Dolls dolls dolls

Took the boots back. Bought some more that were less than a third of the price! And bought some shoes too....still added up to only just over half the price of the others, vintage is the way forward.

Also handed my projects in, and the crit went ok considering the night before someone pointed out I'd used resin coated paper, when the brief had said use fibre based!! Admittedly, it wasn't completely my fault because I'd 100% asked for the right one in the shop, and they'd sold me the wrong one. Another girl had gone to the same shop and asked for the same thing, and been sold the wrong stuff too. You'd think that people in a photography shop would know about the different types of paper, surely?

I also did my presentation, which I got a 2:1 for! Shame it hardly counts for anything. I'm not expecting as good a result for my projects, but I don't get them back till christmas, so for now i'm just going to forget about them and get on with the next ones...............

Firstly there's 'Pretty'. We have to produce 5 photographs based on that word, and at least one of the projects needs to be in colour, so I think I'm going to do this one. The obvious idea that pops into my head is the comparison between pretty and ugly; anorexic/fat, flowers that are both dead/alive, food that's ripe/mouldy. The idea that I love though, as I am based in the studio for this one, is to use dolls.

When do you ever see an ugly doll? I might try and photograph them how they are, but also dressed up abnormally, like goths or slags for example. As things we don't normally associate with the word pretty. I could even make little scenes, have one binge drinking with sick around her. I'm quite excited about this one!

The second project is a group controlled study. We have to take portraits outside, at three set intervals during the day; 9am , (or during the 45min gap when the sun rises), 1pm, and at sunset, to see the difference in natural light. We take group pictures, but we also take our own seperate ones, and these are the ones that get marked. I really want to use a medium format camera, so I may use it for my individual ones.

Pink floral pantyhose?

Seen as I spent 8 hours straight on my photography project yesterday, I thought I'd have a change and get my powerpoint presentation sorted for my Sex, Gender and Media Cultures class. We had to choose a book, magazine article, problem page, tv programme or online site, and create a short presentation, covering key points about sex, gender, presentation, advice, media, lifestyle and project of the self.

I've chosen this online article on pink floral pantyhose for men:

http://www.e-mancipate.net/articles/pink-pantyhose-for-men/pink-pantyhose-for-men-mantyhose.shtml

It's not very professional or of much length, but there are lots of points that can be made about it, and I've found it pretty easy to write about. Just need to make some final tweaks....

Now I need to work on my sketchbook, I've saved so many artist examples but they're all on my computer, which isn't going to help me gain marks! I've also brought a lot of my photography books back home so I'm going to have a nosey through those too. Here are some I've found:

Vinoodh Matadin

Amazing! Such a simple idea, but so effective.

Martin Parr

I tried to find examples of portraits that weren't of the face (or not the whole of it)

Luc Delahaye

At first glance, these don't seem to have much to them. Then you find out that Delahaye took them with a hidden camera, and their expressions become extremely interesting and intriguing. what are they thinking about?

Fashion photographer, Nick Knight

He shows that you don't need to use black and white photography to create sincere, disturbing images. The last one is especially dark, with it's clown-like appearance.

Right...off to get some pritt stick...............

Up Down All Around

I've been in uni all day doing 'Up Down All Around', the colour project, and it went quite well for once. I haven't managed to do the contact print yet but I've printed six pictures. The brief said at least 5, but I wasn't too happy with the way the fifth came out and ran out of negatives that weren't underexposed, because I'd done half the film with candlelight and half with a lamp. The candlelight ones came out with a red cast, and the lamp ones with a yellow one. I thought the yellow ones looked nicer and had more contrasted negatives, so would be easier to print good pictures from. I did a sixth one so I had a couple to choose from.

The first and last are the ones I'm not sure about...


Here is where I'm up to with my 'Portraits', black and white project:

I'm only happy with a few of these too, but we've been given an extra day of printing later in the week, so I'm going to redo some of them.
The above three are fine, the one below has a 'splodge' on the right hand side which I'll need to remove, but I'm happy with it other than that.
I'm going to try this one on a lower filter, because compared to the others it's a lot more contrasted.


And the skin tone in the next one is a lot darker than the others, so I'll also have to sort this out.

I'm going with the theme of 'photographing a conversation'. They knew I was there and taking photographs of them, which would make them pose even if they were trying to act natural. When a camera is placed in front of a person, their reactions will change. I didn't want to put them in any particular pose, I wanted their personality to come across as they talked amongst themselves. But this summons the question; would the images be much different if I had been hidden from the subjects, and they hadn't been aware of my presence?

If you compare these to the examples in my past blog 'R.I.P. Loreal Contour Resist', they haven't turned out quite as exaggerated. Even so, I like the outcome, and prefer these to the original straight-forward prints.

Some favourites

Sally Mann

Punctus





















Candy Cigarette



















Virginia at 6























Frantisek Drtikol

Untitled (nude reclined on ledge, crucifix hill background)























Josef Sudek

Prague at Night















Michele Demanche

Jerry's Flowers


I had a talk on medium and large format cameras yesterday, and this reminded me of something he said to us. You have to use an 150mm lens at least, or your photographs will come out with black fuzz around the edges. I'm guessing this is what the photographer has done here.








(More of) Wayne Liu <3>

(unsure of titles)





























I can't get over how beautiful his images are. They're ghostly and dreamlike, and just conmpletely draw you in.

Retail therapy please.

Ok. Work is going terrible. My B+W prints haven't come out how I expected, and look pretty poor, even though I've had to print 3 x as many to get them and therefore have spent 3 x as much time. As for the colour ones....well my paper still hasn't turned up so I haven't had chance to even START those. So as you can guess, I'm a little stressed, and in need of some serious retail therapy...............

And here it is. Last night was the Topshop student night with 20% off and free goody bags....oh dear! Firstly, the queues were huuuuge, even half an hour before they opened! The goody bags weren't much to shout about either. But for some reason I decided I had to make the most of it and spend too much money as per usual...

BOOTS! I was so close to not buying these because of the price, but cramped into a very stuffy shopfloor, unable to move an inch, I decided to buy them and make the decision at home. Keep 'em? Take 'em back? I can't decide........


This little 'plait bodycon skirt' is adorable. Wore it today, and I definately don't have second thoughts about this one. My new theory is 'more skirts, less dresses', because you can get more outfits out of a skirt!


Saying that, I also bought this, but I love it! And it's really baggy at the top, so I can wear different tops underneath it so it's not always the same. Not bought a romper since summer '08, and this one is cuuute.

I also have a new 'one dress a month' rule, which now has been broken. oops. This months dress WAS this:

A backless, blue velvet long sleeve bodycon dress. Mmm yummy. So I shouldn't have bought anything else. Naughty me...

R.I.P. Loreal Contour Resist

Guess what.

They've stopped making my absolute favourite eyeliner! Disaster.


Took the film for the colour project last night. As they asked, I took the first from right in front of my subject, then just took more from different angles and heights, cropping certain areas and focusing on particular features. I only have to choose five to print, and a contact sheet of them all. Planned to develop it today...got the film developed, got to uni and set everything up, only to find TWO whole packs of paper had been exposed to light somehow! Nooo i can't understand how either. So had to develop black and white instead, even though the negatives I had weren't quite what I needed for this project, so may have been a waste of time. At least the colour film came out though, only thing that actually went right today :-( Let's hope tomorrow goes a little better.

Here's the photo I was talking about last time...


(It's cropped because my scanner is smaller than the photograph, but at least it gives a general idea of what I mean).

And these are some examples of when I experimented with using a wine glass to distort the face....






then I went on to create a negative, and then a negative of the negative, creating a more unusual version of the image


I might try this with my new black and white project, at least it'll guarantee a finished project that isn't a typical portrait. I'm having doubts about whether this is what they want though, I think they want us to look at technique of taking the photograph, rather than ideas for development. It might be a bit late to take any more now though, I might use the ones I developed today and print them in this way. At least that'll show I've put some effort in!

Right...time for a quiet night in with a glass of red, so I can get up early and start all over again in the morning!

Inspired

Once I got my head down and did some research yesterday, I came across some amazing photographers. First of all, I found a slideshow by Wayne Liu containing the most obscure, beautiful and mesmorising images:

http://www.foto8.com/home/content/view/994/136/

I wasn't sure how he had managed to make them look like they did at first, apart from that a few were double exposures. Then I read that he uses out of date photo paper, and uses a very high filter when printing them, to get a high contrast. Genius! I've always wanted to try using old paper to see how it would come out, and now I'd really love to try it. My most favourite photograph I've ever taken, was apparently taken all wrong. Wrong light, wrong exposure time, etc....but I think when the routine isn't followed by the book, you get the some really magical outcomes. I will post this photo soon.

Werner Branz also caught my eye...


The top one reminds me of Egyptian wall paintings! I love images that you have to look twice at. At first, you can't tell that it is taken of real people, it looks either painted or drawn, then you look again and realise they are real models and are just concealed behind a screen.

As for the others, I love how he's played with shadow and tried to disguise his subjects. I have looked at similar things in the past, ways to make things look different to how we are used to seeing them, and this has always been an area of interest to me.

Distortion is the word I'm looking for, and this photograph taken by Michele Clement shows exactly that...

I seem to be going down a pretty specific path, so my next aim will need to be to decide what method(s) I'm going to use to distort my portrait. I'm going to investigate into where you can buy out of date paper, but if that fails I'll need a back up. In the past, I've already used a broken wine glass in front of my model's face, and also photographed a friend who's face I projected a photograph of my own face onto. They both worked really well, but I obviously don't want to repeat myself, I need to think of new ideas.

A last little dose of inspiration...

'A bit spotty', I found this on wired.com, on the Top 10 Readers Black and White Photographs page. It doesn't give the photographers real name, just his screen name, Whiffleboy. It's just quite fun, and shows use of camouflage in a portrait.

Distractions

I'm having a semi-productive day today, but having a mind-block on the project front, so thought I'd do this while I wait for it to start working again.

So far, the highlight has been winning this cute bag for only £2 on ebay



which means i am awaiting FIVE items to be delivered now! Maybe gone a bit ebay mad this month?

- 2 ink cartridges for my new printer - One b+w and one colour

- this Lomogrpahy four lens camera....a friend for my fish-eye i got for my 22nd from the boyf, and only £9.99 and free p&p! Again...I'm loving the bargains.


I also decided to be a lovely girlfriend and buy Calum a new Black Flag t-shirt, not from ebay this time though!



Seen as he took his last one on tour, completely destroyed it but insists on still wearing it because he loves it so much. Now he can have a brand spanking new one!

Song of the day, stumbled across whilst shuffling through my Itunes collection... The Sonics, 'Don't you just know it':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqYuYwBdqhw

I love 60's bands with this kind of happy, carefree sound. Recently I've been getting more into the girl bands of this era, such as the Ronettes.

Back to my projects.

'The Portrait' (Black and White) and 'Up, down, all around' (Colour)...

Not wanting to do the same old same old, I'm finding it hard to think of an idea for the first. And for the second, we have been given quite a specfic brief, so I just need to get on and do it. Need to get those mind cogs ticking....perhaps playing with the idea of taking photographs that are normally done portrait, landscape, and vice versa. Hmm...a starting idea anyway.