Fright Night

I have been to the National Forest maize maze in Tatenhill a few times. Last year they organised a one night fright night on Halloween. This year they are building on that and going for 4 nights and making it bigger, better and much more scarier.

I'm excited to get the chance to photograph the event this year.

Last halloween I photographed a halloween party and the photographs turned out great because they were so natural. There is something about halloween that creates the perfect atmosphere to photograph.

Either people are dressed up and act to the camera instead of shying away or people are there to have fun.

Halloween 2009

This year I will be documenting the 4 nights of fright night. I will be taking photographs for advertising and documenting the events. I will then make money from any photographs I sell to visitors of the maze, with the aim of next year setting up something more professional.

It's sort of a bit of fun this year.

Today I was roped into making zombie scarecrows. My workspace was a barn full of cows, working with chicken wire and straw. I came out covered in cuts, fake blood and straw. I'm not sure who looked scarier, me or the zombie.

I'm happy to get involved from the start. I like that I'm not just photographing the event, by making things and being a part of the creative process it automatically makes you think about how you can make your photographs work better to suit the event.

I was thinking of how I could document this. Black and white or colour? Portraits or documentary?

My aim is to do a bit of both. I want the natural shots of people at the event but it would also be interesting to get some portraits, particularly of the actors who will be working and any visitors that choose to dress up.

Laura Pannack did a collection of photographs based on halloween. They were portraits of children in there fancy dress costumes. The natural background she has set them against is interesting and adds to the effect of the photograph. I could do something similar. It's going to be dark and very low light, I will need some artificial light.

That Book!

I'm aiming for Wednesday to send my book off, in the hope that it will be produced and delivered back in time for the following Wednesday.

I've been struggling with not feeling confident about my idea, but conscious that there is not much time to this assignment.

I carried on taking photos for a book about different chairs and the environment that they are found in. It's slowly growing on me and beginning to get ideas on how I can improve it.

However, yesterday I received a text from someone I've not heard from for years. I had thought about trying to find him, to photograph him for a while now.

So I arranged to photograph him today.

I knew straight away I wanted to photograph him using disposable cameras. He is not the most confident of people and suffers from paranoia. I know that he would act differently if I turned up with a big digital camera.

If I used disposable cameras he would hopefully forget they were there. Disposable film would be better for the look I'm after too. I want them to have a soft focus and be grainy and imperfect.

I finished photographing about 4pm and rushed back to get them processed. An hour later I picked them up and scanned them in.

Brian Griffin Face To Face

I was in Birmingham this morning and decided to head over to Brian Griffin's outdoor exhibition, Face to Face. The exhibition is a collection of portraits he has taken throughout his photographic career.

There were a few portraits of his that I had seen before like the St.Pancras photos but a lot of them were new to me. I liked his black and white portraits, in particular the ones that are a little unusual. There were a few long exposure portraits that have created a sort of double exposure look to them. I also liked this portrait of Brian May.

It's much different looking at an exhibition outside. Especially on a sunny day, when your looking at a portrait that is attached to a shiny, reflective white background. You get blinded!

Jon Burgerman

So, on Wednesday we had our first visiting lecture of the year, Jon Burgerman!

I realize that Wednesday was 4 days ago now but this is the first chance I've had to write up about it. I've been working on a couple of paid jobs and been finishing off the work for the typography assignment due this coming Monday.

All that happily sorted but I've been struggling with the book assignment, which is frustrating me because I'm always thinking of projects that I want to make books around but being given a deadline in only a few weeks has made my brain go to mush because I automatically want to work on these preexisting ideas I have but I feel that they need time in order for the photography to give justice to the subject.

Jon coming in was some much needed inspiration!

His extremely placid attitude and behaviour towards life is infectious. He is confident about his work and his abilities. I noticed he didn't speak about what his work meant, just where his work has taken him and where his work is/has been.

Is that because his work speaks for itself?

but what does his work mean?

I later thought about where I would like my work to go, what direction, where do I want to see my photography being used and in what way?

Documentary, commercial, fine art?

With his work Jon Burgerman seems to have not even thought about these lines and merged them all together...how many artists can have there work displayed in galleries all over the world and then have the same print reproduced onto Pepsi cans?

Clever man! www.jonburgerman.com

Statutes Fair

On Tuesday I went out to photograph the Statutes in Burton. I headed out before the stalls and rides had opened. As soon as I went out I saw an elderly lady struggling to get past one of the large rides. I could see her coming down the street looking fragile and small compared to these large bright attractions, she was clearly a local continuing a weekly routine trying to navigate her way around these obstacles. I saw her reach for the handrail and took the shot.

I was very much walking around the fair and observing what was going on, looking for interesting things that could possible happen or were taking place. It was quiet in the town but I saw a group of school kids heading towards me. I was stood next to a trailer full of sweets. I thought something may happen. They stopped to admire the sweets and this one child just stood and stared at me. I suppose it would make more sense if the kid was the other way around, facing the sweets.

I always seem to be drawn to taking photographs that are packed full of detail and reflection give so much detail and create interesting photographs.

This final photograph I took was a portrait, which is completely different to all the other photos I took. I looked at my photographs and that of the other students and I didn't feel that mine had any strength to them. The only thing that grouped them together was that they were all taken at the fair.

If you looked at some of these photographs on there own, you wouldn't think they were about the fair at all. When I went out to take these photos I was not thinking anything about trying to group the photos together, I wasn't thinking of a meaning to them. I'm sure if I had gone out and taken loads of photos I could have picked 5 out that had the same underlining meaning or feeling but that shouldn't be the way it works. In professional practice that may not be possible.

I think that during the college course I took photographs and then thought about them afterwards, what they meant and why I took them and then went out to re-shoot.

I have clearly done that again with these photos. I'd like to try and work the other way, to go out with an intention of knowing exactly what I want to photograph and getting it, for when we are given such short deadlines.

This could be why I have found myself struggling with ideas for the book. I'm aware it's a short deadline and I've been thinking too hard about, worried that all the photos I take are not so good or not knowing what to do with them. Instead I should be photographing and then process them in order to get the idea.

Devour

I have completed my typeface for the typography assignment. My final idea involved me creating a template of my font and submerging the end of it into a pool of red ink.

In order to create a timelapse documentary of me making this font I set up a tripod to photograph every time I saw a significant change in the typeface.

Devour Typeface Timelaspe

Now that I have researched into typography and experimented making my own typeface I have began to think about it a lot more and will take into consideration what I have learnt into projects that I do in the future. In particular the book assignment that I am currently also working on.

This assignment, being the first one on the degree course that needs to be handed in has really helped me to get into the intense way of working that I feel is needed for this level.