Note

During this module I have really gave it my best shot to grasp every opportunity to present in order to really develop my presentational skills. I feel that through work shops and seminars and other events at university, I have been able to progress massively in terms of my confidence and my ability to talk to other about my work and practice. 

Note

This is an old post that should have been posted around 4 weeks ago.

Below is a picture of my PDP before I had chance to refine it more. This is basically just to show how my PDP developed over the module, I thought hard about which areas I wanted to work on and then developed the PDP sheet according to that.

Note: Peer Exhibition

I decided to utilise an opportunity that was presented to me around a week ago, myself and a group of my peers were approached by a budding art director who offered ourselves a free exhibition space. As part of this module, I decided to accept this offer and thought that it would be a great point to blog about in terms of going above and beyond my 5 personal development points. To get vital practice into exhibiting was not on my PDP however I thought that it would give me some professional practice for later in my photographic career. The exhibition space is an old large shop which has been derelict for a year or so, it is right in the middle of manchester in the Corn Exchange building. I have chosen to print a series of my latest work on metalworkers. This experience has made me really think about what work goes into exhibitions and it is great experience for the future!

Model Release Form (OLD POST)

This is a post from several weeks ago.

I also wanted to make a model release form as part of this module, not to address my PDP points but just to assist myself in the photographic world. Below is a screenshot from my model release form.

Contextualising My Work

One of my PDP points of interest was to really try to contextualise my work and practice at the moment, in order to be more confident in talking about my work to others as well as creating more passion and drive.

This is something that I am constantly trying to develop and this assignment gave me the opportunity to do so. Through certain work shops during this module I have been given time to try and think about what it is my work is about and what I am trying to achieve. I am now able to narrow down my area of photography to anyone who is wanting to know!

Through a presentation for my final major project where I had to present what my final idea is going to be, I had to practice my speech about the set of photographs I am currently working on and how I intend to develop this and explore this in the future.

I am very happy with how much I have been able to bring to light my own individual approach and how I can now speak about my practice. I can now sum up my work by saying the following... Due to having worked in the metalwork industry for over 5 years on and off, I learnt to really appreciate the work of talented engineers and craftsmen within this industry. Metalwork Engineering is a declining industry and a lot of the work that our country needs doing is being sent abroad or being shipped over being made by machines. I am interested in the praise of these talented men, giving recognition to their hard work and skills which have been passed down through many generations. I am currently in the process of visiting a number of different metalwork forges and blacksmiths to talk to and eventually photograph these workers. I have chosen to branch out from photographing initially in the one forge where I have worked for the last 5 years, I want to meet other engineers and speak to them about where they think the industry is going and where they can see their small businesses in the future. Below is an example of how I see the final images looking, this being a starting point. Through use of different equipment I will experiment until I find my own unique way of photographing these men.

Although it is hard to show my new found ability to speak more confidently about my own work, I now feel very confident attending a portfolio review or an event where I can speak to other practitioners within the industry.

I am very satisfied that I can now tick this item off my PDP list, I will however continue to keep developing my individual style in the future and will be able to thank this assignment for starting me on my way.

 I have continued to keep contextualising my work throughout this assignment and reading books such as Camera Lucida and Susan Sontag "On Photography" I have been able to put further contextual references to my own work, making me think about the reasoning behind certain choices.

My PDP 8/12/13

Below is a copy of my newest and most up to date PDP, complete with dates of when I intend to overcome each objective and wether I have already. This plan will stay on my computer for the near future and I will continue to keep up to date in terms of sticking to my plan and working on the chosen personal development points.

I really feel that this module has helped me to progress in terms of a photographer, I feel much more confident not only in terms of technical issues but also as a photographer and being able to talk about my work confidently and to others. 

Post Production Skills & Techniques

Due to one of my professional development points was to develop my editing skills, I decided to take some time and practice this after a photo shoot that I did at the beginning of december. I was asked to take some photographs of a friend of mine who models part time. He is signing to a new modelling agency and needs some portfolio shots for the company. We arranged to meet in the centre of manchester and we walked around and took some really nice photographs!! Below are examples of the photographs I took. 

Note, the below 3 images were all RAW files which I edited in Photoshop, I looked at the levels and other basic corrections then I delved further into certain editing tools such as layer masks, adding subtle colours to the images. I then used VSCO CAM to add effects onto the images, as requested by the client for a unique look. I have attached the edited images lower down in this post. 

I am really happy with the final images and the client is also very happy with the photographs. I decided that this would be a great opportunity to address one of my PDP points for university, it was also great exercise and practice for future post production. One thing that I took from the editing session is that subtle changes are often more beautiful than bold changes to an image, I am a great believer that most of the editing of an image can be done behind the camera when taking the photograph. Saying this, the edits done on the following images have came out very well.

I chose to use VSCO CAM, an up and coming editing software which I was told about through a tutor, its a way or adding filters and vintage affects to images but in a professional way. It is basically a professional quality instagram. 

Below are the VSCO edited images.

Another set of work that I decided to practice my post production skills on was the "praise of engineers" brief which I am currently working on for my final major project. I really tried to use all of the editing software to its full capability, making sure that I gave the editing process more time than I do usually. Below is a quick screenshot of just one of the areas that I looked at whilst editing, I looked into many more areas of photoshop than I have before and it has really made me more confident in terms of editing. I did not screenshot each of the editing steps that I have taken. 

Although the above screen shot is just documenting the hue/saturation section, I did go into more in depth methods of editing.

Note

Today I had the opportunity to talk to an estate agents professional photographer. I told him that I was a photography student and told him about my interests, I thought that this would be a perfect chance to ask him about how he got to where he is and ask his questions about the industry. 

He basically told me that the job that he landed straight after coming out of university was for an estate agent, he was offered the job based on his portfolio and experience within the photographic industry. I then tried to get as much information out of him as I could, specifically about his income. He told me that he gets a basic salary and if he photographs more than 3/4 houses per day for the year, he receives bonus. It was great to talk to a graduate who has found such a steady and well paid job in the industry. Due to my interest in property, I may keep this kind of job in mind for after I graduate. 

I managed to get the photographers details and website, below is a link and some images of the website. 

I also noticed that Jack puts his work onto Alamy, the online stock image library that I talked about earlier in my blog. Again, I will look into creating an account with alamy and hope to upload many of my suitable images.

http://www.jackhindsphotography.com/

Portfolio: Review Feedback

As mentioned on a previous post, I decided to show just one series of work, I thought that this would give me a better more defined idea of how to edit down a portfolio using advice from tutors and peers. I chose to just use the metal work series due to my recent focus on this piece of work, I knew that I had a solid piece of work within the hundreds and hundreds of photographs that I have taken at the factory over a series of years. 

It was very hard to edit down to my favourite images, or the ones that would be most suitable for my idea. Due to my idea being based around the praise of this declining industrial subject, I needed to choose images which best portrayed that. I finally chose the final 7 or 8 images then went to the new printing company that I have been working with recently. The printer said that he may lighten up the images using photoshop if they came out over or under in terms of brightness. This was great because he was able to see how light a professional would like to view them, I had to trust him on this. 

The final prints came out really well, I chose to ask him to print them semi-gloss instead of high gloss or any other style. This was due to myself finding it hard to see images in exhibitions or portfolios which are printed in high gloss due to light shining on them.

I them had to mount the new prints into my old/current portfolio. I have had this portfolio for several years, since college and I didn't really know of any other styles of portfolios. This is where the portfolio feedback/ review session came in handy. The first thing that was mentioned to the group during the feedback session was the appropriateness off an individuals portfolio, it had to be suitable for the target audience together with a whole load of other factors. One thing that I would like to mention is that this exercise was set 1 week before we had to show the portfolio, giving not much time at all for editing, printing and buying a portfolio. I had to work with what I had and could do in the time scale, as I can imagine I will have to do in my future career. I was very open for others critique and advice to advance my interim portfolio.

There were a group of around 10 peers and 1 staff member and we were all putting ideas toward the person showing their portfolio, it really got the ideas flowing!

When it was my time to show my portfolio, I started by giving an overview of who I intended this pitch to be towards and also a short summary of what the project of work was about. I said that this pitch would be towards a gallery curator, possibly at a working history museum or a metal work museum. Something along those lines. This portfolio pitch also helped me to cover another point mentioned in my PDP, speaking and presenting myself in front of others. 

As soon as I opened my portfolio, someone mentioned about how shiny the individual sleeves are, this made it hard to see the images from certain lights. I have included a picture of the glare on my portfolio to illustrate this.

A tutor mentioned the possible use of polypropylene photo sleeves, these are a higher quality sleeve for photographic prints. I was then told about the London Graphics Centre, a great company for portfolio supplies and such. I have looked on their website and have found some of the sleeves mentioned, I will order some as soon as I can afford them.

The next thing that was mentioned about my portfolio was that the actual portfolio book/ holder wasn't of that expected in the photographic industry, I was then told that although it is accepted as a valid way to show photographs, a photo box would be more suitable for my work. I then looked online for the boxes and found some beautiful cardboard extra coated black boxes, also from the London Graphics Centre. There was an A3 one for around £50, I will be looking further into this at the end of university when I will be expected to have more of a professional looking portfolio. I may also consider the possibility of downsizing my portfolio to A4 as a tutor mentioned in the session. As long as the prints are of a high enough quality and the sleeves are decent then I would be prepared to use a smaller portfolio. The only reason why I chose to have a fairly large A3 portfolio is because I wanted to give the viewer a similar (larger scale) view of how I would like the images to be exhibited. By this I mean that I would want the images to be around size A1/A2 at an exhibition space, having a larger than usual portfolio gives this sense of large format to the work. Below is a screenshot from the London Graphics Centre website of a possible new portfolio for my work.

One other point that was raised when I presented my portfolio was that it was some what unorganised (due to it being turned around so quickly), it was apparently awkward to have to see an image in portrait then having another landscape image next to it. I now see that having the images all the same orientation would be better. 

The actual quality of the prints were perfect, I will be using the printing company again!

One very important thing that I took away from the session is that I need to use a very impacting image or one of the best images for the first and last images in my portfolio. This is because these are the pages that are looked at the most usually. 

Overall I learnt a lot about how to put a professional portfolio together, in terms of editing and aesthetics. One thing that people didn't mention was the choice of photographs, this shows me that they thought that the images worked well together and helped to portray my feelings. Below is an example of when the orientation is wrong and the viewer is forced to turn their head to view the image, I will consider this in the future.

All together, a great session!!