Reflecting on my journey through Identity and Place I took a tour back through all of the work that I have produced, and then took the time to reflect on my work, my working practices, and how they have evolved over the course, and why. Before starting, it would be true to say that I […]
Category: IAP
Assignment 5: Final Submission
Updates from Draft Version This assignment has evolved a lot since my original thinking. It has changed from one of being purely about signs to one about places. I am very pleased with the outcome. A number of changes have been post discussion with my tutor: I had to decide between separate images and a […]
End of Course Learning Outcomes
LO1 demonstrate an ability to make technically accomplished photographic work and apply technique purposefully and appropriately I think that my Assignment 5 is the most technically accomplished piece of work. I think this due to the technical technique used in capturing the images, but also in the editing and production techniques to create the physical book. […]
Assignment 5: Post Submission Reflection
Technical and Visual Technically I am happy with this assignment. I think there is good consistency of framing on all of the images and they contain just the rights amount of context within the image – when the image is about the sign, then just the sign, and when it is about the sign or item […]
Assignment 5: Draft Submission
Introduction During 2020 the virus known as COVID-19 spread across the world at an astonishing speed. Over twenty million people were confirmed as having caught the disease and hundreds of thousands died. The disease was highly infectious and for many was asymptomatic which only helped to spread the disease further. With the reality of asymptomatic ‘Super […]
Exercise 5.3 Journey
The Journey I took these images on a journey from my home near Stroud to my workplace in Central London. Clearly they are taken during the COVID pandemic and they are at a time when the country is trying to phase itself out of lockdown. Life where I live has started to ease considerably, our area […]
Book: Jail Keys Made Here by Lee Boltin
As part of researching the photography of signs for my Assignment 5, I came across the book, Jail Keys Made Here (Boltin, 1959) The book is not art, it not trying to say anything other than highlight some of the signs the photographer, Lee Boltin, has come across in his travels across America and that he […]
Photographer: Keith Arnatt
Arnatt studied painting at Oxford and then art at the Royal Academy Schools (Keith Arnatt, n.d.). His interests lay in conceptual art; particularly the reductionist element of that movement and “in relating the presentation of art objects to the contexts of their viewing in a way that sought to activate those contexts.” (ibid.). Reductionism This concept is […]
Exercise 5.2: An Attempt at Exhausting a Place
Exercise Choose a viewpoint, perhaps looking out of your window or from a café in the central square, and write down everything you can see. No matter how boring it seems or how detailed, just write it down. Spend at least an hour on this exercise. What I saw I am sitting in my attic […]
Exercise 5.1: Traces of People
Exercise Create a set of still-life pictures showing traces of life without using people. Approach Where I live, in a Stroud valley, there is virtually no man made element and as we walk in the valley, which is nearly every day, we often reflect on how beautiful if is because of the fact that it […]
Photographer: Lee Friedlander – Letters from the people
Friedlander’s collection ‘Letters from People’ is a series of images that cover letters, numbers, words and sometimes whole sentences (Lee Friedlander: Letters from the People | MoMA, 1994). Fig X below shows an installation image of his work as it was displayed in MoMA in 1994. Fig. X is an installation image from MOMA and shows a part […]
Assignment 4: Final Submission
I was pleased with my feedback on Assignment 4, particularly as I had placed a lot of emphasis on technical quality in addition to telling my story. The two key points to reflect on and develop further going forwards are: 1. Telling the story – getting the balance right between giving enough information to tell […]
Photographer: Moussa Kalapo
I came across Kalapo when reading the Summer 2020 edition of the RPS Contemporary Photography journal (Ashley, 2020). The images that I saw are typical of those that I might have passed over before my studies but have come to appreciate more and more because of the story that they tell rather than their aesthetic impact, although […]
Photographer: Richard Wentworth
I researched Wentworth after finding him within the course texts. The images that I could find online piqued my interest in the way that he has used considerable attention to detail in isolating small pieces of reality to create interesting, sometimes amusing, images. I decided to purchase the book Making Do and Getting By which contains hundreds […]
Photographer: Michelle Sank
I researched Michelle Sank after finding her through the British Journal of Photography. Sank’s collection where the collection My.Self is portrayed (Warner, 2018). The collection was created by Sank by simply approaching young people in the area of Sandwell and asking to photograph them in their bedrooms. I think that Sanks, as a woman, was perhaps more able […]
Reflection Point: Fact or fiction
I touched on this area in my reflection on Assignment 4. In my day job, I am successful or not by how much ambiguity I manage to remove from situations and I think that this flows over into my photography. I think I am prone to trying too hard to mark my pictures explicit. This is analogous […]
Assignment 4: Post Submission Reflection
Technical and Visual Technical accuracy – From a technical standpoint, I was conscious on this assignment that I am now only one more assignment away from level 2 and felt that it was time to up my game. There were a few technical improvements suggested for my Assignment 3 submission and I wanted to ‘raise the bar’ […]
Assignment 4: Draft Submission
This assignment is carried out during the peak of the lockdown required in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, the government had created the phrase ‘Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives’ and repeats it on television many times a day. This assignment is inspired by the first part of that message ‘Stay Home’. I also […]
Photographer: Aubrey Wade
I discovered Wade through the British Journal of Photography and a feature on her collection covering refugees in the UK and the families that have adopted them (Clifford, 2018). The images are taken from her project ‘No Stranger Place’. As well as the subject matter and the images themselves, I was interested in the extensive use of […]
Assignment 3: Final Submission
After discussion with my tutor, Shot framing and timing. My shots are all candid, as in they are not posed, and this has raised some small issues in terms of framing and timing. I had thought to ‘let myself off the hook’ with this because of the candid nature of the shots. But since completing this assignment I […]
Photographer: Karen Yeomans
I came across this photographer as she was featured by the Association of Photographers (AOP) (Yeomans, 2020). In her profile on the AOP site she says “I’m on a mission to help women be seen, it makes my creative heartbeat. I search for alternative representations of femininity through photography to discover the strength and depth of its […]
Photographer: Steve McCurry
Steve McCurry is known for his images of India. I chose to look at his images in more detail because I was specifically reflecting on a conversation that I had with my tutor about the importance of framing and the attention to detail in images, even when they are taken in non-posed situations. McCurry’s images are mainly […]
Exercise 4.3: Storyboard
The Exercise Create a storyboard where the image does not depend on the text and the text adds something new to the narrative. This exercise is a light-hearted look at the role of image and text. Aim for it to be around 10 frames long. Draw the picture storyboard first and then add the text. […]
Photographer: Cocoa Laney
I came across Laney as I was attending a talk held by the Royal Photographic Society based largely on her project ‘belle’ (RPS,2020). Her project interested me because in many of her images, and outside of the image itself, she makes strong use of text. Laney describes herself in the following way “an American documentary photographer currently […]
Photographer: Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson photographs tableaux photographs (Gregory Crewdson, 2020), meaning constructed scenes in which he aims to tell a complete story in a single shot. His images are influenced by films such as those from Hitchcock (ibid.) and this is very clear looking at most of his images which are filmic in their appearance, Fig. 1 is an […]
Exercise 4.4: Captioning Newspaper Images
Exercise Over the space of a few weeks gather newspapers that you can cut up, preferably including a mixture of different political points of view. Have a look through and cut out some images without their captions. You could choose advertising images or news. For each image, write three or four different captions that enable […]
Exercise 4.2: Impact of Text
Exercise Choose a day that you can spend out and about looking with no particular agenda. Be conscious of how images and texts are presented to you in the real world – on billboards, in magazines and newspapers, and online, for example. Make notes in your learning log on some specific examples and reflect upon […]
Research: Rhetoric of the image – anchorage and relay
Learning from reading paper I read Barthes’ Rhetoric of the Image (Barthes, 1964) in which he uses the image of an advertisement for Italian food ingredients, but used within France, to illustrate his concepts (see Fig 1.) The overarching thrust of his paper (which is written in his usual style and means that it takes […]
Exercise 4.1: Looking at Advertisements
This reflection is based upon Dawn Woolley’s assessment of the avert “There’s a science to looking good” (Woolley, 2016). This is an advert for Clinique face wash for men along with some kind of scrubbing machine – both produced in a metal looking grey (see Fig. 1). The initial part of the analysis focuses on […]
Assignment 3: Post Submission Reflection
Technical and Visual This was a challenging assignment due to current circumstances. Technically, I should not have been out taking pictures and so I could only do so in conjunction with other trips out, no small reason as to why therefore that shopping played its part in the assignment. That said, this is fine as shopping is […]
Assignment 3: Draft Submission
Introduction This assignment is produced during the COVID-19 isolation and lockdown measures of 2020. In one regard this meant that I was limited on what or who I could gain access to; during this time, one is not allowed out of the house except for work if not possible from home, shopping, or exercise. From a […]
Exercise 3.4: The Gaze
Exercise Produce a series of five portraits that use some of the types of gaze defined above. Outcome I have reinterpreted this exercise slightly. Whilst at the National Portrait Gallery recently, I came across a picture of Kate Moss by Corrine Day (see fig. 1). What struck me about this picture is that the different poses […]
Photographer: Stephen Gill
Stephen Gill, born 1971 (Stephen Gill (photographer), n.d.), has produced a series of collections that are predominantly inspired by living in East London. Many of his images are of everyday scenes that one might walk past and never take the time to stop and study them. An example might be one shown below in Fig. […]
Exercise 3.3: Portraying under-represented groups
This piece reflects on how marginalised or underrepresented groups could be badly portrayed and how being an insider might help combat this. For the exercise I thought about the homeless people and in particular a group that is supported by a charity that one of my daughters works for – they deal with those who have […]
Exercise 3.2: Personality
Make a list of some aspects of your personality that make you unique. Start taking a few pictures that could begin to express this. How could you develop this into a body of work? This exercise is being done during the times of COVID-19 and the constraints that this places on being outdoors – namely […]
Assignment 2: Final Submission
After discussion with my tutor, three major points stand out. 1. Choice of Black and White I wrote “I have chosen black and white for the presentation of the images because this most typical for the ‘genre’ of street scenes”. We agreed that this statement is too glib. There are plenty of examples of colour street scenes, and […]
Photographer: Nial McDiarmid
Background I researched Niall McDiarmid after he was suggested to me by my tutor after Assignment 2. In my Assignment 2 Reflection, I had made a bit of a throw away remark that I had chosen black and white presentation of my images because I wanted to position my images in the street photography domain, […]
Exercise 3.1: Mirrors and Windows
In this exercise I had to select around 10 pictures from my archive and separate them into two piles, one for mirror and one for window. For the purposes of this exercise, the terms used and interpreted from my perspective; meaning that a mirror for me may well be a window for somebody else. Mirror […]
Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2019
I visited the Taylor Wessing 2019. Photographic Portrait Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery . Previously, when I was reflecting on Assignment 2, I wrote “ I did feel that the need to capture the subject as the main person in the frame did reduce creativity in terms of one’s ability to control the frame and […]
Assignment 2: Post Submission Reflection
Technical and Visual Technically, I think that the outcome is good. All of the subjects are sharp. Visually, perhaps the image of Anna (the lady preparing ice cream) would have been better if she had been looking at the camera as it is a shame that one cannot see her eyes. I felt though that because she […]