One Day Brief - Flash Fiction

Flash Fiction is a style of literature telling short stories usually no more than 300 words. For this one day brief we each picked out of a hat a folded piece of paper showing our own roughly 50 world flash fiction story. We were asked to produce a series of five images communicating the story we had been given. My flash fiction story was:

'Two Unfortunate Displays of Bad Taste'

'It happened quickly. One day we stood in a museum, gazing at a Vermeer. 'Quite slick' said I, 'Now thats a smooth, smooth painting'. 'Stupid prick' said she, 'what a bastard'. We split up forever that same afternoon. I never knew if she hated Vermeer, or my comment, or both.

As there was a museum setting in the story, and the mention of a Vermeer painting, I decided to head to Leeds Art Gallery to take my photographs. I had to be quick and subtle when photographing as I wasn't 100% sure I was allowed to be taking photographs in there, and I couldn't think of any alternative photos to take based on a painting without visiting the gallery. My first image is a close up detail of the 'smooth' painting, and some of the frame, as if the photograph was taken from the character's perspective while initially looking at the painting. My second image shows the girl in the story looking at the painting, and the third pointing at it as if they were talking about it. I think they could have been more effective and sucessful in showing the story if I had included two people in my images. In the last two images I slightly desaturated the colours using Photoshop, to show the relatively negative ending to the story starting to come into effect. In the last image I wanted to show a blurred figure walking away, to represent the couple's break up at the end of the story; this was something I visualised when first reading the story and is probably my favourite image from the series. Looking back on these images I wish I had been more creative in showing my story, or I wish I'd had a more abstract story that I could have played around with the concept and meaning of it. Overall I found this brief to be a good practice for working to a strict time schedule, and also showing a narrative in a series of images.

One Day Brief - Shoe Advertising

We were given a One Day Brief on the theme of shoe advertising and put into groups to work together for the day, 9:30 - 3:00. The rules were to only use the shoes available within the class, and to present three final images complete with a logo for the chosen shoe brand. We were told to use the studio and any resources or props available in uni on that day.
My group decided to create advertising images for the brand 'Vans' as on of our group was wearing a pair, and we knew a few other people who were also wearing some. Therefore our initial ideas were shots featuring several pairs of Vans shoes. The Vans brand has a sporty, grimey image, often associated with skateboarding, alternative music scenes and urban culture. We wanted to try and communicate this in our images.

10 Things List

At the beginning of the year we were given a weekend project to photograph a list of ten random things. To determine the list, everyone wrote a theme, object or idea down on a piece of paper and put them into a box, and 10 of them were randomly chosen. The list we ended up with was:

• Alcohol
• Something Gorey
• Chinese Food
• Park
• Trees
• Weather
• People
• Someone you live with
• Door
• Fence

Here are the images I produced:

Alcohol

At first I found it difficult to think of an interesting idea to photograph alcohol, as I didn't want to take a predictable close up image of bottles/glass etc.

Something Gorey

This idea was inspired by a stop motion film I made a while ago. I rubbed berries onto my hands to make it look as if blood was on them, this works quite well as the image does look gorey, especially when you don't know exactly what is on my hands.

                                                              Chinese Food
I went to a Chinse Supermarket to photograph chinese food. This image reminds me of Martin Parr's work with the bold bright colours and the repetitive patterns of all the food stacked up.

                                                                     Park
I couldn't think of an idea to capture the word 'park' in an image so I tried to be witty with this image and use a play on words for something to do with car parking.










Trees
When I took this image I just intended to include the trees and the sky in the background, however it was lucky that whilst I was shooting a bird came and sat right on top of one of the trees!

                                                                   Weather
I was also struggling to think of an idea to get an interesting photo of 'weather', however as I was walking back from my shoot, I found this broken umbrella on the floor.









People
This is probably my least favourite of the images, as I don't think it works well if you don't know the story behind it. I was in a supermarket as they started reducing all of the food that would have gone off by the end of that day, a lot of people were pushing at the counter to have a look, apart from the man in the foreground, who polietely waited until it was his turn.


Someone you live with

Although I quite like the ambiguity of this image, I don't think it works well in reflecting the 'someone you live with' title. I found these belongings on a field near my accommodation, and thought they might belong to a homeless person possibly living in that area, so I interpreted this as someone I live with, as although they could be essentially 'homeless', they still live in the same area as me.

                                           Door

                                      Fence

I'm glad I found this bright coloured fence as I think it creates an interesting subject out of something that could be usually quite boring and mundane

Overall I was surprisingly happy with my images, especially after I had the chance to edit the colours in a few, to make them brighter and more appealing. We viewed the images by each category and voted for the best in each one, and the winner got a roll of 35mm film. I won film for 'Something Gorey', 'Chinese Food' and 'Fence'.

Developing Darkroom/Technical Skills

First roll of 35mm film I developed and processed in Vernon Street Darkrooms.

Although I have worked in a darkroom before in college it was nice to refresh my memory on developing 35mm film, and get used to working in a new (and much better!) darkroom. These are some photos I took around Leeds city centre, we were given a roll of Black & White 35mm each and told to take photographs of people. I headed straight to the market to do this as I thought it'd be a good opportunity to get some candid and posed shots of people. When working in the darkroom there was a lot of new equipment to get used to, making me realise just how basic the previous darkrooms i'd worked in were! This included the filters on the enlargers to increase or decrease the contrast of the image, which i put up to number 4 for this contact sheet to increase the contrast.

120mm Film & Test Shoots
I took some test shots for my portrait brief using black and white 120mm, the medium we have to use to take the images. When developing the 120mm film I found it a lot harder to get the film onto the spool before the developing process, as expected, because of its difference in side and tendency to bend and curl up a lot more. However since then I have developed a few more rolls and improved slightly. When making test strips for the exporusre of the negatives I noticed that becaue half of my roll was shot with a white background and half with a black background, there was a split difference between exposures, so I decided to split the negatives up and do a test strip for each background. I shot these images in a studio which was my first time shooting in a studio using film, also with a camera I had never used before so I had my doubts about how the negatives would come out but I was pleasantly surprised by the punchiness of them.
Notes & Improvements

• Experiment & get used to using the filters on the enlargers
• Record all details for each print/contact sheet
• Be more careful with fingerprints on negatives & clean them

Park Plaza Hotels Competition

Everyone doing Photography at LCA has been given the chance to enter a competition for Park Plaza Hotels. Apparently the Park Plaza Hotel in Leeds is getting refurbished and they want photographs to go on the walls of the corridors and rooms. There were three categories - Yorkshire Hospitality (the people of Leeds), Icons of Leeds (the history, heritage and architechture of Leeds) and Wild Yorkshire (the landscapes, flora, fauna and wildlife of Yorkshire). The deadline is tomorrow, and here's what I've decided to enter in each category:

Yorkshire Hospitality

 These photos have to be in black & white, square and 15cm x15cm, to go in the corridors of the hotel, and be backlit. I think the first one is my favourite, although I do sort of prefer the second one composition wise. I like the first one because as soon as I walked in the market & got my camera out, the old man came over and asked if I'd take a photo of him and his son, which I thought was really sweet! There was also a lady standing next to him but she wasn't really paying attention/posing so i cropped her out so it fitted in nicely with the square requirements. (We're allowed up to three entries in each category so I entered all three)

Icons of Leeds

This one is of the roof/clock in the Corn Exchange. I think it counts as a pretty iconic place in Leeds because there's not many places like it in the whole country, and because it has quite unusual architechture.This category is to go in the Executive Suite rooms in the hotel, so I was also thinking this might be a good place to photograph because not many people in those rooms (I'm assuming fancy/rich businessmen!) might get the opportunity to see the Corn Exchange if they're just in Leeds for business or whatever. I also wanted to go up to Hyde Park Picture house to take some photos because I think that would have even moreso counted as a place not many people will see or have even heard of, however I've been a bit poorly therefore haven't been feeling my usual adventurous self recently and didn't fancy what would most probably involve me getting very lost in the wind/rain (plus I didn't want my camera to catch a cold as he'd been rained on quite a lot that day ;)

Wild Yorkshire

I was so stuck on this category, it would have been ideal to have a car so I could have gone to the actual countryside or something! Instead I just planned to have a walk to Hyde Park and see what I could get there, however this was taken before I even got there. I took these and was happy as I could be with them so decided not to go to Hyde Park as I'm guessing thats where everyone has gone! I was walking up Woodhouse Lane and saw this sort of overgrown patch of land (I called it a field in my actual description for the comp, to make it sound nicer ha) where the sun was lighting these flowers (probably weeds...) and I decided to try and capture the church in the background to add more of a countryside/Yorkshire feel to it! This is probably my least favourite as I find 99% of flower photos a bit cliched, but I was just happy to get something for this category as I seriously thought I was going to have to miss it out!

Bradford Photography Festival - The Verdict

Red Saunders - Hidden

From looking around the Ways of Looking website, Red Saunders didn’t really strike me as an exhibition that I wanted to see, or stand out to me that much. I think this is because I usually end up thinking I won’t enjoy things related to classical/historical painting, but in more than one case when I’ve thought this I have actually enjoyed it, in particular taking photographs inspired by paintings. Similarly, I did enjoy the Red Saunders exhibition more than I thought I would; I could tell this as soon as I saw the images.

I was glad to see they were large scale, as the size of a painting would be, to get across the amount of detail in the picture. They were taken using a 5x4 large format camera and printed using a combination printing technique, again to get across the detail that is in the image. The large scale and theatrical effect of the images is what made me able to appreciate the work, and the amount of effort that would have taken to produce such images.  The only thing I initially hated when first seeing the exhibition was the way the images were presented; they just seemed to be quite flimsy, bill board style, slightly creased at the folds and curling up, from a visual perspective, I actually hated this and thought it spoilt the dramatic effect of the images; it seemed such a let-down for images that had obviously had so much effort put into them!

Although after we had a talk from one of the curators of the exhibition, the reason for this was made clear. Because of the theme and meaning behind the images – undocumented events from history often of lower status - the underdogs, such as the peasants revolt, the presentation was obviously done like this intentionally to be reminiscent of picket boards and protests. Red Saunders had also wanted the images to be removed from the 'rich art object' status. Although this totally made sense to me, I still think it would have been nice to see them neatly stretched out or something!

Also found this video which shows how the pictured shot was taken! (this one was probably my favourite)


 

Alan Dunn – Scene for a small crime

I enjoyed this exhibition, it was one of the ones I was interested in seeing when viewing the website. It was set up in a 'pop up gallery', a previously unused shop space that had been turned into a gallery for the photography festival.
The imageswere interesting to look at, especially with the inclusion of the witness statements that transformed the image from a vague mystery for the viewer to add a meaning, to a documented and informed viewing of a crime scene. This is definitely the type of exhibition I would have enjoyed more if I saw it on my own. I don't know what it is, and it sounds pretty fussy, but whenever I'm at an exhibiton with a group of people I can never properly concentrate on what its actually about, I get distracted talking about the images and come away feeling as if I still haven't fully taken it all in, a bit like when you leave a shop with the feeling there's something you would have loved but didn't see!

Unfortunately I didn't get to see the Daniel Stancliffe's British Wild Boar work, as the gallery it was in wasn't open on the day we went.

Bradford Photography Festival - Ways of Looking

'Ways of Looking' is a new photography festival in Bradford, running throughout October. The festival will show new exhibitions and commissions, photography in pubic spaces and a specially published book, all on the theme of 'Evidence'.


When visiting Bradford, I am interested in seeing Daniel Staincliffe's work, titled 'Fauna Automata, British Wild Boar'; the description for the exhibition being 'explores the British wild boar population through photographs taken by the boars themselves' which I found instantly interesting and unusual. The work is a result of Daniel Staincliffe's artist residency in The Forest of Dean, and the photographs are a result of his scientific style of recording the movements and habits of the boars. Staincliffe developed a camera which was set up in the forest, and triggered to take a photograph every time a boar made a movement near the camera.

 

I think I might find this exhibition interesting because I think the whole idea of it is quite cute, and strangely mysterious because not much is known about boars - a point which Staincliffe is trying to make by bringing them into the public eye and increasing awareness of them. Staincliffe's work also reminded me of the documentary 'Polar Bear Spy on the Ice' which had a similar idea of putting video cameras out on the ice to 'spy' on the polar bears and capture their movements.

Some more photographers I am interested in seeing are: 

• A Scene For a Small Crime by Alan Dunn
• Strange Lights by Joe King & Rosie Pedlow
• UFO by Julian Claxton