And finally……

The trumpets have sounded….the confetti has fallen…..the clapping has ended…..

No, I’m not talking about the EU Referendum, although I could fill several column inches, I’m talking about opening night to our end of year exhibition entitled “Iungent Nos” (for those currently scratching their heads, it means ‘We Unite’ in Latin).

It was a great success and after putting in the hard work and stress to put it together, as a group we were extremely proud and elated that it was triumphant. It also means that I can finally let you, my ever faithful subscribers (love to your faces), see the piece that I have been working on for my final major project.

So here it is. It is titled ‘I Cannot Be By Myself’

It is the story of Anna, who since she was a young girl claims to have been ‘visited’ by something not of this Earth. She has never told anyone of these incidents but now she is older, they seem to happening more and more frequently. She also knows that at some point, she will have to tell those closest to her because she knows that one day soon, she will be taken and may never return. Tonight may just be that night.

The piece is influenced by my appreciation and love of the work of Gregory Crewdson which I have mentioned before. As you may know, my main passion is street photography and for me, there is no better feeling than to out on the streets capturing real, unrehearsed reactions. However, throughout this process, I have learnt to both appreciate and respect other photographers and other genres and one of those photographers is Crewdson. His style is of course, polls apart from the instant reaction of street photography – some of his images taking 3 or more days to complete – but there is an inherent beauty and sense of total control in his pictures that immediately draws me in. It is for this reason that I wanted to try to make a picture, in his style, for my final piece.

I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Now onwards to the unknown……(“I thought you said this wasn’t about Brexit!!!!”)

It’s Victory for Harrison!

 

V FOR VICTORY !!!

They’ve all done it and we have admired them for it ! Winston Churchill…..Lewis Hamilton… John Lennon…Mahmoud Ahmadinejad….(?)

Ok maybe not the last one….

This week my friends, I can finally claim victory! My final piece for my college HND is finished, has been edited in Photoshop and Aperture and, as they say in Hollywood, in the can (not the can as in toilet, although the first few attempts have ended up there.)

And before you go scrolling to the bottom hoping to see it, well, I’m sorry to disappoint as you won’t find it there. Or indeed anywhere else on the blog. Not just yet anyway. I will put it on here after the final show has taken place, so be patient !

To say it has been a tough journey may be somewhat of an understatement. For those who regularly follow this blog (thank you, I love your faces), you may have read in previous blog posts that getting to this stage has been “eventful” to say the least. From starting out at the planning stage it was going to be an epic scene with forests and spotlights and American cars and great Hollywood lighting but it soon resulted in me having to come down from my lofty perch and the fantasy land that I live in most of the time (it’s great there by the way, you should stop by sometime), to the stark reality of a somewhat smaller scale scene with one camera, no lights, a very local location and my lovely neighbour as my model. Not quite Crewdson, but hey – we all have to start somewhere.

And here we are. I have a final image. I must say that I am very pleased with what I have. I find it very easy to be self-critical – name one photographer that isn’t – and throughout this project have constantly questioned myself; Is this the right idea? Have I chose the right topic? Am I good enough to do this? Should I have stuck with street photography? Why am I talking to myself……?

I think I have also learnt a lot about this type of photography too. It has certainly made me more appreciative of Crewdson. Sure – you could argue that he has an army of people to set up his locations for him and do his lighting etc. but he still has to have the initial idea, he has to perceive the first vision in his head of what he wants to portray. It may be why he is so meticulous when he on set. He know exactly to the millimetre how something should look because he has already seen it in his vision of the scene.

Going into my shoot, I had a vision of what I wanted my picture to look like and now, seeing the final version, it’s 99% spot on (it would have 100% but I hadn’t factored for a security light in the car park being brighter than the sun!). Getting to use a Hasselblad medium format camera was a blessing too. The picture quality is beyond expectation. (I’ll happily take a free one Hasselblad in return for this free advertising!)

Would I do this type of picture again? Absolutely. Definitely. In a New York minute. That’s not to say I would cheat on my first love of course! My first love will always be street photography but there is an overwhelming sense of achievement when working in this type of environment. Street photography gives you that hit of adrenalin when you are surrounded by people and the everyday but working on a landscape piece such as this is almost intoxicating. You have a this enormous blank canvas to work with and you control (almost) everything within it. I think I can understand why artists such as Crewdson and Jeff Wall et al. relish working with this form of photography. Every single item in the viewfinder is within your control. It is a mixture of still life and landscape photography coming together to make something truly incredible. What I wouldn’t give to be on set to see Crewdson at work…..

All I have to do is find someone with his mobile phone number….

Anyone?

Sometimes, it’s the small victories that count…

“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention…”

So, I’m in like, what it is now? Week 130 of my final major project? (it hasn’t been 130 weeks – it just feels like that) and I can report a small victory of sorts. After many test shots and endless editing attempts, I think I am finally getting close to something resembling what I want to present at the end of this marathon.

I can vaguely remember saying at the start of this project that I wanted to make a picture in the style of Crewdson. Of course, it can never be on his level but as I said in my last blog post, I don’t have his budget. But nevertheless, given what I had to hand, last night, I went out and shot a few pictures and after rinsing them under the cool waters of various editing packages, I think I’m finally getting somewhere. So here it is –

Now let me be clear that this is a TEST SHOT….ok? It is nowhere near being the end result. For a start, the final picture will have a woman in it !

But as the title of this blog suggests, I see this as a small victory. A small victory in the ongoing battle that is this final major project. But I shall succeed.

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.”

Finally, the penny has dropped…

There is something to be said for ambition.

Some of the most fantastic things in this world have happened because of ambition.

But sometimes, you have to admit that some things that you want to achieve cannot happen merely by ambition alone.

So the penny has finally dropped. And over the past few days, I have had to face that reality. At the outset of my final major college project, I had a plan. This plan was epic in its scale. Massive in its concept. Ambitious in its execution. But sadly, I have had to realise that because of a number of factors, my plan has now had to be scaled back to something more manageable; something you might call a little less ambitious.

As I mentioned in previous posts, my final picture is a landscape in the style of Gregory Crewdson. The final picture will still have a “Crewdson-esque” style to it – just not shot on the scale that I originally wanted. But do you know something? That’s ok with me. Of course, if I had a spare $20,000 lying around then sure, I’d hire a set designer and director of photography and shoot the picture on large format. But I don’t have that kind of cash. Believe me – I’ve checked down the back of the sofa and in those old shoe boxes in the attic and there ain’t nothin’ there!

During the planning for this picture I have come to realise that you can’t always get what you want. (And if you could, where would you put it?) Sometimes photography is about compromise and this project has taught me more about that than I was prepared to learn. When I’m out shooting street photography, if I don’t capture a certain image, I will nearly always have the chance to get another image with another person.

With this project it has been quite frustrating not being able to find a certain location or afford to hire a particular piece of equipment etc. but it has made me think about how these images are shot. And it has also given me a new-found appreciation for those photographers who work tirelessly to create such fantastic imagery. I love Gregory Crewdson’s work and am continually amazed at the sumptuous beauty and meticulous detail of his pictures.

I just hope that when it comes to shooting my picture, I can produce the image I want.

Gather around everyone…..time to channel my “inner Crewdson”…..

 

 

 

“Where Is Everybody?”

Look around you.

I’m not just talking about those who are nearest and dearest. Look further. Beyond your street. Beyond your town. Beyond your city, beyond your country and even beyond your world.

Where is everybody?

Doesn’t it seem odd that given all that space out there that it’s just us? Is there obvious proof that we could be alone in the Galaxy?

Now before you start thinking I’ve donned a tin foil hat and began x-raying all of my mail before opening it, I haven’t. And neither have I stumbled upon some top-secret classified information or just got back from a week’s vacation at “Area 51”.

I’m talking about something called Fermi’s Paradox. And it is a small part of what is forming my HND final major project at Solihull College. I’ll get onto this later…

For my project, I am creating a landscape piece inspired by the works of Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall. With Crewdson, his images can often be described as somewhat melancholic or even disturbing with the blurring of the boundaries between fiction and reality. This is thanks in no small part to the artist’s painstaking preparation of elaborate sets, meticulous lighting, and strong casting.

Jeff Wall is equally as meticulous in his planning and executing of his photography. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Wall described his work as “cinematographic” re-creations of everyday moments he has witnessed, but did not photograph at the time. “To not photograph,” he says, “gives a certain freedom to then re-create or reshape what I saw.”

By now you are probably wondering what all this has to do with being alone in the galaxy? Well, there is another one of Crewdson’s images that represents not only that theme but also the idea of creating something on a large-scale and something totally out of my realm of expertise. It is this image –

Crewdson gave this image no title but I think you can take two meanings from it. It could either be a helicopter shining a spotlight down onto this person (perfectly acceptable explanation), or it could be something else. Something more unexplainable. Maybe something extraterrestrial. Whilst the first possible meaning is fine, I don’t think it has much of a story there so naturally, I have gone with the second possible meaning and it is here where my FMP is going….

So – Fermi’s Paradox. What is it?

The Fermi Paradox seeks to answer the question of where the aliens are. Given that our star and Earth are part of a young planetary system compared to the rest of the universe — and that interstellar travel might be fairly easy to achieve — the theory says that Earth should have been visited by aliens already.

So with the Crewdson and Wall imagery in my head, swirling around like a Texas tornado and then added to that the idea of the Fermi Paradox, a plan started to form and the picture became just that little bit clearer.

The picture would have to be more than just a picture. I would have to create a back story, a narrative as to why the scene you will see is happening. I will need to explain how and why people claim to be abducted and how often, if you are to have any understanding of what’s happening here. And most importantly, who it is happening to. You will need to know that the person in my picture has experienced this type of thing before and you will know that she is not afraid this time.

Below is just a mock up and my first attempt but hopefully, when you see the final image, you will understand why she cannot be by herself…