Cole Thompson

Cole Thompson is a black and white photographer whose images are extremely varied and unique. He has travels a lot of places to take many different images. He specialises in black and white photography and manages to capture shape and style both man made and natural. His photographs have a huge amount of contrast and include both absolute black and absolute white which I really like this gives the images drama and depth while making them stand out and catch your eye. I am going to manipulate my images so they also hold this quality as I think it makes the images look better.

Meirion Matthias

Meirion Matthias is a photographer based in the UK. I particularly like his work as it is very characteristic but one of his photographs especially caught my eye. His image named colour splash stood out to me, it is a black and white image with a canoe in its original colour. This made the image stand out and is bold and bright. I like the perspective of the image and the way he has used the rule of thirds and separated the image into different parts.I also like the way the background is not in focus which draws your eye to the colour part of the image. My client has requested this type of photography in his shop, however he wants the colour part of the image to be in his shop colour which is lime green. For this reason I am going to take the black and white images which I have shot of Bath and manipulate them in hotoshop to get this effect. Another of his photographs which he has manipulated the colour is 'Jetty in Blue'. He has enhanced the blue tint on the photograph to make it stand out.

Will Pearson

Will Pearson is a photographer who specialises in panoramic photography. He also creates virtual tours of places using his photography. I really like the perspective he gets in his images and the way he creates an atmosphere. My favourite panoramic images of his are the ones of cityscapes and landscapes. I want to experiment with my own panoramic images and possibly try these in the style of David Hockney. What I like most about his images are that they create a story and almost freeze a moment in time, this creates quite a special image which has a lot of depth and more of a perspective on the subject matter than a normal image might hold. Pearson has also shot some of the images at night which gives the image a very quiet and peaceful look, I would experiment with taking pictures at this time but my client would like to keep the images lively and in keeping with his shop. I like the way in some of his images the shape of the subject matter changes. For example things which are straight in real life curve becasue of the way he has taken the image, I owuld like to gain this quality in my images.

David Hockney

David Hockney is an English painter, stage designer, photographer, draughtsman and printmaker. He is based in Bridlington although he also maintains a base in London. Hockney is considered an important contributor to the Pop Art movement of the 1960's and is established as one of the most influential British artists of the Twentieth Century.

I am looking at his photographic collection "joiners". These are a collection of photo-montages. Which are photographs stitched together to create one whole image. He does this by taking lots of different images of one place then working these all together to create one big image. Hockney uses small polaroid snaps or photo-lab prints of a single image.

Hockney created these photo-collage works mostly between 1970 and 1986. He reffered to them as "joiners". He used different techniques but the one i like the most is where he would take lots of polaroid images of one subject and lay them in a grid layout. The subject would usually move while being photographed so that the outcome would suggest movement and motion seen from the photographers perspective. Another method he developed would be to move the camera around the subject giving a slightly different perspective and almost producing a more 3D effect with a larger spectrum of the subject seen in the image rather than in a normal image.

Hockney's creation of the "joiners" came about by accident. He noticed a lot of images in the late 60's were created using wide angle lenses giving a distorted view. At the time he was working on a painting of a living room in LA, he decided to take polaroid shots of the room as he walked through it and glue them together not intending for them to make a composition of their own or work in any way he just wanted to see the perspective. After creating the final composition he realised that it told a story in a much better way as if the viewer were moving through the room. After he discovered this he decided to work with photography more and stopped painting for a while to divulge in this idea thoroughly.

My images are related to David Hockney's as I have explored creating 'joiners'.

workspace

I have taken some images of the area we have to work with. Ed our partner doesn't mind how big the images are or how many there are or where they go. Taking the images was helpful because I can refer back to them if I need to see sizing or colour scheme of the area. It is important to get the colour correct as we would not want the images to clash with the walls. It will also help to get a rough idea of frame sizes although when the images are done we will be going to check they fit in time for the event so we can make any adjustments.

I like the idea of putting our images onto foam board as this is quite simplistic and will compliment the shop space. However if we can find frames to use I think this would also look professional. I will need feedback from Ed about this to make a final decision.

2nd meeting with eat5star

Today my partner and I returned to eat5star to receive some feedback about what we had done so far. I showed him the black and white photography I had done and he was very happy with them. I also showed him the coloured 'joiner' images I had done and he also liked these, he liked the two landscape ones more so we decided to use these. We decided to use two joiners to put up on the wall and to manipulate the black and white images to incorporate the shop colours. I still have some work to do on the images so when they are finished I will take them back and put them up. As I am having 5 images my partner is also having 5 and we are going to do a selection of 5 black and white images together. We worked it out so that Charlie will put up three images of landscapes and I will produce two 'Joiner' images and together we will create the final five Black and white images.

Eat5star

Eat5star is the company we will be working with to put on a photography exhibition. the benefits of working with them is the location, it is very close to the centre and a busy spot which will be visited many times a day. The actual venue is fairly small but as you walk through the door there are rooms following in the back. We are allowed to put pictures up in two of the rooms so can put up a maximum of 7 large images or around 10 smaller images. The walls are painted black and a very specific green which we will be incorporating into our images. In terms of frames I am planning to visit some frame shops in Bath and see if they would donate any frames to us if we put their logo on the frames. There are already some canvas art hanging on the wall so getting our work put on canvas is another option to explore. If we cannot get any frames we could mount the images on foam board which would not damage the walls and would be secured with Velcro.

I took some pictures of the space available and the colour of the walls. I also took a card which had the logo on with the green colour we needed.

Photography

Today I went straight out after speaking with my client as he liked the black and white photography and the 'joiners' idea. I used an slr camera to take photographs, but after developing I realised the subject matter wa snot very good. The black and white also didn't work very well.

Change of plan

Today my partner contacted me saying that unfortunately they could not work with me anymore as they had some important conferences arranged which could not be postponed. This meant I had to start again with a new company. I joined with a partner and we found a small cafe and catering service which was very happy to work with us and have our exhibition in their venue. They were also interested in paying us to go with them to photograph events they held and use our images on their website. In the meeting I took some photography to show them as an example of our work. Ed was very interested in the black and white photography and said he would like it if an aspects of the image was tinted the same green which the shop is themed in. This seemed like a good idea so we planned to go and take pictures around Bath to later edit. In terms of subject matter Ed didn't mind what we did as long as we included green somewhere in the image. Although this gave us freedom to experiment it was quite difficult to decide on what to photograph. We had quite a range of images by the end of the day and decided to go back to Ed to receive some feedback.

Photography

Today I went out and shot film of Bath. I found inspiration along the way and decided to settle on a theme of people to go throughout the images. I kept the background focused on Bath while having people in the foreground. Today was particularly busy for buskers and street performers so I managed to get some good shots of people dancing and singing. I also got some good shots of crowds in the streets of Bath. I think these could work well in a shop as they show off Bath quite nicely. I developed my film and printed some of the images. I am very happy with them and got a good range of images. The other films I shot I was experimenting with creating a 'joiner' much like the work of David Hockney. I used a lot of film on this and instead of printing the images in a dark room I scanned them into the Mac so I could manipulate them without wasting paper. They came out quite nicely but I didn't get enough pictures to create a whole image. I think it would be a lot more successful to use a digital camera to take images as I am not constricted to taking only 36 pictures and it is a lot more cost effective.

The Cork

he Unit 6 show is mainly based on the opportunity to create an exhibition with a company local to Bath however I am also working with a restaurant called The Cork in Bath as a project on the side. This project is shared by everyone on my course and the photography course.
We all went over to The Cork to be introduced to the project and measure the frames in the area. We were briefed that the images submitted must be relevant to Bath. We were all randomly allocated a frame and left to fill it how we wished.
Once all of the images have been submitted we will all meet for nibbles and they will judge the images and anounce the winner.
I am quite exited about this project as I believe my strengths lie in blck and white photography. However my style of photography is fairly mainstream and straight down the line, I believe other students work may stand out more than mine so I will have to try to think of something which will make my image stand out.

Initial Meeting

Today I met with Nikki Francis from the Francis Hotel. We discussed different aspects of the exhibition and I noted these down on a form. From the meeting I have decided to use black and white photography of Bath, my initial ideas are to take interesting photographs of Bath and try to create something different about them, I am not sure what this is yet. I may choose to take all of the pictures at a unique perspective or choose a theme to run through all of the images. There are 11 frames available in the function room.

Proposal

For Unit 2: Show, I am working with a local business in Bath putting on a photography exhibition in their venue. I have delivered letters to possible companies informing them of my proposal and got some interest. The Francis hotel in Bath showed a lot of interest so I have arranged a meeting with them on the 3rd of April to discuss important aspects of the show. In the meeting I want to get a good idea of the kind of photography Nikki Francis wants and the kind of space I have to work with. I also want to find out about frames and how it would be possible to display the images.