I’ve booked Monday off work today as we’re required in for a group review of the projects so far. Normally I’d be able to attend just Tuesday but with the review on Monday and a Seminar on Tuesday I’d need to be here for both days. After having three days out last week at Geneva it is a challenge but I’ve got my phone and will be able to deal with some work stuff if required.
Scanning
I still had a colour film that I needed to scan in from the Crowmoor Shoot and that I got processed at Jessop’s on Saturday. It was 37 images on a roll of Kodak Gold 200 and I’d shot it with the exposure up one stop, after I’d previously found images from my M6 coming out a bit muddy.
Review Time
We sat in the basement then for a review and to chat about our projects so far. The group had been told last week that 10 slides was the maximum and that there should be very few words on the slides also. Euripides, Sam and Dan all sat ready with all of the group to pay attention and hopefully provide some feedback. Notes from others can be taken into a plan of action for the future of the project. I wasn’t first up but I’ve put my notes first so I can find them more easily in the future. The slides from my presentation can be seen in the gallery below.
Notes Taken
Euripides suggested that sequencing and selection is an important action point to take forward and work on. To make it easier, put multiple images on a single slide and test what they look like together.
Images that are more minimal seem to be a better thing, the image of the fence would be better if it was more square on. I’m in agreement with this and did have a more straight on version of this which I scanned in as part of film 135.
Euripides said that I should reflect on it being about sentimental topic but the drone photography being far away is disconnecting the person from the subject. He mentioned that the personal project is a visual metaphor using a distanced methodology.
Rebecca suggested that the plainness of the netball court could have been changed with a basketball or netball on the floor near the middle, by casting a shadow. Euripides liked the stains on the tarmac that are subtle tone changes.
Sam asked me to rotate the desks photograph 90 degrees to the right as it gave it a better result. As I did rotate it, it began to look more like an engineering drawing, or cad model. They all mentioned that it was a bit of a mind job trying to figure out what it was I had taken a photo of.
The fence picture wasn’t well received and it was mentioned that this could be down to the fact it wasn’t a straight line, which doesn’t slot into the consistency of the rest of my work. The group liked the underpass photograph too and Euripides said that he was ok with the playground clock image. I had expressed that I wasn’t sure about the cropping of it but he had said that no it was good as it was.
One of my course mates, Podge, mentioned the framing of the tennis court and the crop having a narrow edge on the right and a slightly wider border on the left. I said that I had done this as I thought that it balanced better with the shadow of the net looking off centre when cropped accurately each side. Euripides liked it as it begs the question whether it was something done on purpose and that it is something that might upset the viewer without them actually understanding why.
Euripides asked if the school was abandoned and I said that it wasn’t, he mentioned that if I could obtain one of the old desks from the drone photo it might be beneficial to include in the degree show exhibition in June 2027.
After lunch Euripides came and had a bit of a tutorial with me and said that he thought that the Drone Images were a vast improvement from last year, with his favourites being the Tennis Net, the Broken Desks and also the Subway Shadow. He said that they were really nice images and worked well together with the colour palette. He repeated that I should put them on a single slide in a gallery style to try out the fitting of them, and suggested that if I needed another wall or the corner of a space then it would be good. Overall, a pretty positive reception to the images I’ve made thus far.
Everybody Else
Below is a list of the rest of the course mates and what their presentations consisted of, what their subjects were and anything I felt interesting to make a note of.
Podge Wheaver – Unseen Forest Life
- Photos of natural environment using Macro photography
- Goal to be featured in in a magazine
- Focus stacking
- Brought in some twigs to show scale of what is in the photo
- Clear slides, white background and a couple of words on the slides
- Euripides and Sam talked about some of the images are a bit abstract
- Advised to use Medium Format, Pentax and Hasselblad’s
Meredith Harvey – Mundane Photography
- Photos of street scenes around a town
- Fences, lifebuoys, geometry
- Recommend to watch Wes Anderson
- Euripides notices there is black colour into the bike, door, pushchair etc
- Sam liked the starkness
- Victor Bergin (Recommended by Euripides) He’s amazing, theory into it and said “shoot first, think later”
Amelia Belvey – What is self expression within fashion
- Taking a photograph and turning it into a graphic
- Almost magazine like
- Like a trading card for. K-POP band
- Photos have been improved and improved the overall effect
Ed Bowen – Ice Hockey- Visual Identity of environment, players etc..
- Various shutter speeds, positions and capturing moments from the events.
- A slide full of small words that were read out.
- Using motion blur. Advised to use a longer telephoto lens other than the canon r7 with 200mm
- More words on the slide than photo, Euripides advised to change the proportions of words v photo
- To experiment – know what you want and aim to get there, use experimenting to find something that is interesting
Claire Richards – Nature Therapy
- How does nature make us feel?
- Linking photos of nature to how we feel.
- Questions on b&w versus colour
- A place of meditation and a process that helps meditation
- Euripides sats there is comfort in repetition
- Need to focus on Landscape Photography and doing some research
Rebecca Aldridge – Between Chance and Control
- Unpredictability in Analogue photography
- Intention and unpredictable outcomes
- Previous B&W but want to do some colour
- Altering the development process to get weird colours
- Using Film Soup, lemon soup and wine soup
- Sam Mentioned Kate Hook
Tesheena Solomon – Creative Fashion Photography
- Crazy and Subtle
- Reading through the slide until Euripides asked her to stop and just explain what the project was about.
- High end fashion Melanie Martinez
- Did the costuming for Cruella
- Focussing on make up first, make up tutorials etc
- Planning on doing make up , photography, directing etc..
Kirsty Wooliscroft – In The Quiet
- Backlit photography
- Lack of detail as purely backlit almost full silhouette
- Pulled up some photos but didn’t have a credit or a photographer
- Artificial lighting and natural lighting
- Euripides asked about what the photos were about. How do you see these in the exhibition space?
- I mentioned that the silhouette shot of a couple with baby, was similar to memento more, still birth photos. It got a few weird noises.
Review Reflection
It was good to see everyone else’s work and see what they’re up to, there were some good images already and some others who don’t appear to have done much in the first four weeks of the year. There are some people who had pages of text and very few images, a couple of people read loads of words of their slides and Euripides needed to ask them to just stop reading and concentrate on explaining what they were doing.
I was happy with the result of my review and some of the comments that Dan, Sam, and Euripides voiced. There were some nice comments from my classmates too and not only have I seen what they’re doing, they’ve also seen what I’m doing. Instead of being the fat old fella in the corner scanning negatives they’ve actually heard off me and seen some of my work. I did do a brief introduction to what I had done last year and how it fed into this year’s work.
Back in tomorrow for the session on the history of photography exhibitions and will result in the research into a contemporary show and an historical one too.
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