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!!!

VIVA practice and final

On the 14th of May I had my practice VIVA. If you're not sure what a VIVA is, it's basically an oral examination where I have to talk about one of my projects from the final year. It's not my work that is being marked but my awareness of the work. The guidelines included things like what is the context of my project, what research have I done, what theory have I looked at, what experiences have I gained from this project, etc etc etc. And you have to cram it all into 7-10 minutes. I decided to talk about my Succession project as I literally know everything there is to know about succession now. The practice was terrifying. I was surprisingly nervous, even though I practised multiple times! The only thing that threw me were the questions at the end, there isn't really any way you can prepare for that!!

I had my actual VIVA on the 24th of May. I took some notes with me as well as some hand outs for who ever was marking me and two books: Clyde Butcher's and Peter Lik's book. Another thing that was very difficult was the fact we had to do it in front of two people, the first was a lecturer who obviously knows all about our work and saw us progress, but also someone else who isn't part of the photography department and might now know anything about photography. This meant that instead of just saying "a deadpan style of photography" I had to go into what deadpan photography is. Same for the photographers mentioned. Again, all that in 7-10 minutes!!! I don't think I ever talked that fast in my life. I can honestly say I don't actually remember much of the VIVA presentation, and I can't repeat the questions!

Before I walked in I heard my lecturers talking about me saying something along the lines of "The next student is extremely talented" and then them joking around how I'll go far, followed by my lecturer saying "she probably will go far".... WHAT!???? I can't believe I heard my lecturers say that!! When they came to get me I obviously had to pretend I didn't hear anything, but wow!!

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!

Officially done with University

It's been a little while since my last blog post and that's because of my hand-in. Our "final" blog post was marked (previous post) so I couldn't blog until I got that mark back, which I've got back now!! The blog and my portfolio were part of the same until called Professional Practice and I got a 2.1! If you aren't sure what that means, it's the second best mark you can get. It goes First (70%+), 2.1 (60%-69%), 2.2 (50%-59%), Third (40%-49%) and anything lower than a 40% is a fail. I'm extremely excited with that mark because in my last portfolio tutorial, my lecturer wasn't very impressed with my portfolio... I also got back my mark for my VIVA presentation. The VIVA is an oral exam where we got 7-10 minutes to talk about our work (what it's about, research we've done, experiences gained and a whole lot more). This was one of the most nerve-racking things I've done on the course as it was in front of a lecturer and another person who doesn't necessarily know anything about photography. Instead of just going straight into each artist I looked at, or talking about what style of photography I used, I first had to explain who they were or what it was.... all in 7-10 minutes! Anyway, back to the point, I also got my mark back for that and I got a first!! I am incredibly happy with it, especially because it isn't the work that is marked, but it's how much you know about your work that matters. The VIVA and the dissertation are part of the same unit called Visual Cultural Dissertation, so my final mark for that is now a solid 2.1!

I'm only waiting for two more marks, which happen to be the most important marks! The first is my practical work of my 7591 Miles project, and the second is my research mark for both my Succession work as well as my 7591 Miles work. I should be getting that back sometime this week.

Other than the marks, a lot has been happening! Firstly we had the preview night of the Portsmouth Show which was a great success. Before the show I emailed my lecturer to see if I could create a time lapse of the night. He was very enthusiastic and recommended I work with another student interested in time lapses called Will Rudman. On the preview night we ended up using 4 cameras to take time lapses and some videos. We spend four and a half hours editing it yesterday and I am so proud of what we've made. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aepp6JEchwY&feature=youtu.be.

I've also continued the weekly photo challenges, but I will create a separate post for them. I will also add some more specific posts after this one to show you in more detail what I've been up to!

Portsmouth Show Catalogue

As I mentioned in a previous post, there was a bit of drama/confusion about the catalogues presented at the Portsmouth show. Basically, the London show people created a catalogue for the London show, however they also decided to present this at the Eldon exhibition. To the people not part of the London show, it seemed a bit weird as we're part of the show, yet not in the catalogue. Anyway, we got together on Facebook and talked about having our own little catalogue. It''ll only feature about 12 people I think, but at least we'll be in a catalogue!

This is my page! I could only take up one page, so decided to add my Succession print in it. I also added a bit of text and my email and website. I think it looks great! I'm really happy that we're creating our own little catalogue, although I do think it'll come across as a bit weird having two different catalogues, but I'm glad I'm part of it now!

Title

Thinking of a title is probably the hardest part of the whole project. I don’t want anything cheesy or obvious, but I don’t want something that sounds silly or too abstract. When seeing the title, I want people to start to understand the work, but not completely give it away.

I’ve been thinking about a title for a long time, but it wasn’t until the group tutorial recently that we got the ball rolling. Some things that were suggested were “moving on” or “immigration” or simply “movement”. It seemed to simple and rather obvious. I don’t want the title to ruin the whole piece!

Then Dan (a course mate) thought of the idea of adding up all the miles I’ve travelled together and have that be the title. I thought it was a fantastic idea!! It shows the distance I’ve travelled, without using obvious words.

I started to think about whether to include every single move, or just the out of country moves.

Moves:

1.      Within The Netherlands

2.      From Netherlands to America

3.      From America to Netherlands

4.      From Netherlands to UK

5.      Within the UK

6.      Within the UK

I don’t think the moves within the same country are as important as that happens a lot more. The 3 photos also indicate the three countries where I have lived, thus it would be more appropriate to only add the distances of the moves abroad, to The Netherlands to America, America to The Netherlands and The Netherlands to England.

I used the following website to find out the distance as google maps wouldn’t work as it was an overseas action.

http://www.javascripter.net/math/calculators/distancecalculator.htm

I could only get approximate locations so that’s what I did first:

Rotterdam, The Netherlands – Newark, New Jersey: 3639.962 Miles

Newark, New Jersey – Rotterdam, The Netherlands: 3629.962 Miles

Rotterdam, The Netherlands – London, UK: 198.990 Miles

= 7478.914

I wanted to be more specific so I used Google Maps to determine the exact miles between where I actually lived and the approximate location:

Nieuwerkerk a/d IJssel – Rotterdam: 11.3 Miles

Newark – Upper Saddle River: 28.3 Miles

London – Gerrards Cross: 22.0 Miles

So all together the distance would be:

First Move: 11.3+3639.962+28.3 = 3679.562

Second Move: 28.3+3639.962+11.3 = 3679.562

Third Move: 11.3+198.990+22.0 = 232.29

Altogether:

7591 Miles

New Creatives

Motion Blur Time Lapse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1yL3208sko

Motion Blur Time Lapse

As picky as I am, I decided to go back and work on my time lapse again. I thought I was finished with it, but there was something bothering me. The final time lapse sequence of the sky wasn't exactly what I wanted to do, and as I was flipping through my workbook, I noticed I'd taken another motion blur time lapse of the sky which was MUCH better, but I didn't have enough images. Now that I know a bit more about motion blur time lapses and how to edit them, I thought I would give it a go. It's currently in the process of being created, so I don't have a link yet, but when I do let you know! The right image is how the time lapse originally was, and the left photo is what I've changed it to. It's not as abstract, but it looks a lot better, and the faint colour matches the rest of the scenes.

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

Large Format Shoot with Lauren Whatling

On the 8th of February I assisted one of my classmates with her Large Format photoshoot. She had never used the 5x4 camera before, and since I love it so much and can't afford to buy more film, is was a great opportunity for the both of us to work together. We went to her grandparents' house in Southsea as her project revolves around their lives. I took a time lapse of shoot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl9kHM6tMmg

It clearly shows how much time it takes in order to take one photo! There was so much preparation involved: getting the camera set up, getting it in focus, light meter reading, waiting for a cloud to pass by, take another light meter reading, record what the readings are, take a photo of what you're taking a photo of, and then of course the process of taking the actual photo.

The photos are uploaded on Lauren's photography page, in the album named: "Large format Images Final Uni Project".
http://www.facebook.com/LaurenWhatlingPhotography?fref=ts
http://laurenwhatling.wix.com/laurenwhatlingphotography

Artful Dodgers

Today I went up to London to go to the Artful Dodgers. It was at Chancery Lane and definitely not what I was expecting... I had to get buzzed into the building and walk down to the basement, getting a bit lost in the basement! Anyway, you enter Artful Dodgers and it's just one room filled with prints everywhere! It was great to see the other people's work and the scale of everything! I will be getting the photo to the left printed A2 sized (20x24 inches) on matt paper. They will post it to me in a huge tube on Monday the 11th and include all the test prints. I've very excited to see how it's going to turn out!!

The reason I went to Artful Dodgers is because they specialise in hand printed images from the dark room. According to my lecturers they will look a lot better and will have a lot more depth and detail to them. Having them hand printed will also mean that I'm not making use of any digital technology, they are taken in an analogue style and will also be printed that way.

When I get my photo back from the Artful Dodgers, I will go back to The Vault in Brighton to get it mounted on Diabond (similar to aluminium). When I got my negatives developed there, I had a chat with one of the guys there about mounting options and he showed me what diabond is and how it would look. I thought it looked fantastic, so I'll be getting that done for my final. Hopefully I can get it all done in time for the "Crit" - our little Eldon exhibition for everyone on the course - but with my shifts at Subway, New Creatives commitments, my dissertation hand in and all my lectures, that might be a bit unrealistic. Luckily our final deadline is after the Easter holiday.

On Wednesday 6th I'll be helping up at Aspex gallery to set up the show and hang up the work. I'll be creating a time lapse video of this which I will exhibit in Aspex gallery.

Time Lapse 3

It's been a little quite on the blog, but I've still been busy! I put together my third (and hopefully final) timelapse on Monday. It was a really nice and sunny day although there were cloudy intervals and it was really windy. This worked perfectly with the time lapse, as normal time lapses are usually about the movement of the landscape, eg the tops of the trees moving in the wind or the sunlight moving over time. In the motion blur timelapses, obviously I'm already moving the camera, but since I got the technique down, it was really interesting to see how each of the photos are almost identical, yet the sunlight moves through the frame (it'll make more sense when you view the video) or the tops of the trees create movement.

I pieced together my favourite scenes from each time lapse and made a final piece. The scenes from the second time lapse were all taken on cloudy days, so I couldn't just have half the video in the shadow and half in the sun without some kind of transition. The scene I was talking about earlier, with the sunny intervals is the link between the sun and the shade. I'm really happy with the outcome of my time lapse and hope the lecturers will like it just as much!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naKX4y7kB7M

Motion Blur Timelapse 2

I wasn't too happy with my first time lapse and I wasn't really sure whether I wanted to do another one. However, Daniel seemed quite impressed with it, and since I do love making time lapses, I thought I'd give it another go. I knew what I did wrong in the first one, so I know what I had to change. I went out again today, but it was a completely different day. It was dark and cloudy and completely motionless. I thought this would be the perfect day for the time lapse, as the darkness would allow me to take longer exposures. But.. it turned out it was just as boring on the time lapse as it was in real life. I did manage to make it a bit more interested by getting the lights from cars in the time lapse. It created some interesting shapes.

After viewing it on the laptop I was thoroughly impressed with myself. Instead of a time lapse that literally looks like I'm shaking my camera about, it's more like I'm taking a video of something that actually looks like that. Each of the photos look almost identical, so the movement in the photos is just the tops of the trees moving (other than a little bit of up and down movement). 

Something that stood out to me during the shoot was the fact that one still image looked completely abstract and unidentifiable, but when the series of photos played as a movie, it was quite obvious what you were looking at. The photo to the right is an example of it. The photo is taken of a really dirty pond. The bottom of the photo is the reflection of the tops of the trees, the green colour is the dirtiness of the pond, the browny-red colour is the muddy ground and the dark lines are the tree trunks. It's not the most obscure photo, but if you didn't have any of the information it could be pretty confusing. Anyway I created a time lapse, and when I played all the photos it just completely contextualised the photo. Some photos aren't as blurred as this one, so when I played the movie it almost seemed like it was picking out all the recognisable bits. The ground is probably the most recognisable in this shot, so if the next shot had the trees in focus, followed by the water in focus, you see the whole shot!

This is the link to the edited version of the video. I used one scene from my previous time lapse as I loved it! But the rest is all taken today. The shot above isn't part of the time lapse:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYlzi83aWYw

Comparison

I'm happy with the middle and the right image but am unsure which one to use for the first one. Both images are quite similar in colours so they both fit nicely with the other two images. The top photo is a bit more obvious, whereas the bottom one is completely obscure and unrecognisable. In the top photo, the trees go to the bottom of each of the photos, however in the second sequence the bottom of the photo is very dark and doesn't have as much detail.

If I go for the first sequence of photos, the first and third are quite obvious as to what the photo could be of, however in the second sequence, only the third photo is obvious. I think the next step is to get the photos printed and see what they look like in real life, rather than a screen!

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!

Large Format Contact Sheet

These are all the images I took on my large format shoot. The three images that aren't moved are different techniques. The middle one in the top row is just a straight picture of the landscape, the right photo on the top row is a technique called tilt shift. I created this by keeping the back of the camera straight, and tilting the front part of the camera (with the lens) slightly up. The photo is blurry at the top, in focus in the middle, and blurry at the bottom. The right photo on the bottom row is also tilt shift, but slightly different. This photo is blurry on the left, in focus in the centre, and blurry to the right. I created this by, again, having the back straight, but the front of the camera is tilted left to right. I'm happy and relieved that all the motion blur images came out with the motion blur effect. The first image is very dark, but has the most movement out of all of them. The first photo on the middle row is definitely my favourite. The other two on the middle row are quite similar, although the third one shows the most resemblance to a real landscape photo. Unfortunately the middle bottom photo messed up, but that's just 1 out of 9!

Large Format Scans

Yesterday afternoon I spent an hour scanning my large format images and I'm so happy with how they came out! The colours look beautiful and very different in each of the photos. The photo above shows three of my favourite images. The first one is the most obvious as you can identify the most features, however the colours are so bright that it returns to the abstraction. The middle photo has completely different colours and is probably my favourite out of the three. There is no indication of what the photo could be of. The third photo has the colours an ordinary landscape photo would have, but is blurred in such a way that it's the most like a painting. The three of them look so different from one another, and that's why they work as a set.

Analysis of Tutorials

For the 1:1 tutorial I presented both of my ideas to Judy and she said she preferred the motion blur images, and thus for the group tutorial I decided to only talk about that project and leave out the second one.

The summary of the 1:1 tutorial is basically do A LOT of research. I have the visuals for the project, however I haven’t quite got a concept yet. Judy has given me a whole load of things to look at.

The group tutorial was really beneficial. Everyone said that they loved my photos, which was a relief. No one on the course has done images like this before (that I know of) so it’s definitely original. Again, it was said that the concept might need some more work, but Daniel explained that I shouldn’t pressure a concept, I should just see how the project continues. Because I showed the work on my iPad, Daniel said it looked a bit like Hockney’s iPad drawings, so I need to think carefully about how I want to present the work (digital or printed). People found the pictures interested due to the ambiguous nature.

We then moved on to talk about where the project could do. Daniel first mentioned I should create a motion blur time lapse. I was pretty shocked, how on earth can I create that?? But I’ve been thinking about it for a little while and I’d love to try it! He also mentioned I should use the medium format digital back to get the most amazing quality. I explained that I love the large format, both Judy and Daniel said I should try it on the large format camera, which could end up being easier. Other things that were mentioned by the group were to really test everything: different types of motion blur, and movements of the camera, different mediums and different ways of presenting. I have to put my own stamp on it.

When we got to the critical thinking part, no one really knew what to say – which I obviously loved. The main things that were said is to make sure it’s not too amateur and that I need a concept, it shouldn’t just be about the technicality of it.

Finally we arrived at the overview, which basically just says do a lot of work. From today until Friday I'll be doing a whole load of research. Learning more about motion blur and in camera movement, looking at paintings and drawings and of course photographers. Saturday I will be going out with the large format camera (5x4) to take some shots (very exciting) and on Sunday I will attempt to make a motion blur time lapse (very exciting too!). Hopefully the colour processor will have been fixed by then, or else I'd have to go on a trip to Southampton to get the photos developed.