As part of my previous post I mentioned the review that we sat together for this Wednesday. We were given a brief for the review and this was as follows.
Brief
This Group Review is a key opportunity to present your current work-in-progress and receive feedback ahead of the Interim Exhibition. You’ll share a selection of images and discuss how they might be developed into a professionally presented piece for public display.
The focus will be on refining your conceptual direction, evaluating the visual and material qualities of your work, and beginning to consider how your chosen image(s) will function in an exhibition context: framing, scale, and audience engagement.
Student Tasks:
- Present 8–12 images and a short project statement outlining your current direction.
- Discuss which image(s) you are considering for the Interim Exhibition and why.
- Take notes during feedback and reflect in your journal.
- Identify 2–3 specific actions to take in preparation for the exhibition (e.g. test prints, framing options, installation ideas).
Slide Away
I always open up my slide decks with a standard and consistent title slide that contains the relevant information pertaining to who I am and what the presentation is for.
I had been playing with calling the presentation Rectangles but it seemed a bit too playschool, infantile so I used the word Tetra due to it meaning four and this is a feature of both rectangles and squares. I know squares are rectangles too, just a special type of rectangle. I wanted to include a stylised page showing some of the images that would follow in the upcoming slides whilst I talked about the type of place and photos.
The project statement page is a trimmed down version of the project proposal I presented in Week 4. There has been a change to the scope of the work as I am no longer able to gain access to the interiors as H&S rules with the council prevent that from happening.
The purpose of this project is to capture images of the Shirehall Buildings in Shrewsbury, which is the headquarters of the Shropshire Council. I need to present an image for the Interim Exhibition this December, but I won’t necessarily be producing work for the degree show as I won’t be doing that module until next year. The reason for this of course is that I am a part time student so doing only a single module per year when the remainder of the full timers are doing two modules.
The first image is a drone photograph of the solar panels on the roof of the building, the rectangles are difficult to make out as solar panels if you do not know about solar panels but it’s a strange collection of lines, angles, squares, rectangles, light and shadow.
The next slide features a top down aerial image of the skylights over the Crown Court within the building. It is a grid of lines with popping up glass blocks and the condensation within creates the odd slightly circular pattern. I particularly like the shadows in this image between the blocks.
Going back a couple of years ago when I was interested with Liminal Spaces this stairwell would have fit the bill as a route for the workers in between the floors of the building and not hanging around in. It reminds me a lot of the stairwells in my old secondary school, Belvidere School, which is now flattened to become a car park. The reflections in the windows are also nice to see in this image with the different floors offering reflections of different scenery.
This photo show a reflection of a scaffolding covered Lord Hill’s Column, as it undergoes restoration works. The reflection is in the gold coloured reflective film on the inside of the windows, that oringally helped regulate the temperature in the office spaces. The cloudy sky and the sun poking out too show us the messy and dirty windows with the view that office workers might have originally had. As can be seen in the picture beneath and it’s view from the inside of a working office.
The slide following on from this is another aerial photograph of a checkerboard pattern from above the courts and register office area, the blue colours of some of the square skylights are odd but are there as a waterproofing to prevent further damage in the interiors.
I put this down as my 1st choice to have printed and displayed at the Interim show but this was not a popular decision when I presented it at the review. Euripides stated that the composition wasnt as good as the other works and persuaded me to not use this image. I still like it as a photo witht he shapes in the image becoming apparent when looked at for a while. THe Rectangular windows in the concrete frontage, that I recently found out was fitted to block in an open part of the structure that allowed members of the public to wander into the heart of the grounds.
As I showed off this slide I heard Gavin give a warning for a five minute timer so had to pick up the pace and as a result I didn’t stop for long on any particular slide from hereonin.
I like this photo that was made with a Canon 5D Mk IV and 300mm lens of the reflections in the windows of the trees outside. Some panes of glass covered in film that give it a Blackpool Whacky Mirror effect whilst the plaine glass gives a crisp reflection.
Marked in the slide deck as my second choice, I heard a murmur of approval when I loaded this image onto the screen. I had discussed the many instances of squares and rectangles in the image, from the frame of the window cleaning infrastructure to the windows and the yellow and white painted lines on the car park. It seemed to be the image that most people felt would fit the exhibition collection so it will likely be this photo that is printed. I have until Wednesday morning to get the image submitted.
Dan had asked how good the camera was on the drone and whether there would be enough pixels at the 300ppi to get a good size image.. When I photograph using the DJI Mini 4 Pro I have it set to 48MP mode and the images from it are 4536 x 8064 ppi. This means at the 300ppi the image size should max out at around 15″ x 27″ and this is around A2 which is 16.5″ x 23.4″ This should be fine for the A2 ish size that I think the Interim Exhibition will require.
This next slide shows “a good composition” but doesn’t seem to enthouse the viewers, it was in there as a reminder of the mosaic tiles, the concrete, the shapes and the portland stone circular council chamber. It’s not my favourite image but seemed to fit what I was aiming at.
One of my favourite images from the walk around inside in August 2024 is this one, illustrating an open plan office wuth no furniture existing, the carpets showing the wear from the people who worked in there and the light coming in through the closed blinds on the windows. This is an upper floor that is closed off an unused due to the space not meeting fire regulations. It’s very liminal space for me and a photo that I enjoy looking into.
The next two slides showed a still and a link to a youtube video that I made using the drone of travelling along the floor of the building on the outside. The reflections in the windows and the lighting make me happy with Euripides calling this “very strong”. It was suggested that I could display this video, in a slowed down version on a screen as it had come from a photography project, and it is photography. I wanted to get out and do the same flight in the dark too so that I could join them together and have a day and night version. This can be seen here.https://youtube.com/shorts/ixawwuUsmtM?feature=share
The next slide was also a video of me flying up a face of the building with the focus purely on the steps of the stairwell mentioned earlier. This video is available here: https://youtu.be/cpmuI5ktTfY
And so onto the last slide, where we are to document the actions we need to continue to take in order to progress with the project. My actions are listed below and I’ve ordered some Redscale film from AG Photographic but it is yet to arrive. No good for the drone as my drone would not lift the Bronica ETRS I am planning on using. I had been looking into video options too and I have a cheap and old iMac 27″ that I bought broken for £30 and then fixed it, it would be ideal to display my short videos on.
I’d also been looking into the mosaic tile style frame, making a frame from wood and covering it with the mosaic tiles or using them like a mount board. Neither of which seem too good of an idea. I think I’ll leave this as a standard print and hopefully this is god enough for the interim show. If it were for the full degree show, I might be tempted to make a former and pour a concrete frame to go around the prints but that might be a job for next year.
This year I need to get finishing the dissertation with the research that I’ve been carrying out, ahead of the deadline to hand in the draft on 9th December.
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