CD/Album.
We had to use photography and graphics to redesign a CD album cover. the aim was to improve the appeal of the original cover, and - yet again - type was to be incorporated into the final design.
In a similar way to the book cover, the biggest issue here was in being spoilt for choice - added to which, the original images on so many CD's/Albums were a little hard to improve the appeal of anyway!
However, after some thinking, my mind turned to some experimentation I have been doing with motion blur images, and I started to get an idea for using some of them to create a cover for a long time favourite album -
The idea was very simple, but I felt it could be very effective - I would take the words 'rain' and 'dancing' and use a composition of two images that represented them to create the cover.
I decided on two of the movement images to work with
I then turned these images black and white, and I also inverted them for some of final pieces .
Then to photograph the 'rain' component - easier said than done !
In then end, I found the best way to get the images I wanted was to photograph from the inside of my kitchen window, and I used both natural rain and my hose pipe, set on everything from 'spray' to 'soak' to try and capture water droplets. For some, using flash, and a shallow depth setting gave me the dark back ground, and by taking the largest size file I could, I was then able to crop down the resulting pictures, to get rid of the flash reflection (or any others that had sneaked through ! ) and isolate the parts that I thought would work best. I wanted the raindrops to be 'larger' than they would be in comparison to the dancing figure, in real life, as I felt this would have more impact, and using small crops, then enlarging them to the size of the dancing figure would achieve this.
And after photoshop, and some playing with filters and effect, these were some of the final images I experimented with
Then it was into photshop with all the images, to combine them as layers, and start playing with text - I had already decided to list the artists name by using her autograph, which had appeared on other other albums and posters. This is a selection of the pieces I came up with
I liked a lot of the pieces I came up with, and in the end, it came down to having two, that I had made into 3D representations of actual covers - although I like both, I think that side by side, its the second of the two images that tends to 'jump' out at you, so that one ended up as my final choice.
I enjoyed this unit, and was really pleased with the final results, which I felt fulfilled the brief. At assessment however, although there was no criticism of the images, again feedback indicated that the placement of the type could have been better - and again, I'm left incredibly frustrated that a component of my final work falls short, when we have had no instruction to assist us with this aspect of it.
Event.
This was the final unit - we had to produce a mini portfolio of an event, over a one or two day shoot, and tackle it as a professional assignment. We had to produce at least 10 to 20 images, and use a range of shots to tell the story of what happened.
Both my daughters have attended Theatretrain for the last several years. Theatretrain is a National Company that teaches children aged 6 to 19 dance, drama and singing . There are classes held all over the UK, and through this group, my daughters have performed everywhere from the Local Stwit Theatre in Rhos, through to Chester, Manchester, and even the Royal Albert Hall in London. Luckily for me, my youngest daughters group, the 9 to 12's, were currently in rehearsal for a performance of 'Honk ' - a kind of modern day 'Ugly Duckling', which was to be performed at The Forum Theatre, Chester. Steve Davies, the artistic Director of the Wrexham, Chester and Mold groups very kindly gave consent for me to photograph both the morning and dress rehearsal, on the day of the actual show.
So, I spent the morning at Ysgol Morgan Llwyd, and the afternoon at the Forum, with this very talented bunch of kids.
The 'story' I wanted tell tell of this event was really to show how much the kids enjoyed it, and how well they worked with their coaches - the kids performed the whole show no less than 3 full times during the day, and not once did I see any of them lose patience, or look fed up - and same goes for the tutors. And rather than just get the performance aspect, I also wanted to get the kids when they weren't 'on stage' so to speak. I wanted the interaction with the tutors, that goes into producing a performance like this, and to show the amount of work that goes into it, during the rehearsals .
After the sessions, I edited and sent the pictures to Steve, who sent them out as Press releases, and some were later published in 3 local papers.
I really enjoyed this unit, it was great to see how much the children enjoyed this and it was educational to realise how hard the tutors work. From a learning point of view, this was the first 'event' that I had ever really tackled in this way, and dealing with the movement of the subjects and the lighting changes, and so on, was great practical experience.
To Sum up . . .
In terms of the practical work of photography, I really enjoyed this last module - aside from the issues with typography! It crystallized for me that whatever genre of photography that I settle on, I know that I have the most success with working with capturing images of people, especially when I feel I can have some time to 'get to know them' and get images that really capture who they are or what they are doing. I did find it damn hard work at times, partly because of the physical mobility issue that I had - this meant that some idea's that i wanted to pursue just were not possible, and it was really frustrating - but, I guess life can just be like that, and I finding that you have to change plans and adapt to situations is very much part of a working environment - as is delivering the goods under difficult conditions.
Year 2 as a whole - right at the beginning, I felt priority was given to film over photography - the first semester's practical work on our return seemed to focus heavily on the film side, and the units concerning film seemed so time consuming that I sometimes felt that I struggled for time to devote to the photography. In terms of the actual lesson/tutorial aspect, the balance in films favour was even more obvious - we had 2 hours a week with Stewart, which was pretty evenly split between film and photography, and 2 hours with Colin, just for photography - which was in sharp contrast to the SIX hours of tutorials that were devoted to film editing. I did raise this issue several times, but throughout the year, nothing changed, though I must add that both Colin and Stewart made themselves available when they could, for advice and help when I felt I really needed it. That isn't the same as set tutorials, though, and when I feel that I still have a lot to learn on the technical side, it is really frustrating.
What this year has done is made it very much clearer to me as to what direction I feel I want to move in, with my photography. As I have said, work involving people, be it portrait, street or as part of event photography, is something I am finding increasingly enjoyable, and an area of my work where I think I am seeing the most improvement. Especially, this year has seen an introduction for me to event photography, especially in terms of photographing the people at events, and its an area that I have really enjoyed - thank you to Stewart, who got me involved with the 'Store' project - I learnt so much, and its opened quite a few doors for me in terms of making contacts that are already generating opportunities for me to gain more experience in this field. I also think that I am able to be a lot less self concious and more confident about getting 'candid' shots, when working in front of 'the public', so to speak - and having this confidence has improved the images I am producing too.
It was commented at my last assessment that I am showing an awareness of what my 'audience' wants, and looking back over the briefs we have had, I think the work set in them has really contributed to my ability to do this, and I've learnt a lot about this aspect from the briefs.
There seemed to be a huge amount of academic/written work this last semester too - I actually enjoyed all of it, but again, I feel the time it took compromised my opportunities to learn more in a practical sense about photography. Having said that, Creative Futures week was incredibly useful in terms of the advice and information I took from it.
I think I have progressed with my photography, overall - I think I have demonstrated that I learn to cope with new situations and tasks, and sometimes, with the unexpected. And that I can usually find a way to resolve problems and snags that crop up, and where necessary, come up with an alternative way of getting the job done. I am hoping that next year, there will more opportunity for me to improve the technical side of my work - I am still struggling slightly with high key and getting white right, I'd like to learn how to use gels, and would also like to know more about coping with poor lighting on location shoots - amongst other things.
That my next year is the final year of this degree is something I am struggling to realise - its all gone so quickly - much as I am looking forward to the next semester, I am dreading it being over !
