Smoke

Practising my cinemagraph skills! This was shot on my phone with no tripod so I didn't even have a whole second to work with making frames from. However I now know smoke will look really good done properly and I can't wait to try it out!

This was from a day devoted to test shoots, and in the middle of college classmate Steve's practise.

I'm going to link you to his Facebook page below because all his other links are on there somewhere. Always in awe of his work.

Steve Mcivor Photography

PROJECT: Presentation (portfolio)

So as a part of the portfolio we were to give an assessed presentation to the class, putting forward our idea for the project and how we were to go about doing it.

I mostly had visual aids and talked around them, but I thought I might share those images with you by popping my presentation into this post!

I think it went pretty well, I've never been shy about talking in front of people, but I definitely feel as if I'm becoming clearer and more confident about doing it.

So anyway, enjoy!

MODULE: Portfolio Project

Yet another module to be working on, this time it's a nice open brief, create a portfolio of 15-20 images surrounding a theme.

I'm dead set on creating a series of miniature people images similar to what I've done before, and I can't wait to get started.

I think I can get away with creating 12 as they take a lot more work in post, but I'm going to aim for 15.

I'm going brainstorm some ideas and I'll be sure to keep you updated!

MODULE: Work Based Learning

So with the start of the year comes another introduction to another module, and this time it's Work Based Learning.

Now last year WBL consisted of a project brief that ran like a commission, it was in conjunction with End Clothing as they supplied the brief, and it was a fashion based project which is not my area!

This year it is basically any commission work you have had written into a report, along side two supporting images, and aside from the fact I'm panicking about being able to get work, this seems like a much better and more enjoyable module.

I will update you with the work I have, and hopefully you'll enjoy seeing it!

BRANDING: Letter Head

Now this post won't seem too exciting as I've already posted my CV, and this is pretty much the same design, but I've completed it and thought I'd share it anyway. There's not too much to say about it to be honest apart from that this is the last branding post, and I'm very happy about the consistency of my designs.

BRANDING: Business Cards

I have sent off to Moo.com for a set of 10 free business cards as before I pay for any amount I'd like to see what they look like. Here are the design I used, again my number is blurred:

The back of these cards just feature my logo, I got 5 printed with the logo on white and 5 in a dark grey with a white logo, I think I'll prefer the colour ones, but I thought as they were free samples it was worth trying both out.

BRANDING: Social Media

I thought I'd take today to link you to all of my social media places regarding my photography, that way you can keep up to date with any new information, new shoots and anything really that I want to share, this is an important part of brand awareness, and so I have created linking accounts.

FACEBOOK 

TWITTER

INSTAGRAM

BLOG

PROJECT: Surrealism

As you can see it is a very different kind of work than I usually do, and it was all done on a flatbed scanner!

I know I could have done pretty much anything for alternative techniques and stayed a bit safer in terms of imagery, however as soon as I tried scanning images I fell in love with the tones and texture and with the creative freedom we had for this project I decided to push myself a little bit and just go for it!

It's quite a dark image for me and I don't really want to explain my thoughts behind creating it because I like that it's open for interpretation but I'd love to hear thoughts in the comments as it's so different to my usual work!

Calumet Day

So we had a talk from Calumet and photographer Simon Leach who is associated with them. Now I did quite appreciate Simons work, and he answered peoples questions quite well, and seemed to have some interesting things to say about the industry, but I'm going to be honest here, as it's my blog, but I felt like the whole intention of his talk was to sell us a fujifilm camera.

Now i'm very much aware that the talk was initiated by Calumet and their whole day was planned as a way for us to trial new equipment and potentially buy from them. I don't know what i expected from today but I felt a bit bombarded by sales, and less actually learning anything new about photography or actually benefiting at all as I didn't have money to purchase anything either.

I get how it could be useful to some people, but to me I was just kind of stood back not understanding much about the kit and not being able to afford it.

Hopefully the next talk will be a bit more beneficial to me!

PROJECT: Incident Room

So this is my incident room project, it is based off a project I did at a level art, but with much more sophisticated lighting than my bedroom light and a candle hah!

I liked the idea of showing basically two sides to how you feel through a mirror because it is often when you're sat looking at a mirror when you think about yourself and who you are. We shot in a travelodge because it worked out pretty cheap compared to other places, so the room isn't the best (including the warped mirror!) but aside from that I think my lighting is pretty well done considering I'd never lit a room before with flash, and the idea is solid, it just needs a bit more styling to the room.

All in all I was much more pleased with this project than the weightless aspect of the module, and though it is certainly not my style of work usually, I enjoyed the opportunity to create something a little different a practise a new skill!

PROJECT: Weightless

My final image for weightless is one that I'm reluctant to put up, because what I imagined this looking like is not at all what it has ended up looking like.

Cringe 

I'm not making excuses but when we did this we did 4 shoots in a day, which then ended up actually being 5 because my original one did not work even slightly and I had to reshoot last minute having my friend make her way over immediately from university just so I had a model, thankfully Georgia stayed and gave me a hand, but to be honest neither of us were very confident with flash outdoors, and to top it off only one of our flash heads was working because with the equipment we booked out from the store we were only given one radio slave, which was fantastic considering the image had to be lit with two lights....

However I know exactly what I did wrong, I basically exposed the image for the natural light and then added the flash, which due to the fact the sun was incredibly bright was not the best thing to do, I should have spent more time making sure I had it right but to be honest i was flustered and completely lost with how to even begin to shoot with outdoor lighting and that affected my motivation to keep trying. I wish I had had time to go back and try again but I had to make do with what I had, and it's not an awful photograph but I know I could have done better with time and practise. Never mind.

MODULE: Alternative Techniques

This is surreal project and I'm super excited for it, aside from the fact I have literally no ideas on where to go.

So long as we use an animate and inanimate object we're basically free to do whatever we wish.

Examples we were shown were double exposures which I love, but kind of want to do something a little different to that, I think this is opportunity for me to use my art in my work and I want to push that a bit. I'll update you when I've done some more research but for now I'm a little lost!

MODULE: Digital Skills

So a good few weeks ago now I was given a new module at college, digital skills (bet you didn't see that one coming with the title did you?)

This will consist of:

WEIGHTLESS
Creating an image in which something is exactly that, weightless, the idea is floating and using photoshop to create this. We will have to use lights on location, something I have never done before and am quite worried about doing. Fingers crossed for me!

INCIDENT ROOM
Lights on location again but this time inside lighting a room effectively for a shoot, the image must show some kind of incident less like a model looking at the camera and more so like you are looking at something actually occurring.

I'm looking forward to these projects but also very worried about getting the lighting right!