Guest Lecture 5: Scott Grummet

Scott Grummett is a former graduate from Norwich University of the Arts back in 2010 where he then went on to assist photographers. In his lecture Grummett covered how to go about approaching photographers for assisting work. giving words of wisdom such as "ask what you can do for the photographer, even if it is just getting Tea" and "be chatty but still professional in your emails". 

The Golden Rules for Assisting.

• always look busy. 
• make friends, build a network and take notes
• Be early
• Make tea... ALL THE TIME 
• Always be aware of whats needed 
• and don't get drunk the night before a shoot. 

Grummett took photos for Harry Winston Jewellery and worked for wired magazine, and told us we should always have a kit primed and ready to go because you never know when you will get called out to a shoot.

Scott Grummetts main piece of advice was that it doesn't matter if you don't have the equipment or resources, because he started just taking pictures in his bedroom.   

Grummet mainly assisted food photographers, so his natural progression was into food photography, from this he has gained a regular client in Honest Burger, and has also shot for Nandos and KFC. He has shot for Esquire and directed films and tv commercials. 

The last thing Scott Grummett said to us was take pictures all the time. 

Thank You for Reading,

Becca x

Workshop 4: Flash Part 1

For this workshop we were learning how to mix flash light and ambient light. Our first task was to use a light metre and take the flash incident reading to determine the aperture  and take a picture using the flash. The first image was as F22 with a shutter speed of 1/125. This underexposed the image and turned day into night. 

The second image was set to F25 with a shutter speed of 1/125. this only made the image a bit brighter.

For task 2 we had to balance the flash and ambient light. The first image for this task was taken at F8 with a shutter speed of 1/125. 

The second image for this task was taken at F8 with a shutter speed of 1/250  which made the image lighter and the subject set apart from the background, the light is overly balanced. 

Our third and final task for this workshop was to get creative so we lit with the flash from above and from the side, and also from the side so we could freeze movement in the image. All of the images were taken at F5.6 with a shutter speed of 1/125. 

Blurred movement

Lit from above

Lit from the side

From this workshop I learned that aperture controls the flash lighting and the shutter speed controls the ambient lighting. 

 Thank you for Reading,

Becca x

Guest Lecture 4- Lottie Davies

Let me start by saying Lottie Davies is the most genuine, down to earth and funny, person you could ever meet. Lottie Davies worked for the telegraph newspaper and quickly found a name for herself in food photography, she took photographs for the telegraphs food column for 7 years before she decided she didn't want to be known as a food photographer anymore. 

So Davies started working for survival international, (who couldn't pay her because they had no money) she paid for her own flights and everything so that she could go take journalistic photographs in Botswana, this was the start of her building up her portfolio in journalistic photography. Lottie Davies started to work with other charities because she wanted to make a difference, she wanted to use her work to inform people back home of what was going on in other countries. 

Once she had built up enough of a portfolio she got a job working for a travel magazine where she was sent to Africa to take images of the cotton harvest, which she had trouble with because that had happened a week earlier, (No One Had Cotton). 

From there on out Lottie Davies became more and more established winning the Taylor Wessing award for her work 'nightmares and memories' 

Davies works with companies such as Fortnum and Mason to create a very unique shot that you would forever associate with her name ( she even included a pink unicorn called Mr. Happy!)

She is one of my favourite Guest Lectures we've had because she was enthusiastic about her work and had my so engrossed in what she was saying I forgot to write a lot of notes! 

Thank You For Reading,

Becca x

Workshop 3: Optical Illusions

So our title for this workshop was optical illusions, this is what we were told to bring in:

"Each group will need to bring in a camera and either a zoom lens or a range of prime lenses. You will need to cover a focal length range of around 28mm to 100mm."

First of all our task was to find a landscape subject and use the zoom on its widest setting which for us was 18mm and take a photo (this will be the first image shown) then set the lens to 50mm, check exposure and take another photo (second photo shown). Then we had to set the lens at the maximum focal length which on my lens was 140mm  check the exposure and take a final photo (last image shown). Our group found that the only thing changing was how close to the subject of the landscape you got in the photo. 

 

                                    

   

Our second task was to  use a model using the different focal lengths to take head and shoulders profile shots. The model had to be standing three metres in front of a wall with a pattern. The first picture taken was on 24mm lens, shutter speed was set to 1/180, F 3.8 ISO 200 - this makes the background out of focus and the model in focus so that the viewer is concentrated on the model rather than what is going on around her.

The second image was taken with the lens set at 50mm zoom a shutter speed of 1/90, F 16 ISO 800 - This brings the viewer closer into the models face and  distorts the background so that it is not in focus and the viewer is made to look at the model. 

The final image for our second task was taken with the lens set at 90mm, a shutter speed of 1/45, F 16 and ISO 800- yet again the background is not in focus so we are made to look at the model just like the previous two shots 

Our final task in this workshop was to get creative, so we had our model leaning up agains a tree that was slightly slanted, set the lens to 18mm (the widest it could go) a shutter speed of 1/60 F3.5 and ISO 800 the photographer got really low to the floor looking up created the illusion that our model was bending with the tree. 

Thank You For Reading, 

Becca x

Guest Lectures 3- Andy Earl

Andy Earl is a former student of Nottingham Trent University. His degree show was when he first got noticed, the pictures for this show were taken at Royal Ascot, His process was to take two photos from slightly different angles to create a 3D affect. 

Earl was approached to help to help Michael Gondry film a video for the Rolling Stones cover of "Like a Rolling Stone" This was made  entirely of stills taken at slightly different angles and layered together to create a 3D affect. Naturally because they only had film cameras the team ran into several technical difficulties, However overall Earl shot 12,000 stills having to label each one individually left and right. The Warping affect created in this video by layering the images together gives the view a taste of what it feels like to be high on drugs. The Rolling Stones video was also based on  the relationship between Andy Warhol and Eddie Sedgwick, showing how the Heiress went from being Americas Number 1 socialite to just another drug addict on the street. Because of this video being a huge success, Earl was approached by The Matrix to recreate the 3D affect in the films fight scene Although The Matrix needed a lot more cameras than the two used to film the music video previously mentioned.

Following on from this Andy Earl has done work for GQ and RollingStone Magazine. 

There were two main things Andy Earl told us before we left the Lecture theatre which were 

"Ultimately what people are interested in, is your ideas, what makes you tick"

and 

"Nothing is holding you back, just go for it"

Thank You for Reading, 

Becca x

workshop 2: Lighting

For this workshop we were in the studio. Using harsh lighting pointed at the model (in this case I was the model for our group). we were split up into 3 groups to set up our space and start taking photos, we needed to use 4 different reflectors, a black reflector, white reflector and a silver reflector, we also needed a diffuser.

The first image:

This was the set up we had, and we just changed the reflector that we bounced the light off of.

using black reflector

using white reflector and defuser

using just the white reflector

mixing harsh light and bouncing it off silver reflector 

using white reflector and defuser 

my favourite images from this shoot are ones where we used the defuser and white reflector because it softens up the image and makes the light less harsh. 

With this workshop I learnt a lot about how different reflectors can make an image appear different.

Thank You for reading,

Becca x

Guest Lectures 2 - Carol Sharp

Carole Sharp didn't actually study photography at university, instead she studied Visual Communication. Which means that everything she learnt about photography was in her first studio job. Sharp has an interest in Graphic shapes, which is where she brought her graphic eye to food and still life images. 

Sharp faced many  set backs on the way, such as her studio burning down destroying everything, so she rebuild everything again. 

Carol Sharp then started looking into nature taking pictures of flowers and fruit for packaging, where she worked for sainsburys and twinning. Sharps two key pieces of advice to us was to keep a note of the way you light an image so that you can recreate it and also to take photos of the set up. 

One of the main things Sharp enjoys is arranging thing in the shot because it makes her feel more connected to the shoot. 

As well as her work with various brands she started up a stock library called "Flowerphotos" however sold it on because it became to much to manage on her own. 

Sharp told us that licenses are important when it comes to stock photography and wronging with companies because once you sell an image to them you don't have the right to use that image again until the license ends. 

Carole Sharp left us with two quotes that really got me thinking, that i will share with you now: 

"nothing really exists till there is an observer" 

and 

"the trees are our books and the forest is our library" 

Thank You For Reading,

Becca x

WorkShops 1- Call The Cavalry

For this workshop we were given two tasks to create an environmental portrait and an isolation portrait.

The Learning outcomes were as follows:

We were put into groups of four and sent off to complete the two tasks. 

For the first task we had to take a head and shoulders portrait agains a plain background to show isolation. This means that the viewer is only concentrated on the subject and isn't distracted by its surroundings, Here is my isolation image: 

The environmental image is to depict the subject in a location that the live, work, rest or play. My environmental image was taken in an area local to the university building so it depicts a place where Amey (the model) learns. 

I like how her green hair almost blends in with the green foliage around her. 

Thank You for Reading, 

Becca x

Guest Lectures 1 - Katy White

Our first Guest lecture of the year was one of our very own lecturers Katy White, This was the only Lecture I am likely to get from Katy as she mainly teaches second and third years.

Katy White is in the process of completing her MA Degree as well as teaching. Her main focus is on animals, particularly greyhounds, to show how they are reduced to a spectacle. 

One of Whites key methods of how she went about gathering information, on how to photograph these animals, was actually look outside the subject matter. to do this she looked at the colonial archive and how we viewed humans as others, allowing the subject to be dehumanised and treated like an animal. Photographed merely to document traits, there was no connection between subject and photographer. 

Katy White also looked at other photographers such as Sally Mann who used Wet Plate Collodion printing in her work originally "invented" by Frederick Scott Archer. However instead of printing on to glass, White Photographed on to Tin, because Tin is cheap which helped to symbolise how cheap and "poorly" greyhounds are treated. Grey Hounds also have numbers tattooed in their ears which  White also punched into the tin. 

The main ethic Katy White has is that the Subject Welfare is more important than the subject, She would not subject the Grey Hounds to harsh flash when that would put them in more distress than they needed to be in. 

White talked about how she had to consider how the viewer would interact and feel with and about the images. She wanted the view to get up close to the image so that they really had to look at each individual plate as they are only small sheets of Tin. 

I really enjoyed this lecture and it interested me a lot because it had a lot of information and also gave us, as first years advice on how to synthesise our research into what we are photographing. 

Thank You for Reading, 

Becca x

  

First Location Shoot

This post is about my first location shoot of my University course. 

For our workshop we were told to meet at Norwich Cathedral.
Our brief was to end up with for images that showed the following:

We spent a good two and a half hour there wandering round and taking photos. 

With this shoot i was well out of my comfort zone having no clue how to use my camera in manual mode! This was very daunting because everyone else seemed to have known or had been taught in previous schools where I had just been given a shoot and told to go do it! 

After a long while of fiddling and figuring out how my camera actually works, with a lot of failed attempts at pictures I had my URIKA!  moment and got the jist of how it worked, what shutter speeds,  aperture and  ISO it all needed to be on.
The Cathedral itself was magnificent and the architecture was amazing. I found it was very much like the cathedral I have local to me in Ely. However the one here doesn't have the cloisters that Norwich does.
Without further ado here is the final images from the cathedral part of this first location shoot

Extensive depth of field

Blurred movement 

After finishing at Norwich Cathedral we then all moved on to The Plantation Gardens, by this time I was fully aware how to use my camera.

Personally the Plantation Gardens was my favourite location, because it was rich in culture and history. Built into an old lime stone quarry it still shows the same charm as I imagine it would have done when it was first built in the victorian era. I love being out doors and surrounded by nature, which is probably due to the fact I live in the fens, surrounded by woodlands and fields, thriving with living things. 

Here are the final two images from this shoot that I took at the Plantation Gardens:

Shallow depth of field

Frozen movement 

 Thank You for Reading,

Becca x 

Someone Once Told Me

As freshers Photography students at Norwich University of the Arts we were given a one day photography brief. The subject was "Someone Once Told Me"

This is a pretty broad brief that really we can do anything with, however we were told to avoid anything to do with body image, or physical features. 

I went and sat in a coffee shop and brain stormed my ideas. These are the words I decided to choose:

"Someone once told me to believe myself, because I can do anything."

This has always resonated with me because the people I care about most who say that, believe in me enough to follow my gut and do what I want to do. 

In order to capture the above quote I began to create a list of the different possibilities of what i could do for it.
Such ideas as using windows, or photographing the iconic market stalls made the list, however the final verdict that I came up with was to use open doorways, or arch ways.

I set off, excited to create the photo that was as near to perfect as I could get! I don't know Norwich very well so I didn't know where I could find the exact location I was looking for, which can be quite daunting! So i just wandered aimlessly by myself not heading in any particular direction purely with the mind set of "oh i wonder whats down there?" which in my opinion is the best way to explore a place I am not accustomed to.

From my wonderings around this maze like city this was the final result for the words
"Someone once told me to believe in myself, because I can do anything" 

*disclaimer: I cannot find the picture at this moment however i will post when I find/ or reshoot*

Becca x

Summer Project

As I was accepted into Norwich University of the Arts, to study photography I was instantly relieved that I was going to such a prestigious University. with the merit that I was actually good at what I loved to do. As human beings in the 21st century, we live and thrive on acceptance and recognition that we are actually doing something right.

Almost immediately we were set to work. My task was to photography who I am as a photographer, and instantly I was full of wonder for who I am, at that point I had no idea what makes me who I am i spent a long time deliberating how to capture the essence of me as a photographer in pictures. I even asked photography friends what they thought. 

And finally I came up with a solution! 

deciding to take pictures of the things i liked, the kind of photography I wok on (which tends to be landscapes) 

My first photograph was taken in Grand Central station New York. I used a long exposure to create blur and movement to reflect the hustle and bustle of the great state of New York!

I think this image achieves this effectively however the line of the wall at the bottom of the picture distracts the eye away from the true intention of the image! 

I would have also preferred this image to have been more centralised rather than off to the side as shown below.

Note to self: Always take a tripod!

My second image was taken because of my love for the sea and the beach, which my A Level personal investigation heavily concentrated on. This photo was taken at a low angle looking out to sea and is framed by the green rocks at the bottom of the page.

I like this image because of the stormy atmosphere leading into the horizon line, which is added to by the almost murky water foaming around the rocks.

On the same note I don't like this image because it is very one tone, there is little to no dimension in the photo. and the green algae on the rocks distracts away from the image.

 I really enjoyed discovering who I am as a photographer and I can't wait to embark on the rest of my time here at Norwich University of the Arts.

see you in the next post,

Rebecca