Weekly Update #1

Work

If you haven’t made a serious list with a good plan of action on the Sunday expect to have a slow start to the week, which is what I had on Monday. 

I had a brief list formed in my head, firstly I was to get some prints window mounted, and back with mount card to give them a more solid feel for portfolio purposes, secondly, decide which three images from Nick’s shoot to print on 20”x24” paper, and thirdly, prepare things for the fundraising events such as the Thursday night film screenings  and the portrait head shots for the ‘Manchester to London’ project.

None of this actually went to plan, marking Monday the start of the week a fail, fortunately Tuesday was the day I was able to get on to the main tasks. I managed to complete the prints of Nick, with them looking like this sat along side the ones of Monika.

I was given the go ahead create duplicates of the same large print once I had the right colour balance sorted out. I always create three prints there and then of one image just for future opportunities, saving me the time of having to get into the darkroom again, and waste paper getting it right all over again.

Just as the darkroom printing of the Monika prints was difficult so was Nick’s. Partly reason to why Monday failed for me, I underestimated the concentration required in printing something of this scale and tricky. 

Looking at these lined up together, they work quite well. Though they appear as a series of photographs here there is a real level of intimacy being revealed in each image. Chances are I will only be able to have a selected couple of prints up for an exhibition, however, looking at these if I had the opportunity to exhibit the whole project I would  grid them as the picture above, very Eija-Liisa Ahtila like. 

Daniel Meadows 

Wednesday, perhaps one of the most hectic days I have had to experience this year so far. It saw the arrival of a guest speaker, great documentary/portrait photographer Daniel Meadows, who's work now veers toward multimedia elements such as short digital stories.

Inspirational talker, and someone we can relate to as a former student of the Manchester School of Arts, which back in 1970 was called Manchester Polytechnic, ha.

The photographs here are all taken from Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s 

Untitled
June Street, Salford, February-April 1973

Brighton, Sussex. May 1974

Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria 1974

All pictures are copyright © Daniel Meadows except for the June Street, Salford which is copyright © Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr.

That day also saw me take the lead in photographing a keen student from the Royal Northern College of Music, who needed his portrait taken for an upcoming performance in the college. Due to the incredible (almost ridiculous) amount of people in and about the studio this week I had no choice but to do the shoot in the daylight studio. Which was a very odd set up for me as all the other shoots had taken place in the regular studio, not to mention, I had never used the daylight studio before! Getting the right white balance was the hardest part, however, in the end with the help of Luke and Martyn we managed to get this student what he wanted! In 30minutes!

Currently trying to make sense of my ideas with the reality, dealing with not so long ago scanned negatives of a supposedly completed set.

The editing process is by far the most tedious. Tedious and you over think your work in general, not the best of times. Contact sheets of the shoots to follow.

Selective Colour Correction - Prints

After my films have been developed and dried, I usually put the negative through the Hassleblad scanner, so that for starters I can access the images digitally. It is also a good method for me to figure out which frames I am going to use to make darkroom prints out of. Almost like a digital contact sheet. You might add, what is the point in doing that, either stick to one or the other. For me, I find it practical to do so.

Throughout this current project I have planned to make the prints myself and frame them myself, so the digital images you saw before of Monika Sur, were just scans of the negative.

Reasons for doing this is for exhibition purposes. I want a certain aesthetic to come through with the images when they are displayed. 

So, I have been working on making prints of the three images of Monika. The film I used for the shoot was a Fujichrome film which was cross processed. It was also around two months out of date. 

Most times the colours on these films do tend to go a little bit off, but not that drastic considering the time.

As the portraits were shot in the studio the whole light set up was artificial, however, what has made the printing process even more difficult is how off the colours was. There also was a line of Magenta which appeared on the arm of Monika that would deem the print a fail. 

Through quite a bit of time I managed to get somewhere with it through the method of selective colour correction. Selective colour is something that can be altered in photoshop in about 5 minutes  - this process took me days to accomplish (correctly). 

I have plans to get these framed at the sizes they are. I want to create the frames myself, and I have been thinking about it on and off now, almost subconscious; just how I want to display the photographs.

I would like to cover the frames in ivy vines. I wasn’t sure this idea could be possible but I have been assured it is doable. The reason for this is because I am currently working with the title for this piece of work, and though at the moment I have entitled it Walls, that is subject to change. It is to do with the barriers that relationships produce, so therefore I would like something to represent that. The title, the images, and even the way the images are displayed. I would like them to all come together as one WHOLE piece.

Manchester

Came across more old work from the vault (2009/2010)
One day over 100 bikers (I am sure) tore through the city, some jumping red lights. I had my camera on me at the time and just snapped what I could.

London/Manchester - Old Work Revisited

Dog Walkers - The Fallowfield Loop

The Fallowfield Loop is an interesting pathway that runs south of Manchester. Moving from the South West it pretty much run up toward the North East of the city, and I was fortunate to live right in the middle of it. 

During Summer 2010 on various cycle trips up and down the stretch I noticed the number of people taking their dogs for walks, all various breeds, sizes and shapes but I kind of appreciated the community that was there between the walkers. 

It was this I wanted to photograph, and also look into the relationship between dog and human. I later found out about an artist, Keith Arnatt, who's work in the 70's looks at this same thing and other series. 

Here is mine, a small series that is not reached its peak, I want to continue working it and make a hardback book of it within the next year.