Unit 25 preliminary shoot

Being around Salisbury allowed me to kill a few birds with one stone. In that I was able to do some preliminary work for my Unit 25 Final Major Project.

Before leaving, I had identified a number of sites that Nirex had looked at for storage of Nuclear Waste. These included Old Sarum. Initially, I was amazed that this historic (and very public) site had even been considered for the storage of Nuclear Waste. But with further investigation and a look at the map, it became clear that the actual storage location was an MOD barracks to the East with the same name, albeit within a mile or so.

Nevertheless, the images I made seem to capture certain ideas which may be interesting to pursue at other locations.

I will upload the images to Flickr, post a link to them along with some examples here in due course.

Winter Solstice

I've been away these past few days at something I've been meaning to catch for a while - the Winter Solstice at Stonehenge.

Not such an early start as the summer, and apparently a lot less people too (which seems logical), it was a misty morning, with the sun only just making it above the haze right after the actual event had passed. A good atmosphere and my kind of people made it very memorable indeed, and I'd like to go back some time soon - maybe for the Summer?

Pseudo-Celebrity spotting: King Arthur (for it is he); that Druid-bloke with the Afro from 'Surviving the Iron Age'; Julian Richards (archaeologist and presenter of 'Meet the Ancestors'); the Arch-Druid of Glastonbury (my brother's mate).

On the photo front - well, I took a lot, but due to a stupid tendency to stick to 100 ISO at all costs, there are not as many interesting images as I would have liked.

I have uploaded a selection of my photos to Flickr, and most of the above characters appear there - with a bizarre one of Julian Richards taking a picture of me taking a picture of him etc ...

Incidentally, Tom Goskar's pictures of the same event are far superior to mine.

Unit 10 essay complete

It suddenly dawned upon me last week how incomplete my various projects were. So it's a relief to complete this essay. It was also really hard to keep to 750 words. I could have probably written 10 times that given the depth of my research, and my knowledge of the subject (the Situationists).

And I had to rely upon books and the like for most of the images - there isn't as comprehensive an archive of them on the Internet, as there is of their writings. But at least it's done now.

Dérive pictures

I finished my Dérive project - if I knew of a way to post it so it could play here, I would. But for now, I'll have to be content with the images used for it.

So to aid this, I have posted the images to my Flickr page as a set.

Unit 10 presentation

When I first got the Brief for this, I thought - 'what am I going to put in it'? We're required to give a presentation of my work, exploring our 'working practice' and the 'influence our research has had on it'. My mind was pretty blank.

But then I spent some time poring over old prints, negatives, slides etc, and quite quickly found that I had a fair few images that I was more than a bit proud of. And I then had to spend a lot of time over a short period scanning the bloody things in!

But I am really pleased with how it came out. It has really inspired me to keep going and motivated me to pursue my ideas.

The second part of the presentation was about our Final Major Project brief. Nothing executed yet, but I have plans to get things underway in a week or so.

The images used in the presentation are posted on my Flickr page here.

Unit 10 - a Dérive

Talk about leaving it to the last minute. It's my problem, my lethargy, lack of motivation. So with virtually no time left, I had to get off my arse and set about completing my Unit 10 'artwork'.

I had done a lot of research about the Situationists for my Essay, and this brief had to be an outgrowth of that. This was hard, because I knew from my research that the Situationist idea was to destroy art itself, as part of a programme to transform society. A society without a bourgeoisie could not contain art as we know it now, since art itself is a bourgeois construction.

The obvious choice seemed to be the Dérive - the Situationist technique of semi-conscious wanderings, a pre-revolutionary way of experiencing the urban environment.

The Dérive these days is almost interchangeable with another originally situationist concept, Psychogeography. Plenty of self-proclaimed modern psychogeographers have made the activity an end in itself, free of any radical or revolutionary aspects.

When I looked into it, I found that Guy Debord (a key Situationist figure) had been scornful of the idea of it being too spontaneous - he saw chance as being naturally conservative. So a plan was in order. More research yielded many people using algorithms to conduct their derives. These are a series of repeated changes of direction - for example, 'first left' - 'first right' - 'second left' - 'repeat'. So that would be in mine.

Themes to explore:

Gentrification. It's something that has been a feature of Manchester of many years now, and I have been concious of it ever since my sojourn at Polytechnic in the early 1990s.

The Nuclear issue. Central Manchester has its own atomic bunker from the 1950s (very few people know about this). It ties in with my Unit 25 idea. The Sociology department at the MMU used it as a reference point in their own experiments.

The Hacienda. Anthony H Wilson's former nightclub, now yuppie flats. The name came from a Situationist essay, and Wilson had sought to use Situ ideas as well as accumulate their artworks, being the Bourgeois vampire that he is.

So those were my ingredients. I shot both consciously and unconsciously - shooting from the hip, without knowing how things would come out. There was a lot of repetition. In the end, the Dérive concentrated on the bunker and the surrounding area - Wilson will have to wait for another time.

Now I have to decide what to do with the resulting images.

Unit 17 - Location shoot

I had decided that the location shoot should take place in Central Manchester.

Only one model for this shoot today, but we're both nervous enough about it. I had originally envisaged placing the models in a particular context for this shoot: mundane activities (shopping, drinking at cafes, looking in shop windows etc) in and around the town centre. The contrasts and apparent absurdities between their look and their situation would be clear.

On the day, the plan changes somewhat. I'm not sure if it's nerves, but I am aware that it is possible to be over-ambitious. It is sometimes better to stick to relatively few ideas and concentrate upon the possibilities within each one. So with this in mind, we initially stick to some alleyways behind the Printworks. We try out various poses, making the most of the surroundings, including graffiti etc, and making use of colour negative and slide films (to be cross-processed).

We later switched to the 'Northern Quarter' and made use of more graffiti and artwork on walls in and around the alleyways. I tried out some Tungsten film with a filtered flash, the idea being to have the model in daylight and the surroundings Blue.

My model attracted plenty of looks from passers-by, but only when we moved between shoots - most of the time we were away from the main thoroughfares. I admire her for her courage.

There were some test shots with digital, and I may post these, because there's no sign of progress at college with the absent staff member.

Unit 19: Press & Photo Journalism

4 Briefs here:

- Essay comparing 2 contrasting magazines or newspapers.

- Photo Story, (minimum 8 images) similar to the magazines/newspapers we have chosen.

- Short deadline A - 2 images on the demise of the corner shop (for an imaginary MEN story).

- Short deadline B - 2 'grab' images (a la Paparazzi) of a subject appearing at a window & leaving a building.

Crumbs...

Unit 12: Advertising Photography

So we're getting the remaining briefs tonight, in order to give us plenty of time to plan and execute them.

For the practical part of the Brief, we have to produce some shots for an advertising campaign with one of three particular pitches. It will lead a to a mock up for a magazine advert. There's a mixture of location and studio.

Research is also involved - 500-750 words on different aspects of the genre.

I hate advertising...

Unit 17 presentation

Tuesday night was my presentation for Unit 17 - I'd chosen to share the photographer with the essay, to make things that bit easier. Easy clue in the picture - (Not So) Super Mario (Testino). Well, at least in my view. From the research I'd been doing, it was also a critique of Fashion Photography. Testino fits because he illustrates many of the contradictions and tensions of the genre, and also the industry, so well. It's not a type of photography I have a lot of time for really - mainly because it isn't a distinct genre (it borrows from everything else), and also because it is usually goes all out to celebrate the lives and preoccupations of the Bourgeoisie.

The way it went I felt like saying 'OK, I'll get my coat...'. With hindsight, it might have been a lot easier to just pick a photographer I had some time for and gone on about how I liked his pictures.

Unit 17 - Studio Accessory shoot

Last night, I used the studio again to shoot the required accessory images for Unit 17. I wanted to try to incorporate ideas of shadows - a Nosferatu like atmosphere. So I tried, and failed, to use Tungsten light - too bloody hot and powerful. Instead, I used the modelling lamp of the flash heads which is an equivalent.

My model is my fellow student - but we stuck to detail last night anyway - specifically 'accessories' like rings and the like.

I shot 4 rolls of film and managed a variety of shots and ideas. I only need one image, so there should be plenty here to choose from.