ReImagine Wrexham - Part 2

ReImagine Wrexham would culminate in an evening of live music and interactive art on July 11th .

The live music was supplied by experimental band DRK MTR - the Oriel FB book page describes them as . . ."an experiment with music, art and poetry is the brainchild of 3 north Wales artists. Musician and Producer, Steve Nicholls, Poet, Sophie McKeand and Artist, Andy Garside, are collaborating on this project. Fusing poems of the earth with digitally created sounds and performing them with VJ projections the live shows are not to be missed."

This was again, a really enjoyable experience - DRK MTR were edgy and innovative, and somehow, their material worked incredibly well with the 'feel' of the event . . . and it was fantastic fun to photograph them, and the on-going interactive art that was still taking place .

Yet more fantastic art work had been added

Mikey - still painting

The Band joined in too

 

By now, my daughter was thoroughly hooked on ReImagine - and enjoyed encouraging others there to join in !

The art work wasn't restricted to the walls!

This was a really great event to be involved with, for several reasons.  It gave me the chance to learn more and add to my photographic skills, I really enjoyed seeing the artwork grow and develop, it was brilliant to be part of something that was appreciated by everyone I spoke to who participated, and again - I met some fantastically creative and genuinely nice people .


Some of the images I provided were published in an Oriel Galley Programme - sadly, they forgot to credit me, but hopefully, I'll be able to get a copy of the programme and scan it to add to this blog at a later date :)

UPDATE :  I have been put in contact with Helen Odunaiya, Senior Performance and Improvement Officer, from Wrexham Council - Ms Odunaiya has emailed me with reference to using some of the ReImagine Images . . . Its really great to know that my photographs are likely to be used in this way, and I'd like to say Thank You to Ms Odunaiya for taking the time to give me the exact details of their use - below is a portion of the e mail she sent, explaining .





 

"I am interested in using some images of the artwork for the Wrexham Local Service Boards strategic plan from April 2013 to March 2024.  It is a high level strategic plan looking at the future of Wrexham as a place and will be signed off by all the LSB partners, ie Council, BCUHB (hospital), Public Health, Probation, Police, Fire, AVOW, Glyndwr (LSB rep is Paul Whiting) and Yale.  I saw the exhibition and thought the work could be great to represent Wrexham as it comes from local people and is an individual piece of work and will bring our document to life! . . .

 

In terms of my timeframe the plan needs to be in place for April 2013 and we have to have a 12 week consultation period.  We are currently working hard on the plan with 3 high level themes looking at Quality of life, Economy, and community involvement / safety.  The final document will be printed in paper format and we will also have an electronic version so it will go out far and wide across Wrexham and to all our partners and will exist for many years!

 

 Thanks very much for your help, the photos are just great."

  

More in the Studio

A little while ago, a fellow student from Glyndwr asked me to photograph some of her art work, for a presentation she had to give.

Rebekah McEvoy is a second year student, like myself, studying Applied Art, and she brought several pieces into the studio for me to work with.  I really enjoy doing work like this - not only is it valuable experience for me, but its great to see some examples of some of the fabulous art created by other students.

 

Module ARD502 - The Message - Illustrating a Feature - Part 2

Next up -

Vine and Dine.

As always, started by listing as many possible ideas as I could for what this feature could be about.  I looked at possibly wine reviews, or vineyard reviews and then decided that there were two avenues I would like to pursue - I liked the idea of a still life style photograph, using either cheese and wine, or a feature on a recipe that involved using wine as an ingredient.  I came up with the idea of basing the style of photograph on painting of food and wine, and looked on the internet at several paintings that I felt had the 'feel' I wanted to achieve.

I liked both these paintings by Cezanne

 And I also liked these paintings, that I found on the internet .

I liked the often 'rustic' feel of a lot of the art work that I looked at, and also the way that a lot of attention is paid to the textures and colour of the food stuff featured.

To help  create the 'rustic' feel, I used again a small bale of hay, and also a wooden board.  For the 'recipe' section, I bought a casserole serving dish in a burnt orange colour that I felt would compliment the other colours, and also brought along some of the raw ingredients I'd used to make the bourguignon.

Here are some of the images from the recipe shoot

I then moved on to photographing a selection of different cheeses with the wine.

I was really happy with the images I got from these two shoots, so then moved onto adding text

The text on this one is too big and too dark

This one, with white text that is smaller, I think works much better.

Again - text too big and intrusive

And in all these images, I needed to go back into photoshop, and 'clean' up areas like blemishes on the veg shown, and gravy marks on the side of the dish.










This image is more how I think the final page could and should look, and I think that there are several of the images I got, both with the cheese and with the recipe shoot, that could be used in this manner.

Pass the Pasta.

Immeadiately I think of pasta and the image that comes to mind is a family meal, possibly al fresco - and all the idea's that I liked that I had around this catagory had this idea of 'families' at the base.

I thought about doing a restaurant review, and approached the local Frankie and Benny's restaurant -  this specialises in pasta and pizza dishes, and is a very typical 'family' restaurant.  The manager and staff were very happy for me to come in and take photographs, and very kindly furnished me with the area managers phone number, to just confirm with her that it would be OK - several phone calls where I'd left messages and four frustrating weeks on, and I had to abandon this idea, as the area manager didn't get back to me - having wasted all this time waiting to hear from her, I had meanwhile started to pursue another idea, and given the ever looming hand in date for the work in this and the other two modules, I decided in the end to stick with the other idea.

The other idea came again from the whole idea of families - I started thinking about a recipe section based on pasta meals for children - I thought that this idea could convey the idea that pasta meals are fun for kids, and maybe appeal to parents who had 'fussy' eaters.

So, studio booked, spaghetti and meatballs cooked, and youngest daughter dragged into the studio to eat a plate of pasta - at 10.30 in the morning - Thank you Katie - you were a wee star !

I really loved a lot of the images I got - Kate enjoys this type of food, and got stuck in, and I just fired off shot after shot .

Then I looked at putting the images together, and/or with text

I liked the idea of using a tryptic presentation

This photograph was probably the one I liked best out of all the shots I took .

And I liked it presented both as a piece on its own, and combined with smaller images, to create the final pieces.

I really enjoyed this unit, out of all the briefs we had in the modules this semester, this 'illustrating a feature' was probably my favourite.  I learn't a lot about photographing food under studio conditions, and it made me really think about the details - from the necessity of 'cleaning' up spills and blemishes, through to the type of text to use and how to research and develop idea's.  I ended up producing a massive ammount of work, and did so under quite a tight deadline, when you consider how much other work there was in the 3 modules from this semester, and how we had all been hampered by lack of equipment and studio time, plus the fact that several of the film modules were extremely time consuming .  Personally, I would rather have had a more balanced set of modules, because it did feel like priority was given to film, both in terms of our timetable and in terms of the briefs - this was the only photographic unit that I really felt I had been able to spend a lot of time on, and I would have loved the option of doing more briefs like this and dropping some of the film work.  I understand that the degree I am doing is not called 'photography', but 'Creative Lens' - but I was under the impression that at least EQUAL consideration would be given to both until we got to the point where we were able to specialise, and I don't feel like the modules did offer me the opportunity to do that - the film modules that we HAD to do were for the most part, so time consuming that I couldn't spend an equal ammount of time on the photography.  I'm assured that this will change in the next semester, and I really look forward to that.