Vimeo Video Festival Awards

Vimeo is much like Youtube but has videos at alot better resolution so you get alot of professional film makers, photographers, animators, and artists using it as their preferred video host. Vimeo is currently running there annual awards where anyone can vote for a video they like, and there are multiple categories ranging from sport, animation, documentary, fashion, and inspirational captures.

It is certainly worth looking through each category as I'm sure something will take your interest. This video below on light painting takes the photographic technique a step further as the creators take to the street and shoot a series of images with a huge light source other than a torch as most amateur photographers try the practise with.

Analogue v Digital (part 2)

Not just in photography but in music it has gone from analogue to digital, vinyl records to digital MP3's. But There is one exception, dance music such as "Drum and Bass" and "Dubstep" is produced digitally on computers but then put to a vinyl (analogue) format.

In Benga's latest video a reconstruction of the waveform of the track which would appear on a computer screen when being produced. The video uses 960 vinyl all cut to size to create the wave and photographed after each vinyl is placed into order. Using stopmotion instead of CGI or other visual effects gives a more real feel to the video and obviously alot of time went into it.

Glitch/Corrupt photos

Glitch art is made up photos that has been corrupted on purpose by a programme called Recylism which plays with the 1s and 0s that make up the image and corrupts them to leave these end results.

All photos taken from Flickr group Glitch Art
http://www.flickr.com/groups/glitches/

I think this idea of corrupting photos makes for really interesting images, it remains me of Bridget Riley's pop art style images using solid blocks of bright base colour.

Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery was the first exhibition of the day, it features works by sixty portrait photographers from around the world. The competition is open to anyone and has 6000 submissions from professionals to amateurs and students.
   http://www.npg.org.uk:8080/photoprize/site11/index.php - link to NPG's website page on the Taylor Wessing Prize.

Antonio Olmo's photo of friends mourning the loss of their friend to a stabbing is a particularly moving image I feel, they are stood around the shrine to their friend which has been decorated with bright flowers and they are dressed in probably their usual dark tracksuits and other clothing but contrasts with the flowers as if it were a funeral. But are their thoughts really with their deceased friend when they are texting away on their phones.

Darren Hall's photo of a woman moving through a crowd brings out ideas of individuality in a busy and crowded space. In the photo she stands out more than anyone else in the scene due to the lighting, It reminds me off the work by Philip-Lorca Dicorcia which also follows this idea of street photography portraiture with the model not knowing they are being photographed.

Dylan Collard's entry was taken from his series of images called 'Up My Street' in which he photographed local shops which were own by independent business people. I like how when I saw the image I thought of a road in my home city in Coventry which has similar small shops in which are being closed due to lack of business due to larger stores taking customers away.

http://www.dylancollard.com/#/portfolio - click for more of his series from 'Up My Street'

David Stewart's photo I liked because it looks at a social scene that I can relate to. While being at university the most mundane things become something interesting, boredom is a huge factor. So this social setting of the girl cutting this lads hair I find rather interesting.

Don McCullin at Tate Britain

I know Don McCullin as a war photographer and have seen his photographs of homeless people in many photographic books. He also has alot of books published showcasing purely his own work.
   When looking round the exhebition at the Tate even though its in one room I feel like it was split into three genres, War, Homeless portraits and Landscape.

Don McCullin is most known for his photographs documenting war and international conflicts. In the exhibition the photos on show were taken from the series in which McCullin was in Berlin, Germany 1961, he photographs a city which hasn't fully recovered from the second world war and is still occupied by a military force. The photos portray a city at unease and put across a tension which must have been felt all over the city at the time.

This image is the first image that springs to mind when Don McCullin is mentioned, I first saw it when I was at school studying GCSE photography and looked through his book " Don McCullin - In England ". This photo was taken as part of his commentary on poverty in England. The Portraits of homeless people in the exhibition are my favourite I think they stand out as this is something you can see in any city and in any country, you choose to ignore homeless people or turn away from them. Looking at these photos you are confronted with these people that struggle through life and almost forced into starring straight into their eyes and feel sympathy for them.

Don McCullin is a favourite photographer of mine, but personally I don't really like his landscapes, I feel like they are too high contrast and made to look more dramatic than the scene really is. Maybe its to put across a message, but I feel like his other work is a lot more interesting and speaks more to me.

'Photography isn’t looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.' - Don McCullin

Analogue V Digital

http://digbmx.mpora.com/photo-ops/ricky-adam-destroying-everything/

read the full interview and see what your opinions are on the matter.

I must agree with some of the comments in the interview, like how shooting analogue giving you less shots so you take your time to think about lighting and composition, with digital you shoot then look at the screen and decide what needs changing with the photo. Maybe it’s down to a modern day society that expects everything now; being able to shoot photos on your phone or DSLR and edit them on the go allows this quick process that everyone can handle. Analogue may not fit into how people or consumers lead their lives anymore, but to a photographer who wants to explore his practice and idea’s film will hopefully always be an option.

I think having training in analogue photography certainly throws your view over to how much thought provoking and cared for analogue photography is, especially when you have the facilities available to you like darkrooms and processing machines. But from my own personal experience leaving college where I had a colour and black and white darkroom to use and going on my gap year having little money I went back to using mainly digital again. So a lot of my portfolio is digital based, and I don’t think the photos would look that much different if I had shot them on film, I believe you should use what is readily available to you at the time weather it be a 35mm camera you got from a car boot or a DSLR worth over a grand as long as you can make work and show what you are capable of.

Skateboard Documentary

Even though skateboarding is a sport I think the photography goes beyond sport photography, the people that do it come from all backgrounds and have such different characteristics but are pulled together through this piece of wood with wheels. Skateboard photography is being able to capture a trick with perfect timing and make sure you get the right angle, but theres the huge social aspect of it. Photographers have been able to capture this life style over the past 40 years. Documenting the way skaters live, act, and socialise with each other. Ive been looking more deeply into what makes skateboarders brake through this stereo type of a teenage sport that they grow out of, so I've been looking through all the skate books I own and one stands out which is "Mike Blabac: the art of skateboard photography."

This book shows the progression of skateboarding through Mike Blabac's Career from shooting with 35mm and medium format to using Nikon DSLR's and in this time technology might have evolved but the aspect of skateboarding and being a skateboarder hasn't changed and it is shown in this book with a huge documentation of the sport and the people over his whole career.

http://theberrics.com/shoot-all-skaters/mike-blabac.html - link to a video talking about his work.

Colour Priniting

Having a gap year after college and becoming unfamiliar with the colour darkroom has left me wanting to get back into printing again. My other university project called Representation is based around portraiture and colour printing so this has given me the opportunity to print. I'm uploading a few prints from a recent workshop I did in the studios, the idea is simplicity itself, allowing the models in the photos to put across themselves without overly posing or showing to much emotion.

Nathan

Holly