Crop & Tale

Crop & Tale was the wittily named exhibition of Bath Spa Photography and Graphics work, held in the centre of town next to the Roman Baths. It was my first insight into an exhibition and all the hurdles you have to overcome prior to one, although this was mainly run by the graphics students (as there's ALOT more of them than us) we all had our little jobs to do. I originally wanted to exhibit my 'Day in the life' work from last year but with it being a second year show it seemed a bit inappropriate, so instead i chose my 'Still life' work and portrayed both square images at a A3 size. I would have preferred to have the images framed with a square frame but due to organisational issues i had to adapt with a normal rectangular one, didn't look too bad and I had my own wall! 

Advanced Darkroom Workshop

Fibre-based printing, a workshop designed to help advance our darkroom skills (including how to mix the chemicals correctly and the right procedure if working in darkroom alone).

Trip down to Brighton!

So i thought i'd go and visit my sister, enjoy the sunshine and the pebbles in Brighton. I took my old canon 35mm and just snapped away without any real intent but i like the fact that the pictures i took of random areas of brighton kind of painted a picture of the weird seaside town and its busy lifestyle.

 

Project 14: Immigration in the UK

This is my final project for my second year at Bath Spa, and the concept behind the brief was to convey the field of photography that I enjoy most and would most likely follow through to doing after graduating. Unfortunately, in the first few weeks of the project, I had a family emergency which meant I couldn't focus on work properly for a month or so. This then turned the project into an almost constructive output whilst going through a tough time, and gave me something to focus on. Originally i wanted to focus on the mix of cultures found in the UK today, in the style of Steve McCurry, however, after some serious thoughts about how to convey this i took the style of Gillian Wearing's "Signs that say what you want them to say and not what someone else wants you to say" project and approached shop owners along a high street in Bath to explain how they feel about living in the UK or how they feel to be British. 

Overall, I am happy with the final outcome, however, it isn't a real insight into the photography style that i'd like to go into. Below is more of what i'd rather do (in an ideal world i'd get paid for it too!)

Cyanotype workshop

The Cyanotype workshop was particularly fun for me because it didnt have any pressure on it... i could just play around and be happy with the results, which i definitely was! Its a printing process that gives a bright cyan blue print. I love the strong colours of the blues and the different tones you can achieve by layering different materials onto the coated paper. The process was popular in the 20th Century, and is how the term 'blue prints' came about. Learning about all the chemicals and how the process works was really interesting, and i loved not knowing how the images were going to turn out. 

 I printed a negative version of some images i have already taken onto acetate paper and used it as a negative to create a positive cyanotype print, the longer the print is exposed to sunlight the darker the shades of blue of the cyanotype print.

I also wrote words onto acetate paper and used them to add an extra detail to the cyanotype print. Words that contradicted the actual image I think were the most effective, for example, 'delicate' against a picture of the Eiffel Tower.

I would love to work with this process again but i'm not sure when it would be most appropriate and how well it would work as a final outcome.

Working with 5x4 for Visual Poetry

So after receiving many comments during my crit saying that the images should be more detailed and that the concept behind the project shouldn't be quite so obvious I decided to re-shoot, using the HARDEST CAMERA in the world! 5x4!

The film had to be loaded into slides in pitch black darkness of the darkroom (which was quite tricky) but then the whole set up of the camera was so much worse. I had to ensure the camera was focused and set correctly before loading each individual negative slide and then exposing it for around 2 and a half seconds (due to the 125 iso).

The next horrible step was developing them, where once again in pitch black darkness, i had to load the negatives individually onto a holder which had grooves on to help but it was fiddly and annoying. Anyways, they developed alright.

I took 5 negatives:

-1 didn't even expose.

-2 have light flares from where light has somehow managed to leak into the slide/camera before exposure and look like so:

and 2 are quite promising although the one of the model and the dolls house isn't quite in focus (which is really annoying).

Idea for my next project... Playing with perspective.

Final Analogue Prints for Visual Poetry

Project 13: Visual Poetry Test shoots