Photography Course Final Project
Am working on the final project. Hand in date is April 10th. Here’s a shot from it.
Photography Course Update
Well, we are nearing the end of the ‘advanced’ photography course. I’ve got about a week and a half to come up with, produce & edit my final project – and I still haven’t got the foggiest about where to start – or what to do.
It’s not the course I hasten to add. It’s me. I have had lots of ideas but done nothing with any of them. Even while I write this I should really be working away on the project. If I could get on with it now, there would be much less of a rush at the end.
The course has been great. David is reassuringly calm and knowledgeable and patient. The speakers he organised (Christophe Dillinger and Andrew Jackson) were inspirational in completely different ways. Christophe has a wild and quirky approach to photography. He seems to want to break all the rules, and is taking his own unique path. His results are often strange, non-conformist and sometimes downright weird. It’s not to everyone’s taste by any means but I admire his courage to create his own path.
Andrew, on the other hand, is much more conventional by comparison. His images are still challenging and, coupled with his stories about how and when they were taken, take on a whole new meaning, particularly his South African pictures. It was fascinating to hear his experiences of getting briefs from magazines and papers and then having to think on his feet when doing the shoot – to keep the editor happy and also to fit in with the subject of the shoot who was often difficult, or short on time. Add in the problems of weather, lighting, venue, equipment etc it all adds up to a scary account of the life of this photographer.
Other sessions on the course have included a photoshop overview, a studio session with two models and only the barest of guidance allowing us to get it wrong and then learn how to get it right. Plus David went through various styles of photography and the work of a number of photographers.
All in all – it’s been good fun. And I’ve met one or two people who I hope to stay in contact with when the course is finished. And I’ve finally taken my camera off Auto.
I just need to think of a theme for the final project. Better get on with it!
Wanna do a photography course and live within travelling distance of Birmingham? Here’s the link:
http://www.fotofilia.co.uk/
Google Search Results Are Rubbish Now
Google is constantly amending it’s algorithm. It’s trying to distance itself from Bing and other search engines by bringing up what it considers to be better results. Unfortunately they aren’t better. The results are a lot worse now than they were this time last year.
Their exact match domain update means that companies who named themselves after what they do and were doing it long enough to have purchased the domain describing what they do before some else did have now been penalised. Glasses UK (www.GlassesUK.com) for example was the first online prescription glasses seller in the UK. For many years if you searched for Glasses UK you got the Glasses UK website www.GlassesUK.com. Now you don’t. You can try searching for Glasses UK – but you won’t find it.
The same thing has happened to thousands of companies across the world. So now when you are searching, you are not being shown the best results. You are being shown what Google considers a superior set of results. But they aren’t. In fact they are rubbish. Google needs to take a step back, have a long look at itself, stop being so arrogant and start showing the real results – or people will turn away and Google will wither and die ..
Photography Project
We’ve had to present our first photography project on David Rann’s Advanced Photography course.
I spent a while trying to decide what to do. I thought about doing photos ‘in the style of’ Michael Hughes. He buys cheap souvenirs of tourist attraction and then holds them in front of the actual thing and takes a picture. I thought I could try it with things nearer to home e.g. substituting a toy car for my actual car. It did work but it just didn’t look that good.
I mulled over the other themes (Heros, The Circle, Me Myself I, Blow Up etc) and decided to do it ‘in the style of’ Robert Doisneau. The main things that struck me about his photos were that most of them are square, black & white, of people, taken in his home town, and tell a story. So I got up really early on a Sunday and went into Worcester (in the rain) and took a few pics. You can see them on the Photography > Photo Projects page. http://www.markwakefield.com/project-photos
Hope you like them. (Unfortunately this page only shows rectangular images)
My First Attempt at Writing a Book – Aged 53
On a long, boring and lonely weekend in October 2012 I started writing a few sentences in Word on my Mac. I was thinking about how there are times when you have to hold back, to show restraint, otherwise you might say how you’re really feeling (and perhaps offend someone) or you might hit someone (and end up hurting them, or in court) and so on.
Presumably there are certain controls in our brain which help us show restraint. Some people’s control will be stronger than others and sometimes events of actions may get in the way of those controls and we can hold back no longer …
The story of RESTRAINT is about a man who meets two strangers and between them they plan to rob a bank of £3,000,000. These aren’t thugs or sophisticated criminal masterminds, or desperate dangerous people. They are three regular middle-class people who each have their reasons ..
Do they succeed? And if they do, can they cope with their conscience?
You’ll have to read it to find out.
Photography Course Commenced
Last Wednesday I attended the first session of a 10 week Advanced Photography course in Birmingham at David Rann’s Fotofilia Studio. ‘Why choose advanced?’ I hear you ask. Good question. I suppose the answer is that I am much less concerned with the equipment and more interested in the ideas behind the picture.
Luckily this is exactly what the course is about. There is much less emphasis on the equipment and more on the thought process behind the creation of the image.
For our first project we have to produce a series of pictures based on a theme. Currently I am trying to decide which of the themes to adopt – and then I’ll have to work out what photos to take.
So it’s not a case of wandering around hoping to spot a good photo. It’s all about planning & preparation in advance of creating the photos. A more methodical and deliberate approach. See – I’ve leant something already!
Urban Shoot with David Rann
David Rann of Fotofilia in Birmingham – a friend and all-round nice guy – allowed me to tag along with his photographic group on an ‘urban shoot’. The model was Michelle Grice who (as well as being very beautiful) was excellent as a model in that she knew what poses to adopt without much prompting, was also happy to try any suggestions made by the group – and brought several outfit changes – and most of all didn’t mind the cold!
I took a lot of photos – most of them when not connected to David’s portable lighting system as I found myself hoping I could catch Michelle looking less ‘posed’ and more natural. I was pleased with some of the shots and technically they are much better than my normal pics because of David’s guidance. However I really felt that all I was doing was pressing the button .. the work was being done by David, the lighting rig, the model and the location. I was just the technician .. So in some ways I was more pleased by the more natural shots I took (as they had something of me in them ..)
Good experience .. hopefully will do something similar again soon.
Another test post
1st Post
Here’s our new website & blog
My first blog post ..
Here’s our first blog post using this new site.