Producing Work I am Extremely Proud Of

This week has been a long one. I've spent 3 evenings straight in the studio catching up with photoshoots that were cancelled due to the bad weather. All three shoots were incredibly successful, and both students from the Northern Contemporary Dance School loved the images as did I. 

A lot of images were taken over the three days and whilst I was editing as I went so that I had new work to show at the portfolio review, I still have a lot of images to sort through.

 But I could not be happier with the images produced. 

Model: Queenie Mo 

Alumni Portfolio Review | No. 2

This afternoon we had another Alumni Portfolio review day, I have been eagerly awaiting this day for a while as the feedback given is always incredible. I chose to see Laura Patrick again as I wanted to show her some of my new work and ask a few questions about the professional practice module.

I also saw alumni Josh Wilde as he is mainly studio and I thought he would be able to give me a few tips if needed. He said he really liked the lens images as (above) and that the lighting used for the darker image (below) would look great through a lens. I expressed how I had thought the same thing and had even tried the idea out, however, because of the dark lighting the lens would not focus. 

Josh suggested I merge the images together and advised playing around with a slower shutter speed so that you could see more movement.

 When asked about? 

 Websites Josh said he uses a Wix paid site. 

 Putting together a portfolio - he recommended Sim imaging. 

 Printing final large prints - Josh recommended the digital press at the university.  

Laura loves the lens images and said they would look great in a flip book or as a gif. I told her how I was struggling to find a title and she said a thesaurus is my best friend so I'm going to spend some time playing around with words. 

When asked about?

           Websites - she recommended WordPress as a host and said a website with a black background would look good. 

Putting together a portfolio and final prints - she recommended Charlie Meecham 

We selected my final three images together and I couldn't be happier with them. And spoke combining the dark images with the lens images. 

Overall the day was a great success, I've selected my final three images, been advised on websites and am now one step closer to finding a title. 

Meetings with Fashion Design and Marketing and Fashion and Communications Students

This afternoon I had a meeting with a Fashion Design and Marketing student to discuss photographing her work after Easter.  We both met for a coffee and created a plan based off her vision of her work. It all felt very professional and business like, but it was really nice to see what the work I would be photographing and creating a plan together as well as sharing any advice I had from a photographer's point of view. The meeting went really well and now I am just looking to book the studio.

Literally an hour later I had another meeting coincidentally in the same coffee shop as before but this time with a Fashion Communications and Promotions student looking to shoot some of her work in the studio after Easter as well. The vision for her work is something different and will definitely add some variety to my portfolio. She added me to the board she had created on Pinterest so that I could look over it again during the Easter holidays and also so that I was able to add any ideas I may have for the shoot. 

Final Interim Exhibition

This morning was the final interim exhibition, it has been the shortest of them all. We began as we always do in groups critiquing another groups work with the help of questions, However, this time we left our feedback on post it notes. This interim was our chance to go all out and use it as test for our final exhibition in regards to size and types of paper. 

I chose to print A1 on matte paper and found it worked really well against all of the black. However, I was not happy with print overall because there a few things I noticed, which I had not seen before that I now need to tidy up in photoshop. I was also told by a guest who had been sitting in on a few of our tutorials that my kind of work was conceptual and an artists statement would give a lot of weight to the work. I was also told not to be afraid of the fact that my work was conceptual. 

Meeting with Careers

This afternoon I attended a career meeting at the university. I have spent the past couple of weeks re-designing my cv and wanted to have it checked over before I began applying for jobs. The meeting went really well, my cv is pretty much good to go, the reason why I say pretty much is that all of the foundational stuff is there but parts of it will need tailoring depending on the job I am applying for. The careers advisor gave me so advice when it comes to finding jobs as well as making my cv stand out and how to sell myself.

Capture One Workshop with Alumni Laura Patrick

Alumni Laura Patrick came into the studio today to give us a workshop on Capture One a software used by all industry studios to capture and edit images. I have always used Adobe Lightroom for my photoshoots. However, after listening to Laura talk and demonstrate all of the benefits of Capture One I'm looking to start using that instead. All I need to do is pick a day when I'm not doing a shoot in collaboration with someone either with another student or for my own work. Then I will go in and get the feel of it, once I feel confident with using it I will start using it for my own shoots instead of Lightroom.

Snow days

We've pretty much come to a standstill due to the snow.  It all started on Tuesday evening when my tutors decided it was best to cancel the guest speaker planned for the next day before going insane early Wednesday afternoon when they began cancelling trains thus forcing me to cancel the photoshoot I had been looking forward to. Due to Wednesday being so bad my tutors were forced to cancel the alumni day that had been planned for Thursday leaving me thoroughly disappointed and with nothing to really do. 

One thing I knew for sure,  I couldn't spend another day cooped up indoors so I decided to get up and go to the gym, before taking a walk around the park listening to the 'Harry Potter and the Philosophers' Stone' soundtrack on Spotify and capturing the snow with my Instax Mini 8.   I wasn't out for long due to it being so cold but I had a wonderful time. The evening saw my housemates and I ordering pizza after learning that the University had officially been closed due to the bad weather and not enough staff being able to make it in. We were very lucky that Dominoes was still delivering in our area. I spent the evening working on March bullet journal munching on pizza and watching 'Harry Potter and the Philosophers' Stone' because whilst snow may remind some people of snow it reminds me of Harry Potter. 

Considering the snow decided to stick around for the weekend  I spent my time watching films, planning blog posts and redesigning my Cv.