A fresh start.

Been a long time since I last posted on here, as well as this being a medium for my research part of my uni course I wanted it to be a way of documenting just me to be honest. Well that really hasn't happened....

I've realised that despite the fact that I've only concentrated on becoming a true photographer for not even a year I'm already taking this all farrrr too seriously! I'm constantly stressing about not getting any paid work and I'm only really taking photos on shoots with people who have approached me. So this is going to be no more, although obviously I'll welcome any paid work at all hehe, but I'm going to start just taking photos whenever I get an idea - I would do a 365/52 project but so many people have seen it turn into a chore which I don't want at all.

I don't quite know what I'll do yet, something I'll have to think about - so I'll keep you posted! Maybe just do a 365 but not every shot has to be a perfected set up image :)

Reconstructions

Copies

Final Images for Environmental Portraiture

Spanner in the works :(

Cause I was ill today I wasn't able to go to the tattooist to get photos :( and my deadline is tomorrow! Although my tutor gave me until Monday for the photos I won't be able to get to photograph a tattooist as I had to book in to go there today :(

I had a think, and I thought that maybe I could do something similar to tattooing but on the other end of the spectrum of 'urban art'. Photographic makeup is a highly successful craft and in my opinion is just a less taboo, and permanent version of tattooing!

For a photoshoot that I did the other week, I worked with a makeup artist called Emily Johnson and a model called Corrine. The theme of the photoshoot was a 'rock' theme which is how I've tied it to the urban side of the project. The images I will use are the behind the scenes shots that I took whilst Emily was doing hair and makeup. I will edit them in the same way I did for the graffiti artist.

Still so bummed about the tattooist though :(

Half way!

So I took the photos yesterday of the graffiti artist! As he wants to remain anonymous he shall be known as Dave. The location was absolutely amazing so I decided to do an establishing shot for the project, this is something I intend to do for the tattoo artist as well to keep it going as a flowing sequence. 

In the images I kept Dave anonymous, as to his wishes obviously but also found them to look more intriguing then having a clear view of his face. I think this is because unless you are a close friend of the artist, you don't know who has done that piece of graffiti so can only admire. This can also be said for tattoos, unless you either know the 'tattoo-ee' or go up and ask them then you can only admire the artwork really.

Right, so onto the actual images I took. I attempted to try and recreate Keegan Gibbs style where the subject had slight motion blur but obviously this was difficult without a tripod (the location involved a lot of climbing which meant it was tricky to take one with us). I then found this brilliant filter from a company called 'Alien Skin Software' called 'Exposure 3', it's something that I've wanted for a long time as I love the look and feel of traditional film but just haven't had the funds to buy the film and develop it commercially. 

So here are my two attempts to try and recreate Keegan Gibbs motion style.

To be honest I'm not 100% sure whether to discard them or not, any thoughts?

Then there was one that I really didn't like cause of the composition really...

I also found MASSIVE problems with focusing. My D3000, as much as I love it, just won't auto focus with my 50mm 1.8 which is soooooooo frustrating! So I found it very difficult to distinguish whether Dave was in focus or if it was the wall behind him. (You'll be able to see from my contact sheets Mike!)

For editing my chosen images, I used a technique that one of my favourite photographers Rosie Hardy talks about in a recent 'Wedding FAQ' post on her blog. She uses the free software called GIMP but from using both Photoshop and GIMP myself it was capable in both. Rosie talks about what she uses to control the tones and colours of her photographs,

"For tones, I just stick to curves. For colours I use curves too - occasionally, occasionally I will dodge/burn at a very low opacity with a large fuzzy brush but mainly on the BWs. I make selections, feather them and adjust them separately rather than adjusting the tones on the image as a whole. It gives you more control over how the picture comes out and allows you to create some depth."

I took this idea of making selections of separate elements of the images and adjusting the tones of them and found, although it was time consuming, it gave me so much more freedom to show what I want the viewer to look at and concentrate on.

I also used the Exposure filter in order to add some grain and 'roughness' to the images. Here are some before/after shots.

Oh yeah, I also did one last shot to show the final outcome, this is again something I hope to capture at the tattooists (or the stage its at when the client leaves at least).

Any feedback would be great! Thanks!

Project update.

Will be shooting my graffiti artist this weekend! (with a camera...)

And have booked to go and take photos of a tattoo start to finish at Boneshakers in Louth on the 14th... but I'm considering going to find somewhere in Lincoln as a back up seeing as though it's the day before my deadline!

Hmm.

Keegan Gibbs.

Well, while looking around for people who photograph graffiti and such I stumbled across this guy...

Keegan Gibbs is an american photographer, he photographs a variety of different subjects but has a huge chunk of his portfolio dedicated to photographing graffiti and their artists at work throughout city settings. Near enough all of his photos resemble a high iso/saturation almost lomography style (oooh, a possible style to look at?), although I haven't been able to find out if its through post production or that he is actually a fan of traditional film cameras.

As you can see, his photographs are fairly grainy, which adds to the atmosphere of the photograph in my opinion and I actually quite like it (although I think I will add grain and this general effect in post production so I can have control over it)

Not only do I absolutely love his graffiti work, but just the style and composition of the rest of his portfolio really inspires me. He keeps generally with the idea of capturing candid moments, like Rosie Hardy which is something I want to shoot rather than posed shots.

He's even done some tattoo shots!

So yeah, here's his blog as well.... his blog!

Just to finish off with a quote that I found while researching Gibbs, something that I would really like to relate to.

Civil:How would you like to be remembered…?

 Keegan:As a good friend. As a photographer I want to be remembered as someone who was able to shine light on subjects in a direction that was never seen before. 

Urban Art.

Urban art is a contemporary style of art that relates or depicts cities or city life created by artists who usually live in the city. The most common form of urban art is graffiti or street art and there has been of course a lot of controversy about whether this is really art or just vandalism. 

Graffiti have been used as more than just an expression of an artist's talents. Gorillaz is a band whose band members have been animated using a graffiti, urban style for example, and this style has been used increasingly by bands to appeal to their target audience.

As well as various advertising campaign, the area that most intrigues me is those trying to send a message through the graffiti, or as said before, demonstrating their talents. 

Banksy is probably one of the most famous graffiti artists. From Britain, Banksy uses dark humour in his stencil designs to challenge and ridicule usually political issues and therefore is famously a political activist. Banksy uses his work to spread his views rather than to gain an income, as he has never directly sold copies of his work himself, and this I feel really sums up street art and graffiti. It's about spreading their message, whether it's 'sticking it to the man' or just rebelling against the society that have branded this art as vandalism. Although there are obviously the vast majority that create graffiti in order to just be 'cool', for this project I'm going to focus on the more purposeful meaning of graffiti. Where there is an actual meaning.

This isn't the only form of 'graffiti' I want to look at, after seeing that the majority of street art and graffiti are created on unusual canvases (that we don't usually associate with traditional art anyway) I decided to look at other forms that could be considered as a form of graffiti in a sense. Tattooing is the marking made by inserting indelible ink into the skin and creating permanent markings for decorative or other reasons. This can be considered a form of graffiti and certainly urban art as again there is a strong stigma with having tattoos and people with many are associated with a certain stereotype. 

Again, there are very different reasons for people to have tattoos, just as there is for people who create street art. There are those who just simply want a tattoo for the aesthetics, to add to their look. Whereas there are also people who decide to get a tattoo for various reasons, such as a memorial, a transition to another stage of their life, or celebration of something or someone. Again, this deeper meaning of urban art is what I want to focus on for this project, even if it doesn't come across in the photos straight away, there will be stories behind them.

This isn't yet my definite approach to this project, as I still need to find who to photograph and look at existing styles of photography for this area.

xx

First steps.

As I said in my last post, I am going to look at different bigger areas that fall under craft rather than focusing on one specific craft. So, after a surf on deviantart here are some imagery of the different categories I identified as possibilities for my project...

'Heavy Duty' Crafts

Hobby Crafts.

Art/Other Crafts.

I absolutely love some of the ideas that I found that could be under the arts category! I've already identified however that I want to photograph subjects that people don't automatically think have a 'craft' so this eliminates the obvious painting a drawing. As a theme, I would really like to start looking at more urban art, so graffiti, tattoos, etc. 

This is definitely going to be my next step.

What to do, what to do..

I've finished and rendered both of my animations, yay! And started my research log for photography!

This is kinda what this blog is about, I'm hoping to just do my research in the form of blogs and then use them to make a pretty research log at the end! Figured it would probably be easier.

So, this is the beginning of my environmental portraiture project. I have to produce 12 photographs displaying someone in their 'environment' as it were, I also have a word to base this project round which is 'craft'. Initially, I thought about doing the most obvious and literal which is arts and crafts, but when I really thought about it and what craft actually means I realised that I could have quite a bit of fun with this! Straight off I decided I wanted to do candid style images, as I feel that these are the most effective in terms of environmental portraiture. I absolutely love Rosie Hardy's wedding and event photography, some examples on the right. What really stands out about them is the post-production editing and just how she captures the reality of the relationships between the people in the photographs. These are both factors that I want to include in my own work, although rather than capturing the relationships between people I would be capturing the love that the person has for their craft.

As for stimuli 'craft', throughout the project I need to constantly research different forms of what is considered a craft and perhaps unearth something that people do not instantly consider under this category, which is something that will definitely appeal to me throughout the project. I already have a good idea of what I would like to do, which is look at a category underneath the umbrella of 'crafts' and highlight two different practitioners through photography. Before I fully decide on this subcategory however, I will research into photography of crafts as well as more possible photographers to inspire me!

Beki

xx

A quick introduction.

Thought I might as well do a quick introduction for myself and this blog, so here goes...

I'm Beki Doig and I'm a university student! At this moment in time I'm just coming up to finishing my first year as Media Production student at the University of Lincoln but will be transferring to do Commercial Photography at Grimsby Institute in September - where I get to be a FRESHER again!

Kinda got the idea of doing this blog from my photography module tutor, as he has done one for his MA that he is doing (if I can find it I'll post a link) and basically thought that it would be a good way for me and you to see how my ideas for things unfold and progress as course-based projects or personal ones.

Well, I think that's all for now. I've got a new project for my photography module on 'environmental portraiture' which my next posts will most likely be on... never really know how to finish these posts to be honest... so toodle pip! And if you like, here's some links to see my work that I've already done...

Flickr Account
Deviantart
And probably the best to look at for my most recent work...
Facebook page