setting up my formative space

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today, I started to create my own exhibition space for my formative next week. Before setting up the space, I had no idea how I wanted to present my work so far, Although i had a few ideas but the main idea was to create a space for people to view the images, and also feel the images, like an immersive space. I didn’t start with a vision but just began by printing out my rave and festival images and gathering them together on the wall, like a collage. As we are presenting our spaces next week, there’s a few things that i need to think about/add for presenting. firstly how can i create a similar environment to the images in my space? do i need to add sound? cover the floor? lighting? what should i use the other board for?

pairing up with a first year & group tutorial

Today we were paired with a first year student to assist us in our final major project, I was paired with Chloe and we had a coffee and a chat to overall get to know each other and see how we could help each other within the course. We had similar interest and she took an interest in my project so far. I learnt that Chloe was interested in make-up, hair and styling and we though it would be interesting to collaborate in future photoshoots. I hope that as the course progresses that we can help each other and i can help her as guidance as a final year student gone through first year a few years ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the second half of the session, we had a group tutorial where eloise gathered everyone and gave us books to look at. The books were photography and art books that would help inspire us for our final major project. I looked at ‘Touching Photographs’ by Margaret Olin’ a cultural book that speaks about photographs that relate to people gathering and human nature, for example it touches upon 9/11. Moving forwards to my final major project, this was interesting to look into photography books and get inspiration for how i might want to present my images.

crossy at volks, capturing and scanning

 

Yesterday, I got my images back from a drum and bass rave that i attended. I had brought my camera with the intention of taking shots inspired by the work of Ellie Rousseau’s garms and sets. My intentions were to capture photographs of the rave community and capture the scene and environment through fashion and a mixture of portraits. I’m pleased with the outcome of these images but the scanning process was very different to how i had scanned my 35mm images in the past. Previously I had been using the photography unit’s scanner to scan through my colour negatives but they expressed that the system is more used to black and white negatives rather then colour negatives, resulting in my images to look faded and not pick up much colour. I decided that i should experiment with getting the images scanned at colour stream, which i was not disappointed by. Moving forwards in my final major project, I think it would be interesting to get my research project photographs rescanned but professionally as i believe that the images could look so different and perhaps show a different tone to the image. i’d like to also continue with the rave photography as i believe that the images are getting more stronger the more i continue with it. As for my end result, I hope to create something that features lots of photography together as a collective.

first 1 to 1 tutorial back

Today I had a one to one tutorial with eloise, we discussed my previous module and how to progress further in my start of the final major project. She introduced me to a few photographers and photography techniques, discussing how I could make my 35mm photographs stronger and experimental.

Aswell as photography, I have always been interested in styling and wanted to explore that a bit more within this module but due to sticking with my theme of rave culture and documenting, i never really had the opportunity to explore that in the previous module. With these doubts, i expressed them to elosie and she told me that despite coming up with a final major project, it was important to explore everything that you want to do, despite sticking with themes.

Moving forward in the last module, I will look into styling and how i could elevate this project and my skills within fashion communication.

new statement of intent

(click on the pictures for a bigger size)

during the christmas break, not only did i take some time to relax and breathe but i also managed to make some time to go through my recent investigation project, looking through past work and looking at the final major project handbook for the next project. i came to the conclusion that the statement of intent that i created did not represent my projects ambitions to the full intent, and wasn’t impressed of it. the statement of intent and gantt chart needed to be a guide and a reassurance going into the next project, in which i believe my old statement of intent did not show.

i rewrote my statement of intent and create a gantt chart as i believe that it would be helpful for me and my fmp, i hope that i’ll be able to look back on this statement and be guided by it as inspiration and to help show my progress going into the new project.

1 to 1 with rachael

Having my one to one with rachael was super helpful. In this 1 to 1, we not only went through my work but we also had a discussion on the context of my work and how this could progress. It was so interesting to me to hear her understanding and praise for subculture and the rave scene.

Some feedback that I received was that the photography and ideas was great but it would be great if I experimented with different themes and settings that weren’t just rave venues and people dancing, think about trying to make it more personal by thinking about what it means to me. for example, taking photos before/after the rave or outside the rave. Rachael also convinced me that my original idea of having and producing my own zine wouldn’t show the full potential of my idea, she told me that my project is worth being bigger and in peoples faces to ensure that the same passion was seen in the presentation.

Something really interesting that rachael brought up was the idea of using other peoples archives or contribution to ensure that the same theme of unity and passion came across in my final piece. This made me think about my mum’s photobooks from the 80s youth culture taken at events and raves.

Some of the other feedback and inspiration that i took down was:

  • Molly mckindoe / city books
  • Subculturals theory the subcultures reader.
  • Subculture the meaning of style.
  • exbition rebel 30 years London fashion.
  • The museum of youth culture.
  • Free party a folk history

I think my next step is to look into the artist that was recommended and the idea and concept of subculture and how i can make my project more personal to me… what does rave culture mean to me?

dark room workshop

Last thursday, I headed to the photography unit to do a workshop with Rachel to relearn how to create prints out of negatives. At college and secondary school, I had previously learned how to use the dark room but as that was a few years ago, I needed a refresher to remember how to use the dark room. In this workshop we created contact sheets from our negatives to understand how long to expose light to the image for our final printed image.

Throughout thus workshop we learnt about exposure, chemicals, the facilities, filters, sizes and types of paper. To start off the workshop, our first particle was to load up our negative film in the contact sheet holder. Due to not having any black and white negatives, I borrowed one strip of black and white negatives from the photographic unit. I loaded up my contact sheet and placed a photographic glossy piece of paper under the contact sheet template and placed the sheet under the projector. I put the light timer to 10 and with a black piece of card, I covered bit by bit each of the contact sheet each of the contact sheet and slowly made the whole of the contact sheet exposed to the projector. By exposing each section pf the contact sheet this allowed me to see what time exposure worked for the image. In my contact sheet, I also added some of my colour negatives into the contact sheet, beside the borrowed black and white negatives. But as colour negatives were thicker, they needed to be exposed for way longer then black and white negatives in order to achieve a clearer and more textured in the image.

After exposing the contact sheet and developing it, I went through the contact sheet and looked at every photo, to see what worked and what didn’t, going through the photographs to work out what I wanted to work with on my final print. Despite the over exposure in some images, I had decided that I wanted to work with one of my colour negatives as I found that the image with all of the people together would be interesting to see in black and white.

After developing my final print, i experimented with different timings, I found that in one timing it made look too light and not show as much detail but in the other timing it made the background too dark but show details at the front of the crowd. Rachel recommend that when exposing the light to the photographic paper, I should take the same black card that i used for the contact sheet and hold it on top of the people in the back of the photo for around two seconds, this would make the people at the back more stand out.

I defiantly found this workshop very interesting and intriguing especially when i have shown my interest in film photography. I liked that there was a more innovative way of turning my colour negatives into black and white prints.

 

formative with eloise

In this group formative, me and my group shared with each other how our research project is going and any feedback on how to make the project progress. It was interesting to hear other people ideas and see their work. One person in my group was in a similar position where she had no clue what her final outcomes could be but passionately shared her interest in identity. It was nice to hear this as it came as a reassurance this project shouldn’t be a race, its most important to just keep experimenting.

When it came to my turn, I was worried about the little of work in my sketchbook due to having to wait for my 35mm film to be developed. But the feedback that I received was so helpful:

  • Rave being homemade and personal.
  • Underground aspects, the experiences.
  • Minilising social media, what raves and underground culture was like before media.More zines then and now.
  • Bootleg tapes 90s raves, merchandise and collectives.
  • Photographs senaros, text with photographs explore contexts.
  • Nan gouldin, corrin day, female gaze in photography.
  • Wolfgang tillmans, early 90s stuff.
  • Statement of intent with ghant chart.
  • 100 pages, sketchbook limit.
  • Blog; weekly reflection, challenges
  • Sketchbook; research, experimentation.

My next step is to look more into research and keep on experimenting.

my experience with Bronco ETRS

 

 

 

 

 

 

I recently, booked out a Bronco ETRS annual film camera from the photography unit to further my investigation and experimenting into film photography. My plan was to shoot on black and white film as an experimentation. This camera was new to me but I had previously used manual cameras before. Unfortunately, I believe that this experimentation was unsuccessful due to my own faults.

At first the camera was not allowing me to take images due to putting on the lease wrong but once i had established that i then made the camera to take photos again but wouldn’t allow the number of frames life to go up. With these casualties, I decided to stop as I was waisting film. Despite my negative experience with this camera, I still hope to figure out how to use this camera, my future plan is to book the camera out again but ask for more assistance from the photography team.

scanner workshop.

 

 

 

 

 

Last Wednesday, I headed to the photography unit for a scanner workshop. In this workshop, I learnt how to make my film negatives into high quality digital copies with a scanner, and creating contact sheets with the negative and then taking the digital copies and editing them.

I took the negatives from my film camera that i had captured at some festivals over the summer. I recently got them developed and didn’t realise that I could create my own digital prints with the scanner rather than paying for them to be done, which was great to discover!

With my negatives i placed them front up into the negative holder, ensuring that i held the film by the sides rather than the middle, then clipped the negative holder on to the scanner. The first mistake that i made was i forgot to remove the white inner screen from the top of the inside of the scanner, this meant that when i scanned my images in, all of the scans were dark and showed up black. Once i removed the screen then i was able to visually see the scans of the computer. I then selected the picture that i wanted to select and upload, making sure i changed the output size to a4, so that the image didn’t scan through as a small image, then lastly pressed scan and did this to each negative that i had.

This workshop took a lot of patience and time, despite how simple i thought scanning things would be. Just because richard had expressed to me that the scanner’s program didn’t deal with colour negatives too well, the scanner would play up and show lines on the negatives but with movement and time, i got the result that i was hoping to get.