The Exhibition

Last week was our exhibition week. All I can say is wow! It really went off with a bang. I've heard some great feedback and although I would have liked some criticism so I knew what to improve on, it was quite pleasing knowing that no one had anything bad to say about my photographs!


It's been a pleasure working with both Emily and Hannah and I really can't thank them enough for helping me out with the project as well as my Auntie Lisa and my mum for ferrying us here and there...so, thank you!

Frames!

I got my frames for the 16x12 prints! (And for what appears to be my first ever haircut!)

Bought these on Saturday from Ikea - £5.99 each. Quite possibly the only items in the shop that you don't have to assemble yourself.

Prints!

Oh my days, this week has been manic!!

This week was the last week we had to sort our photographs out to send off to ProAm to be printed. There are only 3 Macs on which we can do this, so everyone has been on each other's backs to get it done in time.

Today was especially stressful. I rolled in at about 9ish this morning (it was our day off) and there were more people in on-time than when we actually have lessons!

I have resized a total of 20 images; there will be two 16x12 prints on the exhibition wall with eighteen 10x8 prints in my portfolio box next to the wall.


Our photography exhibition opens at the Hinckley college campus in 9 days - and counting!!

Shoot number 4!

Finally, some sunshine! Some glorious, glorious weather!


Tuesday evening, my chauffeur-come-auntie drove my cousin Hannah and I to Coombe Abbey so I could photograph her again.


We were generating ideas on the way and decided to stop off at a rapeseed field. I'd thought about this before but was quite pessimistic about the blue sky clashing with the yellow of the rapeseed flowers because at times, it can make the photograph look quite dirty. 


Still, we went and the outcome was far better than I had expected! I decided to shoot towards the sun, meaning that I had to alter the camera settings to compensate for the lighting.


Photographing this way is usually classed as "against the rules" - but hey, rules are only made to be broken! The results were that the sky was completely bleached out and the photograph was very soft.

Monkey business!

<This is just a quick shot
 from the fields as an example.
(Click the image to make it bigger)






After about 45 minutes we head back en route to Coombe Abbey.
When there, we made a quick stop at the redwoods. The evening light was slowly but surely fading and cast a brilliant sunset across the whole park; squeezing through every nook and cranny of the interlocked tree leaves and branches and lit up the bark of the redwoods.


When we reached the bluebells, the light seem to begin to fade faster and faster.
There was a log in the middle of the bluebells just lying there as though it had been placed there just for us! I sat Hannah on it and began snapping away.















Once again, a huuuuge thank you to Hannah and Auntie Lisa!

*Update

These photographs were from the same shoot as the previous post but it wouldn't let my upload these on the same post.

I shot with the sunlight behind Hannah and because it was a bright sunny day, I was able to make the exposure time a few hundredths of a second slower to allow more light to enter the camera and create this lovely soft effect.

I have enhanced these images slightly to make the images have a slight sepia cast over them.

I also shot a roll of medium format again:
(click the images to make them bigger!)

The left image was incredibly over exposed. I corrected the majority of the exposure and contrast in Adobe Lightroom after scanning the negative strip to the computer, but some features in her face and dress were too "burnt-out" to salvage.

Third Shoot

I must apologise to my avid fans (haha) - I've been caught up with everything else and haven't had the chance/motivation to post on this for a couple of weeks.

About 2 weeks ago on a Saturday, I went to Bentley Woods again to photograph my cousin, Hannah. We were there for the best part of an hour making the most of the sun while we had the chance.

I was pretty happy with how the photographing went and what we produced. I can't really thank Hannah enough for having the patience and bucking up the courage to pose as it's quite a nerve-racking thing - especially when you're 14!

(I'm doing this at college right now, the internet is poor and it's only letting me upload 2 images. There's a couple more I need to put up so watch this space!)

Untitled post

Started back at college yesterday, spent the whole day in the darkroom processing a roll of medium format and developing some images from when I went to Hartshill Hayes during the break.


Here are a couple of scanned images which I've developed:


(click to make them bigger)

Second shoot

I woke up quite late on Tuesday, expecting the weather to be dismal like the past few days and thinking I'd have a nice day slobbing around doing nothing. However, my mum had other ideas and talked me and my sister to go out photographing again while the weather was decent.

Despite the sun, it was still fairly cold and after the last shoot, Emily was adamant that we wouldn't go anywhere until she'd got some tights. 

The somewhat 10 minutes we were in Asda looking for tights, the weather had gone from being beautifully sunny to being so dull that it was like someone had turned off the happiness in the world.

So; armed with two cameras, a tripod, 2 rolls of film, a pair of tights and my mum in the back of the car (she became my pack mule for the day) we head off to Bentley Woods in Atherstone.

It rained a fair bit on the way, but had cleared up by the time we'd got to the woods so we started shooting.

Here's a picture of me wrestling with the Halina A1 medium format camera.

(Picture taken by my pack mule).

We weren't there an awful long time because the cold got to all three of us and it started raining again, but here are a couple of snaps I've messed about with slightly.


Click to make them bigger...

A few examples and complaints about the weather.

Following on from the previous post; we didn't actually make it to Coombe Abbey. Instead, my sister and I drove around Nuneaton looking for suitable wood areas and ended up in Hartshill Hayes (never been before - lovely place!)


It was fine all day while we were looking for somewhere to shoot - nice and overcast, no harsh sunlight but no rain - until we were about 2 minutes away from Hartshill and the clouds began falling. 
The rain didn't last long though so we headed in to the woods and began shooting.

This is one image which pretty much sums up the day. Walking across fallen trees. I was nice enough to let Emily wear her coat for most of the day as it was no warmer than 10.C and all she had on was a knee-length dress!

I also ran off a roll of medium format film on my Halina A1 after fixing it (using the word "fixing" lightly as I think it's unfixable) and these are 2 separate exposures which I scanned in on a normal document scanner.




I'm hoping to get out again as soon as possible, but the weather is abysmal lately!

First shoot!

So today, I woke up early (around 9:45am - that's early for me!) so that my sister and I can pop in to town and go to a few charity shops to see if we can pick up a few outfits/dresses before we go to Coombe Abbey to start the first shoot!
I must admit I'm quite nervous because these will be first response images and the majority of ideas that I come up with only really hit me when I'm actually shooting - so anything could happen!
Also, considering that it's the first day of the Easter holiday and it's fairly sunny today, I am dreading the thought of a million-and-one kids running around the woods in the background...


And I've just checked the weather: it's meant to rain today. Argh!

Okay, so within the past two weeks of posting I have come up with a final idea (well, kind of) - mainly down to stumbling upon a photographer called Anniken Hannevik. [Copy the link and it will take you to her Flickr page]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/annikendreams/2987748140/in/photostream


I Have also scrapped the idea of an A3 sketchbook and gone for a hardcover A4...so all-in-all I've 
spent almost a tenner on sketchbooks. Not impressed!


I spent the majority of today preparing my Halina A1 medium format TLR ready for shooting at 
some point in this Easter holiday but it's still not working 100% right so we'll just see how we 
have to go.

First post - The project gets underway!

Over the past couple of weeks I have been thinking endlessly about what to do for this project.
So. I've been racking my brains, looking in to a range of magazines for ideas and have decided to do my project based around fashion. 


(Go on, turn your nose up and pull a weird face, everyone else does. I know, it's odd for a scruffy long-haired lad who only wears plain white T's from Asda and jeans from Matalan to do fashion. Contrasting much?!)


Considering this is our last college project and is the BIG THING that we've been working towards for 2 years, I thought it was only right to splash out a bit and make it worthwhile so I bought a sketchbook for £5.40.
£5.40...
£5.40  ?!
That's barmy! Taking in to account that for nearly all the previous projects that I have completed, I've only used sketchbook which cost 80p each. £5.40 is like pure gold to me!


Gah.