Tag: Context and narrative

Assignment 5Leave a comment

Assignment 5 – Making it up – Test shots

517401 OCA Photography

I took some very rough and ready test shots to try and gauge what exposure I would need for the three shots I have in mind. The image features above is a test of the final picture that I am trying to create with a washed-out, high-key, look. Things I need to think about Composition Light direction Light modification Focal length Backgound colour Camera position In the image above I did not think too much about compostion but I realise that this will be important. I think the most important element to concentrate on is lighting, combined with the colour … Continue reading Assignment 5 – Making it up – Test shots

Assignment 5Leave a comment

Assignment 5 – Making it up

517401 OCA Photography

After a bit of a hiatus, a damp but very enjoyable two weeks in France, I have visted my father to get hold of the objects I want to photograph for this assignment. Unsuprisingly many of the items I was hoping to use were nowhere to be found, despite trawling through drawers and boxes they seem to have disappeared. However, I have managed to get hold of several items that I instinctively associate with my mother even if I had not thought of them originally. Whilst I have an outline of how I want to use focus and exposure to … Continue reading Assignment 5 – Making it up

Assignment 4Leave a comment

Assignment 4 – A picture is worth a thousand words – re-worked

517401 OCA Photography

My Dear Yakutia My revised submission for assignment four can be read below or viewed as a PDF here. The image is one from an on-going series entitled My Dear Yakutia by photographer Alexey Vasilyev, who describes the series as a photographic ‘love letter’ to Yakutia (officially The Sakha Republic of the Russian Federation) looking at the impact environmental factors have on its inhabitants. According to Vasilyev’s website his work [… focuses on the daily life of people in the far North and their national identity in the global world] (Vasilyev, 2019). Yakutia is Russia’s largest geographical republic and has some claims to national … Continue reading Assignment 4 – A picture is worth a thousand words – re-worked

Assignment 5Leave a comment

Assignment 5 – Making it up – artistic intention

517401 OCA Photography

For this assignment I want to create images that look at the idea of memory and more specifically my memory of my mother. After suffering from Alzheimer’s for over ten years my mother recently died. During the period of her illness I witnessed her memory loss and the impact it had on her ability to engage with the world and look after herself, until shortly before her death she could not remember how to swallow and so was unable to eat or drink. However, it is not my mother’s memory loss that I want to explore but rather mine. Since … Continue reading Assignment 5 – Making it up – artistic intention

Exhibitions and visitsLeave a comment

Antony Gormley – Royal Academy

517401 OCA Photography

The Antony Gormley retrospective at the Royal Academy features a collection of works from Gormley covering a period of around forty years. As well as his signature figurative pieces, the exhibition also contains drawings and more abstract works such as Clearing Vii 2019, Matrix III 2019 and Cave 2019. As the exhibition is in effect the ‘greatest hits’ of his career the work is not challenging, as so much of it has been exhibited before, but is engaging which probably explains why the exhibition was so busy. The show highlights the two main themes of Gormley’s work, a focus on … Continue reading Antony Gormley – Royal Academy

Assignment 4Leave a comment

Assignment 4 – A picture is worth a thousand words – tutor feedback

517401 OCA Photography

As I expected the feedback from my tutor was uncompromising and can be read here I have never found essay writing easy and I think my tutor’s feedback was basically ‘not interested in what’s happened in the past, sort it out’. He made the point that written work accounts for approximately half the overall mark for the degree course and that if I want to continue then I need to address my issues with essay writing. To that end I will take some time and re-work this assignment. Continue reading Assignment 4 – A picture is worth a thousand words – tutor feedback

Assignment 4Leave a comment

Assignment 4 – A picture is worth a thousand words

517401 OCA Photography

My initial submission for this assignment was based on a photographer by Alexey Vasilyev. The image is one from a series entitled My Dear Yakutia by Russian photographer Alexey Vasilyev. Vasilyev (1985 -) was born, and still lives, in the Republic of Sahka (Yakutia), a vast region in the north east of the Russia. After graduating in Philology in 2008 he went on to work for a local children’s newspaper The Voice of the North. Vasilyev’s interest in photography started quite late and it was not until he was nearly thirty that he started posting images on Instagram. In 2017 … Continue reading Assignment 4 – A picture is worth a thousand words

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Cindy Sherman – National Portrait Gallery

517401 OCA Photography

Cindy Sherman is one of the photographers I wrote about while researching part three – Putting yourself in the picture, which can be found here; so I was looking forward to visiting this exhibition to see if viewing her photographs at close quarters, rather than on a screen, would result in me changing my opinion of her work. The exhibition contains around 150 works from the mid-1970s to the present day including an extensive sample of images from her series Untitled Film Stills as well as her larger scale colour work from the 1980s onward. Unlike most of the reviews … Continue reading Cindy Sherman – National Portrait Gallery

Assignment 3Leave a comment

Assignment 3 – Putting yourself in the picture – tutor feedback

517401 OCA Photography

Feedback for assignment four can be read here. I found the feedback session very useful as it high-lighted a some areas that I have overlooked when submitting my assignments and I think there are two key learnings to take from it. The first learning is to know when to stop and the second to think more about how I present my assignments. Although I started the assignment in a negative frame of mind and did not enjoy the diary keeping element of it, when it came to producing and image I had a very clear idea of what I wanted … Continue reading Assignment 3 – Putting yourself in the picture – tutor feedback