Image and Text

I was recently given The Best Of Life book, when I saw this picture by Bill Ray I immediately assumed it was about the Beatles, I was right.
Some images do not need explanation, in fact in photography and art things are left to be pondered over, the artist doesn't necessarily write a statement to go with the art work in a gallery. A photograph in a newspaper will be surrounded by text explaining further details, the picture just draws attention to the article. Most of us don't have time to read full articles so we rely on an image to give us as much information as possible.That is the role of the photographer, to convey a message, especially in documentary photography. As I have discovers recently, it is not always possible to convey a complex issue easily without some explanation. Maybe we need to give the person in a portrait some justification.
Subjects which have a delicate nature such as Paul Wenham Clarke's Hard Times/Big Issue work recently exhibited at St Martin's in Birmingham call for consideration.I went along to his talk at Margaret Street in October and was lucky enough to be able to talk to him about my interest in the subject of alcoholism. This is another subject that would need some use of text. My aim is to make portraits of various people who are either currently suffering from alcoholism, have overcome it (are sober) and people who can admit that drink does play too large a roll in their lives although they don't consider themselves alcoholics. i think it would be unkind to have people allow you to take their portrait and then leave their image open to the abuse of cynicism and lack of understanding of the subject.

 Paul Wenham Clarke

Paul Wenham Clarke

Paul Wenham Clarke

 Ella Carman

Ella Carman

This is not work I would put into my alcoholism project but they are images off alcoholics that I have taken. They are both people I know, in fact one of them is my partner.Micky the top picture suffers with ongoing alcoholism but has hugely moderated his drinking due to health scares and responsibilities. He has not engaged in AA preferring to dig deep and find his own determination.

This is an example of the sort of thing I might write but in a very draft form.

Paul Wenham Clarke's work explained how he came to meet the individuals, their situations and what happened to them as far as he was able to find out. He treated it with great compassion and it made the whole exhibition much more depth than it would have been without the information provided.



Where do you rate yourself on the novice to expert scale and why? Show visual examples to support your argument

This seems like a very relevant principle to chose as at University we are going through a process of learning, evaluating and improving for 3 years hoping to be refined and accomplished at the end.
I have not been in an education system for 5 years or more so I am very aware that I lacked some of the ingrained skills in writing and most crucially technology.My willingness to learn and theoretical work is good and I am very happy with some of my work, however I am often to be found wasting valuable energy fretting over my camera or completely lost at a Mac/Photo shop or any other design program.  

As a photographer there is a line to be drawn between the quality of the image s you take and your ability in post production. They are two separate skills although they are intrinsically tied whether through a darkroom or a computer. I had had very little formal training in either so there has been a lot to take on board last term as well as a lot of bad habits to drop.(Rarely using a tripod, not looking after my camera, disorganised filing of images, improper use of photo shop, not taking enough pictures, not shooting in RAW)....
For my image content and style, also depth and story I would say I was around a 'Fully acceptable standard achieved routinely' however sometimes as far as technical quality/understanding goes it may be more of a 'fit for purpose though may lack refinement'.
The problems I was encountering with focus, as you can see in the two photographs of mine above, were hopefully due to my old camera which I have been using for seven years or so. I just bought a new camera which I haven't had much chance to use but it seems that I am getting much sharper results already. So I would like to say that my standard and score would go up after using my new equipment for a while. The picture below was taken with my new camera and I can see the improvement in tone and sharpness straight away. I always seem to be capturing a orange tone with my old camera.

I am a real mix between beginner and proficient having read the explanations. It really depends on what aspect of my work one is looking at but my overall goal is to round all my skills into the proficient category by the second year and expert by the third or somewhere between the two.  I believe true expertise would come through experience.

Connectivity:cultural context in photography

This is a potentaly huge subject with many sub categories one could cover. The first thing that came to my mind on this is how powerful photography has been in its relatively short life in all aspects of our lives, from what we wear, eat and talk about daily. However for the purpose of the blog I am going to focus on the Cult of Personality through photography. I feel it is prevalent and current in the media with the ongoing sagas of celebrity culture, paparazzi and marketing.
Iconic images of Marilyn, Elvis and Muhammed Ali are my first thoughts on the cult of personality, perhaps because of the use of images of celebrities by Andy Warhol are so familiar even now. They had something exuding from their pictures that you wouldn't forget even if you'd never seen moving footage of them. However this method not only worked for entertainers and sportsmen, it was abused by despots such as Stalin and Hitler to ruthlessly promote their image to brain wash the fearful public. The camera can capture the passion in people whether it is good or evil.

Andy Warhol



Nowadays in western culture we are selling more magazines and papers than ever before despite the internet due to our unquenchable thirst for images, not only of celebrities but of fashion, interiors, bands, music and so on.
The celebrity culture,paparazzi lifestyle has recently been called into question because of privacy issues, have we crossed the line? Is it quality or quantity that we want. I feel it is the latter, because images equals money.

It would be the most terrible thing to realize you have no photographs of yourself or your family growing up, it validates your life even if you can't remeber it and gives even those from the humblest homes memories of happiness, staged or unstaged!
It seems we have almost come full circle in photograpy as we are now in a hayday of personal and home snapping just as we were at the dawn of photography. Proud images of families in a victorian home or current pictures on facebook and flickr of your children or fun nights out with friends serve the same purposes.

This principle has largely been about the theory behind photography, ie: the art history and the relevance of certain photographers and styles as well as the importance of photography in everyday life. Sublimenaly photography we have seen throughout our lives will affect our own work and way of thinking. Prehaps we a drawn towards bright, happy images or perhaps we are more attracted to a subtle beauty or sentimentality, even the beauty in sadness.

Robert C Wiles

Ella Carman

Something both beautiful and tragic in both of these pictures even though they are very different.

For me in my practical work documentary photography has appealed to me very much as it can convey many different emotions that I may want to express through things going on around me.



The notion of inspiration comes from constant enquiry based on research, observation, recording and experimentation

I felt very inspired during the first term of this course. This is because for the first time in a long time I was being given work to do and HAD to think of ideas for articles, arrange photoshoots and write up articles.It was hard to keep up this momentum on your own with no direction, this is why Ihad set projects for myself before the course began and went to do a little photography course at the MAC during the summer. It set a task which I could take in any direction creatively. In the end I took some of my personal favourites so far. I approached people I wouldn't have other wise and I felt more confident about my skills.I felt inspired to continue and so took  on more projects over the summer.

Some examples of the work I did during my MAC course (Midland Arts Centre) last summer. These pictures were taken through observing other people in fairly mundane situations. The ones of the little boy were taken because I noticed this group of people hanging around outside a barbers shop. I stopped to ask them if they minded having their pictures taken and the little boy 'Spud' stole the show. The other pictures were an area of factory and wasteland I pass regularly on the way tomy mom's ansd I had to use a launderette for a while and various people allowed me to take some pictures of them.

I often use my phone(I hate to say) to record ideas or if I happen not to have my camera on me. I recently visited London to go to the DaVinci exhibition, obviously the exhibition was very interesting but it was very rushed and very busy. I spent some time outside the portrait gallery recording people walking in the rain over the reflection of the National Portrait Gallery on the pavement. I also used my phone as a dictaphone this last term to record ideas that came to my head for articles. This really helped.

These were pictures taken on my mobile phone in London. It was a very rushed visit with a tight schedule and my main camera had broken and I didnt think Id get chance to take pictures anyway, but I was glad to have had my phone to capture a few moments of inspiration.

I didnt know quite what to make of the Da Vinci exhibition.Im glad I went but it was so busy that I couldnt really take it in properly.

I like to go to photographic exhibitions locally and recently I went along to the opening of John Myers Middle England exhibition at the Ikon and during my trip to London I saw some interesting pictures at the Tate,one that springs to mind was a sort of family tree portrait series that documented various families but the most poignant was a collection of photos of young children and babies from a Romanian orphanage, all of them looked so glazed and scared and some just completely mentally ill.

Another source of inspiration is my boyfriend who is a singer songwriter. I have been asked to document his new band and their journey fom early rehearsals through to first gig in February at the Symphony Hall.

I sometimes just go through photography books at the Ikon to see if anything catches my eye, then I will research a photographer.

During the first term I expeerimented with film photography, develpment and dark room processes. I hadn't had chance to do this before so it was an interesting experience, however with the magazine project demanding a lot of pictures quickly in a digital format I didn't get much chance to do as much as I'd have liked. I think in the second term it will be more of an option. I also wanted to sign up for the moving image workshops but again found it difficult to fit in after my film workshops, things were becoming a bit stressful towards the end of term. I am going to focus on these workshops in the second term as I have just bought a 60D Canon with which I aim to make some short films and documentaries!

So during the magazine work I tried to push my skills further, which I see as experimentation. I tried out an interiors photoshoot, I used a holga to get some artistic images from the custard Factory and worked in some poorly lit conditions. I learned a lot from these experiences, particularly about lenses and lighting.With my new camera I purchased a 35mm f/2 lense which I have found very effective so far. The only thing I feel I should have experimented with more is the studio but I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunity for that and I did attend the studio lighting workshop.

I will be experimenting with my new camera and my FM3A Nikon in the next term.

Finally on the notion of experimentation, I enjoyed working with stop frame footage. I thought it worked well for our Ident (although I wasn't too keen on the final music choice). I liked the jumpiness and I puposefully set the aperture very wide so it has a cold white daylight affect which is quite haunting. There was some better footage which was similar however I messed with the lense and zoomed in and out which didn't work with the stop frame footage in post production. I was quite annoyed with myself as it would have been great.

Below are a few pictures from the footage I messed up buit wish we'd been able to use, in fact in hindsight I wish I had pushed for it but it wasn't me who was having to do all the editing and I wouldnt have been able to anyway...something else I should learn.

This is where I zoomed in and 'spoiled' the footage.

I must have a fascination with people walking having looked back at my blog.

I have always been a big Lowry fan and came across some of his work recently. I'd like to think his work has inspired me but I possibly subliminaly.

I could write all day on the subject of inspiration but I'd better leave it here.

Researching the practice (of photography) ITAP-Colette Jeffrey