Update

Last week when I was talking about the Criminal competition I said Sarah Buck was going to do a post about me, well she has done it and you can read it here. It was so lovely reading what she had to say about my photographs. She is an amazing artist herself, praises from her is a great compliment.

I'm doing my Will-o-the-Wisp shoot on Wednesday. I have been having some very exiting conversations with the lovely Miss Clare Greathead, she has a lovely little blog too. We have decided on some big bright panda eye which should give an ethereal feel to the model. A bit like this but bigger, brighter and generally better ...

Will o the wisp light experiments

So this past week I have been experimenting with differnt types of film and light to find out what the best effect is for my Will o the Wisp project. I like the night shots better as I think they have more potential at communicating the story behind the images but shooting in the day would much easier. I definatly learnt that a very good tripod is needed more than one assistant and lost of lights. All of these photos where taken using a very wobbly tripod which mayeb long exposure difficulty. Also it was sooooo hard to focus on my model as the light became less. The Will o the Wisp is all about light so for the black and white images I tried to use spot lights to refect on the clothes that the model wore. It hasn't worked as well as I hoped it would but there is still a bit of reflection. With the colour images I shot earlier in the evening when the sun was setting. I tried to experiment with multipul exposures as I want my model to repesent the uncertainy and mythical element of the Will o the Wisp. The exposues where a bit weak and needed more time. But overall the test shoots where really interesting and I learnt alot from doing them.

I'm doing my final shoot next week!

Criminal Clothing

So 2 weeks ago something pretty exciting happened...

I won the Criminal Clothing advertising campaign that I blogged about last time! So now I am featured on the House of Fraser website!! And... I have a window display in the Bournemouth store! If your in Bournemouth you should go check it out. The competition was against 6 other students from my course. There images and links to the website are also on the House of Fraser website. I also got interviewed by my uni for a press realise. You can read it here. Annnd Sarah Buck is going to do a little piece on me on here blog. :)

Criminal images

Sorry its taken me so long to put images up! I've been meaning to for ages but just been distracted. Still haven't heard anything from the competition yet but when I went to London to show House of Fraser the images they seemed to like them. But they were pretty much the same with every ones images so its hard to tell who they liked the most. Here are a few of my favourites and you can see more on my website.

Shoot

I'm doing a fashion shoot tomorrow :). Its supposed to be for a summer campaign so I'm hoping it doesn't rain! Pictures will be up soon

Simon Perini

I've been researching photographers recently and have come across this guy. I am really liking his stuff. He has only got a blog at the moment but if you want to see more of his images you can see them here. The portrait at the bottom is one of my favourites.

New photographer I found

I love Ricor's photographs. Quiet a lot of them remind me of paintings. They are all taken on film and most of them have a hazy, bleached out look which I love. I'm not so keen on his stuff which doesn't have the vintage feel to them . Not that they aren't good but in comparison to the other images they apear quiet plain.

Yulia Brodskaya

I recently found this artist who works with paper. She isn't photography related but her work is really interesting. Check her out,

What I'm reading now

I started reading Susan Sontag's On Photography the other day. I'm really enjoying the book and how it looks at photographs. On of my favourite bits so far is the idea of photograph's as a trophies. Its really interesting and I plan to explore the ideas further through my own photographs and others. Its very simple to read and easy to understand, anyone could read it. If your interested in photography theory this is a key read. I can't believe its taken me to long to start reading it.

Sally Mann love

2 weeks ago we went to the Photographers' Gallery to see Sally Mann's exhibit. It was amazing. I've mentioned before that I love here work so was pretty excited to get to see the real images up close and personal.

She had 4 different series of images on display. The first images where from Faces, which were intimate and personal portraits of here children. These photographs where a result of here earlier work Immediate Family.

Because of her use of antique cameras the final result feels raw and honest. The images contain drips, marks and fussy lines which all add to the uniqueness of each portrait. All of the photographs are a close crop of the face and often blurred. This gives an impression of the subject rushing as if they couldn't stay for very long. I think they give the feeling of a memory, only the most prominent features or an expression defines that person are captured clearly. The image featured above is in my opinion one of the best.

The actual photographs where huge. Mann is well know for using large format cameras but these were the biggest out of the whole collection. This made it very easy to see all the detail and the sublet changes in tone. The room was darkly lit which also add to the mysterious, memory like atmosphere.

Upstairs was the rest of her collection was split into three sections. The biggest part of this was dominated by Immediate Family. I had seen a lot of these images before so it wasn't a surprise for me, but it was great to see the real size of the images rather than the tiny versions printed in books. Next was the series Deep South with were amazing. These were my favourite images out of the whole collection. The image seemed to glow as they had a strange kind of yellow white where the image was brightest. Again because the landscapes were photographed using an antique camera and had the feeling of a memory, or a haunted land.

I had never before images Mann as a landscape photographer but she really does capture some amazing stuff. The gosly mist and strange shapes definatly make the audience view the landscape in a differnt way.

The last images were What remains. This captured decaying bodies found in nature. She photographs through all the stages of decomposition. There was so much detail in the images, and in one even Mann's finger print could be seen. After going round the images I sat in a film for a few moments that interviewed/documented Mann and her work. It appeared at the moment that she is very interested in death as she was filmed photographing her dogs bones. But the images don't look gory or gross but are interesting and in their own way very beautiful.

Part of the reason I like her work so much is that is done using old cameras and techniques. This creates such a contrats to the highly polsihed images that are produced today that it intrigues me. These processes will be something I will try and explore this term at uni.

All images are copyright The Photograohers' Gallery.