Clothes Show Live

Went to the Clothes Show at Birmingham NEC yesterday, which is an annual event which is spread out over a few days in December. The fashion students I worked with to help create their posters for promotion invited me along and I had an awesome time.

Having spent more than enough cash throughout the morning, I decided to wander about and find a way to gain access to the main show, I finally gained a press pass which allowed me access to shoot from the press pit during the live catwalk event. The theme for the year was “A Night At The Movies” which showcased a multitude of eras documenting cinematic inspired fashions. The events production was massive and I was blown away by the special effects and the choreography that I was capturing through my lens, at one point I felt my arms slowly dropping the camera from my face, because I was so eager to sit back and watch the whole show. But I managed to keep snapping, and thankfully I did because I was quite amazed at some of the shots I gained. (uploading tomorrow as my laptop is crap and doesn’t seem to enjoy canon raw files)

Shooting in the catwalk environment was a little bit daunting, as having very – in fact no experience what so ever in this type of field made me feel extra nervous. Having dabbled with the 5d’s a few times I am becoming much more acquainted with them, but still I felt a great sense of panic as it came to shooting the event. With the setting one minute really dark and then the next there are laser lights and firework cannons flying everywhere, I literally had to keep dialing back and forth on the shutter to make sure the image could be read on the camera. My fingers have definitely experienced repetitive strain from yesterday!

I did fear that my images were just not going to work at all, and that they would be all underexposed and having such a huge amount of motion from using long shutter speeds, which would just label them as absolutely worthless. Luckily, I took a canon flash gun with me and I think this helped me gain more of a static and exposed image.

God knows what I would have done if I hadn’t of brought that with me.

The whole day was brilliant, and although I wouldn’t want to photograph catwalk as a profession, I would not rule it out completely. I thrived on the energy of the show and the rush of getting the shots, at the right time, following the models up and down the catwalk through the viewfinder, to get the perfect image of the garment that would make the item sell. I also did in fact enjoy having the added pressure of having to find a balance of dealing with the lighting situations, and having to compensate using an auto focus, as a pose to manual, in order for me to get the correct exposure balance.

Images will be uploaded tomorrow

Old Scans

Just found some old scans on the uni imacs, i was shooting on 35mm using black and white film and a slow shutter speed. I was looking at capturing movement in light.

 

Jamie George

My Gorgeous Nephew

EDITS From Today

Feedback/Comments Appreciated

Hinckley

Note To Self

use flickr more often.

Flickr the online photo sharing community is a great way to find and make new contacts and to showcase my work as a type of online portfolio.

I have a few contacts on my flickr account, 20 to date – and I have only a measly 6 people who call me a contact. I hope to grow my flickr contacts dramatically so I have many users work on the feed to keep up to date with their styles and their work to help develop my own, and like wise have a lot of people have me as a contact so I can help inform them and their work. I know this is not a task which can just happen over night. No this is something I need to work on constantly and will involve me having to broadcast my self via networking on Facebook and Twitter and also for me to search through the flickr community finding artists that relate to me and inspire me.

Another thing to note is to create my own water mark to stamp on my photos. I think that adding water marks to my uploaded images would help eliminate the risk of people taking my photographs and calling it their own.

I will add a post in the hopefully very near future with examples and concepts of watermarks I may use….

Anyway, let the broadcasting begin -  find me @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/riiarr/

photos will hopefully be added regularly

Inspiration is right infront of us…

you just have to embrace it.

I find inspiration in anything, from what I hear, see, touch, smell and taste. However I do not use all of these senses to inform my work. Hearing and seeing things are the main ones in which I use to help develop my work. Inspiration is an important factor for when I am developing the process of my photography, having information at hand of other practitioners, be it through exhibitions, books, word of mouth of online communities really helps me find inspiration to make my work better. Using tools such as Flickr and Twitter is a really huge information resource at the tip of my fingers and I have come to value these greatly. Being fed information on what other artists are doing, seeing and capturing helps me have a great understanding of how others view the world.

I also find inspiration from my peers at University and my friends. It’s always great to see what everyone is doing and also to give each other feed back to help further our work to make it stronger. Also when my friends comment on my work or ask how did I do that and just showing a general interest in what I do gives me the motivation and the confidence to work harder to keep them always in awe.

I did a post recently about a guy who messaged me via Facebook who had stumbled across my blog. His thoughts and views on my work were a real confidence booster. Yes friends may say your work is good, but they are your friends it is kind of in the rule books, but when a person you have never met before can say such kind words is a real motivator. To hear that I have informed and inspired someone to follow in the work that I have produced has inspired me to keep blogging and sharing out information about how I work and what inspires me and drives me to the images that I produce.

So when told I had to do a blog post on inspiration for 101mc on 3 specific items, it really is hard to pinpoint them. So much has inspired me to do what I do. There is so much inspiration around in our world that we can have to inform ourselves. It’s the a case of getting out there and finding it and putting it to good practice.

Inspiration:

• Other artists and photographers
• My Peers
• Strangers
• The world and life itself
• Music
• People in general
• EVERYTHING

I think how ever if I do need to focus on 3 topics that have informed me a great deal this year so far then I would choose Social networking sites such as twitter, Strangers approaching my work and giving them inspiration and finally the camera and its power to record and deliver such powerful messages.

Far Gosford Street

Far Gosford Street, Coventry

Note To Self – Don’t be afraid to ask people for their photos

We have a right to photograph whoever, whatever and when ever – except from standing on someones personal property.

Last week my course mate, Larissa Grace @ http://larissagrace.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/my-experience-of-street-photography/ got into an awful situation where she had been photographing on the streets when a man demanded she deleted the photo. However she tried to explain she had been taking images using film and was unable to show him the photo, to not only prove she hadn’t even taken his photo but to prove it was university based work, he demanded the film off her and destroyed it. It’s a shame for Larissa and anybody this has happened to, I know if this was to happen to me I wouldn’t know how to act.

So what are our rights as photographers?

Well like i said, we have the right to photograph anything we want, as long as we are not accessing private property without permission. We can photograph anyone we want, we as the photographer own the right to photographing their image, no matter what. And this counts world-wide – except france, where they have silly rules where the person themselves own the right to their own image being photographed and therefore own the rights to that image the photographer has taken.

So I am using this as a note to self, o not be afraid what happens if I am photographing people, I should not be ashamed of what I do and how I want to capture the world, and if anyone does decide they have a problem with this, then at least now I know my legal rights.

Type Writer

I bought a type writer yesterday from PDSA charity store for £1.99 – what a bargain.

It came with 2 new printing ribbons and has a portable carry case…

This was the question most people said when I told them I had bought one.

So why did I buy it? Call it an impulse, but I have wanted an old original metal cased type writer for so long and this was just too good of a price to refuse! I also bought it for my photography too. At the moment we are concentrating on making images using a self constructed pinhole camera. I have loved my outcomes and they appear vintage and out dated. So the connection between the type writer and my pinhole camera is not to take a picture of it, but to use the type writer as an aid in printing captions. I feel the two resources used together will have a powerful impact upon my images when I have chosen my finals for printing.

Matchbox Pinhole Camera – First Film

Here are some images from my pinhole camera….

The images are taken at Gosford Green and Far Gosford Street, Coventry

From looking at my images I can notice that the colours are not very vibrant and the images appear dull. I’m not sure what factor it could be for this, but two main ones I am thinking of are that it is either the film or the weather conditions. I am using Kodak colour plus ISO 200 which i got from poundland. I will reshoot in this area of Coventry using the same film (as i bought a bulk load!) and hopefully the weather will be a bit more sunnier and brighter. However with this change of light I will need to drop my exposure time to ensure i have not over exposed my negatives.

Also one more thing – The furry frame around my image is accidental but I think it is growing on me. It is simlpy the fibres from the cardbord blocking light onto the negative.