guildhall is a statue of Queen Elizabeth, and I'm sure any photographer would agree with me. Because of that statue, you can't take a front on geometric photo of the Guildhall! Anyway, I ended up taking a video there instead of a time lapse. A few people came up to me and posed for the camera, unfortunately that won't be part of the time lapse...

Lastly, another shot at the Historic Dockyard. This was complete luck. I left the flat at about 8.45 because we googled the sun would set at 9.21. When we got to the dockyard it was about 9 and the sun was quickly setting. I was lucky enough to get quite a long time lapse of the sun sinking behind the HMS Warrior. This shot is about halfway through in the time lapse. During this time lapse a huge ferry went by as well, which looks quite interesting, the whole new vs old thing.

Obviously I only added the stills from the time lapse in this post, but I did create a lot of videos as well. I really like the idea of combining still images with moving images, it brings the video alive. I will be doing some more shooting tomorrow. I will be going to Commercial Road, maybe down to the southsea shops and Gunwharf. Gunwharf has actually got a no photography rule..... which is a bit stupid.... but I'll have to go hide my camera somewhere so I won't get caught!!

Preview night!!

On the 31st of May was the preview night!!! A couple days before that I emailed my lecturer asking if I could make a time lapse of the event, and he suggested I work with Will Rudman, another student on my course interested in time lapse videos. We got chatting on facebook and decided to work together! He had already filmed a short video of the setting up of the show, so it was a great continuation for him. We went to the exhibition space a couple times to decide on where to put the camera and talked to the technicians about health and safety things. We decided on having one camera above the open exhibition space, which as far as I'm aware no student has ever been! Will's camera was set up there and shot from 5-8. I had my 7D and 1000D on the exhibition floor and moved it around the space. Starting at the beginning where people came in (and conveniently pointing at my work..) and then moved it to the corner close to the bar area, then in the middle and finishing by looking at Will's work. While I was timelapse-ing with my 1000D, Will used my 7D to film some shots of people's work and people looking at the work. Finally, we also had a gopro in a separate room part of the exhibition. It was really great to work with Will and I'm SO happy I didn't do it alone!!! We spent 4 hours on Monday the 3rd of June putting all the time lapse scenes together and creating the most amazing time lapse video I've ever created!! Here is a link for it so do check it out! :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aepp6JEchwY

Anyway, so apart from filming for the whole preview night, it was fantastic!! I could see people coming up to my work and pointing at it, which is so strange haha. I couldn't spend that much time with my work since I had to keep a constant eye on my camera. However, after the show finished and I was on my way to Gunwharf, I got a phone call from a person interested in my work!! I was overjoyed. We met up a couple days later and chatted for about an hour and a half. It was great to talk to him and hear about his stories and his passion for nature. When I got home from meeting him, I checked my email and someone else was seriously interested in buying my work! Again, overjoyed!!! I will be meeting him either on Friday the 14th of Monday the 17th to discuss prices and things like that. I literally can't believe that I got so much interest in my work and that all my business cards ended up being taken.

On top of all that I got a phone call from Foxtons (estate agents) regarding a graduate job! What on earth!??? I sent my CV and website to Foxtons before Christmas asking for work experience and never heard anything back until now. I haven't been able to speak to Foxtons yet, but unfortunately I won't be able to take the graduate job since I'm going to Australia! However, I was thinking about either asking to work for the month of August, or whether I could just get some work experience with them. That way I would be able to continue in that industry in Australia. It would be fantastic to get a photography related job in Australia, rather than applying for something like Subway again (even though I really enjoy working at Subway).

It's been an incredibly exciting time since the exhibition!!!

Business Cards

After I got my 40 free Moo.com cards, I decided to actually splurge and pay for 100 cards. I got a set of 50 business cards solely for my 7591 Miles project. I used the three different photos of the series for the three designs of the back of the card. The front just had my name, that I'm a photographer, my website, email, blog and phone number. I printed another 25 cards for my Succession project and 25 of Kayleigh. The reason I printed 25 cards with Kayleigh on it is because I wanted to save those for the summer as I want to do some pet photography then. I put them alongside my exhibition anyway just in case. At the end of the preview night I only had about 20 cards of Kayleigh left and that was it! A couple days I came back and there were only 3 cards left!! I decided to restock with some of the free cards I got, and by the time I added those I only had one card left. It's crazy! I had no idea people would take my cards. I printed 100 cards thinking I could use them over the summer and take them with me to Australia and just cross out my phone number... But no, they're all gone. It's absolutely crazy!

Exhibition Set Up

 I'll start with the Eldon Show set up.  Way back on the 7th of May we started with setting up the show. This included lots of painting and creating 'fake' walls to hang work and a whole load more. Basically getting the space ready for an exhibition. It was a joint effort so for a week and a half everyone came in and helped out. On the 16th of May the setting up had to be ready as that was the first day to hang up our work! We all came in in the morning as it was our professional practice hand in and in the afternoon we came back to hang the work. For professional practice we had to hand in our portfolio (either physical or digital (eg website) as well as our 'final' blog post. I got a 61% got this, so a 2:1. Although I'm not super happy with it, I'm glad it was in the 2:1 mark. In my last tutorial my lecturers weren't very impressed with my portfolio so I was terrified of failing!! After the hand in and the feedback forms, the lecturers basically just sent us home so they could be alone and layout the work. At 2 we came back and oh my goodness!! My work was placed right at the front!! The top right photo is taken from where you walk into the exhibition space. My work is the first you see!! I was so excited that I immediately wanted to hang my work, before they could change their mind.

I asked my boyfriend to come in to help me as diy isn't my thing at all! I bought a whole load of screws and mirror clips as well as a ruler and a screwdriver. Who knew that stuff was so cheap? So we started off by measuring everything very carefully. We almost hung it up wrong! But thankfully one of my course mates set us straight. It probably took us about an hour and half to hang up the first photo... When we started on the second one we got a bit over confident and ended up hanging it about 5cm too high! That was easily fixed though. The third photo was up in about 10 minutes.

It looks like Kevin is doing all the work in these photos, but honestly it was a joint effort! When we finally got all three photos up we thought we were done for the day and we'd do my succession photo the next day. However, my lecturers urged me to keep going and get it all done in one day.


The Succession photo weight about 7kg and the technicians recommended I hang it up with mirror clips. We started off by getting rid of the original hanging method and made new holes in the frame. Pretty scary!! After that we carefully put in the mirror clips. That was the easy part.... After measuring the wall various times and figuring out where everything had to go, my lecturer helped me left the photo while Kevin drilled some more holes in the wall. Letting go of it was terrifying. But it stayed up!!


 I'm super happy with the spot the lectures gave me, and also that both of my work was next to each other. The work is so different, 7591 Miles is a lot more personal and has a more creative approach, whereas Succession is very scientific and precise. Below is a photo of it all hanging up on the wall. It was a very proud moment!

52 Week Photo Challenge

It's week 17 and this weeks theme was "steps". The first thing I thought of was the Guildhall, which seems to be an ongoing theme. The Guildhall is where I'll be graduating this July so I'm extremely excited. The government also recently took some time to clean all the steps, making it the perfect moment to photograph it!

I wanted to mainly focus on the steps, but not in an obvious manner. That's why I kept the pillars out of the frame, as well as the ground. I think the two main areas of photography that I tend to go into are Landscapes and Abstraction. The photo looks like it's got a huge lens distortion to it, which frustrates me so much! But the steps actually do curve like that, so there's nothing that could be done about it. I like my photos to be straight and that's why I stood right in the middle of the Guildhall. You can see a line going all the way up in the centre of the photo, making it a little bit more into my signature style of photography, in spite of the rounded stairs.

52 Week Photo Challenge

It's been a bit of a busy week, so I completely forgot about last week's theme! The theme was "Statue". Again, not my favourite theme as you can't really find another meaning for it, but I had a couple ideas. Portsmouth has quite a few statues so I wasn't short of choice. At first I wanted to take a photo of the lions at the Guildhall, but as the week slowly passed and the next theme was announced, I decided to find a way to combine the two themes into one photograph. This would be a bit more interesting than just a statue, and it would mean I was back on track with my weeks! The theme of this week is "glasses", which I quite liked. It's a bit more broad than the previous themes we've had.

Across from the Guildhall is a council building which has got these very reflective windows (glasses) and there is a statue of queen Victoria in front of it. I really like how the photo looks, I like how the statue is centred and the Guildhall is directly behind it. It's also interesting because the windows are a lot more modern than the reflection it it. The flags ad a pop of colour to it. Another thing that I like about the photo is that is doesn't have any people it in, so there is nothing to distract you. And finally, it was a beautiful day so the reflected blue sky makes the Guildhall stand out more, and the clouds towards the middle of the photo add a bit of mystery to it.

New Creatives

New Creatives has already finished, but I wanted to do a little concluding post about it. Firstly, the photo to the right is taken by a press photographer from The News Portsmouth. It's just a lovely photo of myself and Oliver Merkin and one of the students from Portsmouth College. 

Secondly, I never mentioned this on my blog, but at the preview night I received some vouchers from Denise for taking part. I had no idea I would receive anything so I was incredibly surprised and grateful. One of the vouchers was £50 at Blackwells, a bookshop. So far, I've bought two books from the voucher. The first is "Photographing Dogs" by Lara Blair. I've been really interested in dog photography, and as I mentioned previously I will try to do some proper shoots over the summer (of dogs that I don't already know). The second book I bought is "Setting Up A Successful Photography Business" by Lisa Pritchard. It's a book that my lectures have talked about countless of times and we've recently had a lecture on. I haven't actually looked at the book yet (I only got it today!), but from what I've heard about it it's really good. It's got all sorts of important things in there like copyright and model release forms etc. 

I do still have some money left on the card so I'll have to do some research on what to buy! 

52 Week Photo Challenge

This weeks theme was B&W. I'm not the biggest fan of taking photos in black and white, unless they're taken on b&w film. My initial idea was to take a photo of the old style of architecture in Portsmouth. However since the weather has been so miserable, the photos didn't look as nice as I expected them to look. When I converted the photos to black and white, I was even more disappointed with how they looked.

I went out again today, to see whether there was anything else I could take a photo of. I started off at the Guildhall, and took photos from the side (in a deadpan manner, making sure all the lines are straight like usual), but again when I converted it to black and white it didn't look right. After that I took some photos of Park building. Park building is one of the university buildings, but the architecture is very similar to that of the Guildhall. They looked quite nice, but as I was taking photos up instead of forward, it didn't fit with my usual style of photography.

Finally, on my way back, I thought it would be a great idea to take photos of the building I live in, but again, that didn't work either. The building is surrounded by a busy road and traffic lights and all sorts of distracting things. As I was about to give up, we walked past some strange detail on the building which I've never paid attention to before, and that's what I ended up taking a photo of. It's taken straight on, so to top and the bottom are completely horizontal and there is no distortion. This is a great addition to my abstract photography. I didn't convert this photo into black and white, which is probably the reason I chose it! The brick itself was already grey, and with the blackened shadows, it looks as though it's been edited!

New Creatives

New Creatives

Link of the Time Lapse shot at Aspex Gallery - my piece at Aspex Gallery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQHX21GcFwY

New Creatives

Yesterday was the New Creatives preview night at Aspex Gallery and it was absolutely fantastic! It was great to have a chat with the other buddies about their experience but also to see all the work up on the wall. It's a proud moment!! Portsmouth college were in the cafe space and Havant college were in the main exhibition room. There were maps that indicated which work belongs to who and which college, which was very well organised. 

My video was up on the wall in the cafe area, although a bit biased, it was definitely the best place in the gallery! The video was looped so it played over and over again. It starts off with some images taken at each of the colleges showing the progression of the work, and then it goes into a time lapse video of the curation. There are two different scenes, the image to the right is the second scene. After the time lapse there is a quote by Oliver Merkin talking about his experience of New Creatives, followed my a quote by myself. Alongside my work, I also had a little tag that explained I was a buddy.

The picture to the left was taken by Lauren Whatling, who offered to photograph the event. It shows some of the work created by Portsmouth College. It's very professionally presented and it looks great. I've said this so many times, but to see how the students' work has progressed over such a short period of time is amazing. I remember going to Portsmouth College for the first time and no body really knew how to interpret the theme.

 The work to the right is some of the things created by Havent College. Again, seeing how these small ideas built up into something that looks so professional is great. The doodle piece is definitely my favourite. It must have taken so much time and patience to create it as it's all hand drawn.

All in all, I'm very happy to have been part of New Creatives. It has taught me some of the things I can do when I have finished the course, such as working in a gallery, being a curator or being a teacher. It was also shown me what a professional artist does. This experience has been a professional practice and has been a lot more valuable than a lecture on that topic. Thanks to New Creatives I've also gained more confidence in myself, both to talk about my work but also to help others with theirs.

New Creatives

Today I went to Aspex Gallery to help curate the show. When I got there, some students from Portsmouth college were busy creating a layout plan. I set up my camera to take a time lapse video of the work being hung up on the wall. The space Portsmouth college has is the cafe area. There are two walls so I shot two different time lapse scenes.

Havant college is set in the main exhibition space. Even though there were only 3 students, they have all produced more than one piece of work. Their section looks fantastic! Their development has been incredible from when I last saw it.

The Bootleg Beatles

Last night Lauren asked me if I could come on a shoot with her at the Guildhall to photograph the Bootleg Beatles. Last semester she conducted a project about tribute bands, and has continued it this semester as a side project. I'd never been in the Guildhall before, and since I've done a bit of band photography before Uni, I thought it would be a great opportunity. 

When we entered the Guildhall, we got a special press pass which allowed us to basically do whatever we wanted. Before the show started we briefly met the members of The Bootleg Beatles, and had a chat about what to photograph and where to go etc. They were incredibly friendly, and seemed to be very relaxed. We took a few photos back stage, but the show was about to start and they were getting changed into their costumes, so we didn't have too much time. 

The show was absolutely amazing! We started off just walking around the audience trying to find the best place to photograph. It was a bit awkward to walk around while everyone else was sitting down, especially when we wanted to get some close-up shots right at the front. But as the show went on the more comfortable we got. There was a second level, although it wasn't in use, so we asked security whether it would be possible to go up there, and we could! 

We got some amazing shots, and after the show was finished we asked The Bootleg Beatles if they could sign our press stickers. I've just gone through all the photos and picked out 39 that are the best. I've set the contact sheet to Lauren, who is going to send both her and my contact sheets to The Bootleg Beatles. Once they've OK'd it, I'll be posting the photos on my blog and website. 

New Creatives

This is the poster for New Creatives. The preview event is on Friday the 8th of March from 6-8pm, and the exhibition will be on from the 9th of March until the 14th of April. Come and check it out!! I'll have a time lapse video of my experience in Aspex Gallery too!

http://www.facebook.com/events/554768554546085/?ref=3

The Harlem Shake

Since my dissertation is all about virality, I was very interested in seeing how the Harlem Shake video went viral. I first heard of the Harlem Shake at Subway, but had no idea what it is, but soon it was literally EVERYWHERE. It even started playing on Subway FM! Anyway, videos popped up out of no where and all of a sudden I stumbled upon a video taken at the Portsmouth University Library! A few days later I found a Facebook Event for the Harlem Shake to be performed at the Guildhall in Portsmouth so I went out to see it. It was great to see how many people had turned up, although there wasn't very clear direction, it was a great to see all the different costumes.
Here is the video I create:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvDabzcYl8o
And here is the official video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FxE0uzkvlA

52 Week Photo Challenge

This week the theme was "weather". It look me a while to think of what to do. Again, I started off by thinking about the things I didn't want to do, in this case just a plain photo of the sky. But it's quite difficult to get around that, since the theme is pretty clear. Instead of taking just one photo, I wanted to compare the weather over a few days. Hopefully getting a sunny shot, a cloudy shot, a rainy shot etc. I started this on Thursday and took a photo everyday at around 17.00. Thursday through Sunday were all beautiful days, which I wasn't really expecting. However I think it worked out in my favour.
The shots look great together and there is a real continuation between them because the weather is so similar. You can tell each of the photos is taken at a similar time by looking at the orange glow towards the bottom of the photos. It's interesting to see the recurring dark clouds in the first three images and a completely cloudless sky in the final one. If had been raining or a completely white sky, I don't think the photos would have worked together this nicely. I wanted to keep a bit of skyline in the photos, to make sure it wasn't just a plain photo of the sky. It kind of contextualises it. Trying to keep that the same in every photo was incredibly hard though!!

52 Week Challenge

The theme of week 5 is Illuminated. This has probably been the theme I've struggled with the most... and it's only week 5! I have never really taken any photos focussing on lights so I had no idea where to begin. After google-ing for a bit, I came across a series of photos of blurry images taken at night. The blur was so extreme that the lights created this large circles in different colours. I loved these photos and thus decided to try it myself.

The photo to the right is taken from my bedroom window. We live on the fourth floor of a building so we're nice and high. The window is tilted at an angle so you can only see the sky when you're looking out. I never really bothered to get a chair and have a look at the view, but this theme was the perfect opportunity! There is one quite high apartment building and a few houses surrounding that. I blurred the camera so much that each of the circles ended up being quite big. I tried to get as many different lights and colours into the frame without being able to identify what you're looking at. I really like how the photos has turned out, and it really fits in with my other abstract work. I titled the photo "Portsmouth at Night".

After posting the photo on the flickr page, someone commented "awesome bokeh". Not knowing what that meant I googled it. It turns out, this style of images is called Bokeh!

New Creatives Portsmouth

 On the 25th of January Oliver and I went back to Portsmouth College to see how everyone is doing on their projects. There's beena massive improvement from last time. Sarah, the lady in charge at Portsmouth, has been the most organised person ever, making sure all her students had some work ready on a USB stick for us to have a look at before starting. We had a quick flick through all the work and everything looks great! There is quite a variety of work including photography, graphic design, fashion/textiles etc.

After Oliver and I were updated about everyone's project, we sat in one of the rooms and had a group discussion about each persons work. It was great to see that the students had gained a lot more confidence and were more able to talk about their projects. On the 1st of February, both Portsmouth and Havant college have to submit their labels to Aspex gallery, so they have to know the title, size, format etc. It's super early, since the opening is only in March, and because of that's it's hard to say how everyone's work will be presented. We helped students think of titles and had a chat about how to present their work.


After we spoke about everyone's work, I had a quick one-to-one with one of the girls who wants to do a photography project. She wasn't sure how to go about composing the shots so we talked about some techniques she could use.

Although the New Creatives brief says we should have three visits to each college, we decided it might be best to visit the students one more time closer to the time of the exhibition to see the final pieces and help out with the final bits and pieces.

New Creatives

This is a long overdue post. Before the Christmas holiday, both Portsmouth college and Havant college came to Aspex gallery to have a look around and to see where they will be exhibiting their work. It was nice for the students to look at the place and imagine their own work hanging on the wall. They sketched the area so that they could look back onto it when creating their final pieces. Whether they display their work on a white wall or on a brick wall could make a huge difference to the look of things.

Next week I'll be visiting Portsmouth college for their last tutorial session. After that we will all be selecting the 20 best works (although since the groups are smaller than 20, everyone can hang their work) and finally in March Havant and Portsmouth college will deliver their work to Aspex gallery. The exhibition will be on the 8th of March.