Feeling a bit Nan Goldin-esque...



Nan goldin -  My Bed, Hotel La Louisiane, Paris

I purchased a pack of the Impossible Project polaroid black and white film 600ASA which has 8 slides in a pack - I got it earlier this year and have been waiting for the right moment to use it. Then I forgot about it for months and it was only about a week ago that I thought about it after having a browse through my polaroid book by Taschen. I have an old polaroid camera that I bought in a vintage shop in Sheffield two years ago and I thought Christmas Day would be the perfect time to finally test it out. It is a straightforward camera, its a shove the film in and point and shoot - it has a built in flash and there is no focus control which reminded me of the work of Nan Goldin where she doesnt look to focus her image, in many ways it enhances the truthfulness of her images.

When photographing I kept in mind her style and you can see two of my photographs below (the rest can be found on my Flickr page).

My Bed, Drakes Park

 

Jack

Buckland Abbey Calendar

If you click on window number 2 on the picture you'll see one of my photographs I took this year at the Buckland Abbey Craft Fair - it's not a very good photo, they could have chosen a better one but hey I'm just happy that they credited me for once!http://ntsouthwest-seasons.org.uk/christmas/

It ended with a little dance...

My application was successful to study in Budapest next year!! I heard back in late November so I have left it a month to actually talk about it on my blog as it has been a hectic term at college. But here I am, a few days after Christmas and I finally have some time to myself.
I was at work when my friend called to say we had both got in and the office was rather surprised when I came out of the kitchen doing a little dance and looking incredibly happy - they eventually got the reason for my ecstatic mood when I had settled down. I now have about a month and a half to find some accommadation and prepare to leave home for 4 months. I really think this trip is going to develop my photography as it has produced so many amazing photographers like Moholy-Nagy, Brassai, Munkasci, Barlogh - I could go on! And the Moholy Nagy Institute of Art and Design is a very prestigious university so to have that on my cv is an extra string to my bow and I have always been interested in the history of the Ottoman Empire, so to see the city itself has been a dream of mine for years and now I'll be able to live and photograph the city for 4 months! My next update on Budapest may be in February when I am about to leave so until then....

Buckland Abbey Xmas Craft Fair 2012

What has felt like an incredibly long weekend is finally over! Thats not to say I haven't had a great time because I have loved being at Buckland Abbey all weekend, especially on this rare occassion where we have had two days of great weather. But I am rather exhausted and am looking forward to a good night's sleep tonight, once I have finished editing!

Anyway I shall tell you a bit about my rather fun filled busy weekend; it started as a simple request from my mother - she asked if I would take a few photos of her stall (The Wet Felting Company) which I happily agreed to (the loving daughter that I am). So we get up at 7.45am and we get to Buckland Abbey for about 10am ready to roll!
Now as you know I am already a Contributing Photographer for the Abbey and so I thought maybe I would send them some of the pictures at the end of the day just to help them out - by the time it gets to 11am I have been roped into being the official photographer for the weekend and they also roped me into making a film too!! So I am there with a couple of different lenses, 2 cameras round my neck and a big job to do!
I was rather worried (and still am) that I will have all this editing of the film to do alongside a college deadline due in just over a week so Saturday night I was up until 1am editing all the photos from Day One and thankfully it's only taken me 3 hours to edit Day Two's images. I have been told the photos will be used on a load of the advertising/some calenders and wherever else they want to use it so it will be great exposure for my work.

Also some other good news is that a panoramic photograph I took a few months ago has been put permanently on all the signs at Buckland Abbey (see photo below):

Of course you will want to see a few pictures from the weekend so here are a few to keep you interested: 
 

Buckland Abbey and it's colourful winter vegetables



Kate Packer and her wire work 



Bere Pottery - oh and my photograph is on their business card :) woop woop

A beautiful sunset to finish Day One



All photographs belong to Sarah Packer, do not use without my permission (see copyright in blogspot footer)



WireWork - Small Studio

Had a commission from my sister, Kate Packer, to take some photographs for her entry into the Devon Guild of Craftsmen. She needed a catalogue of photographs with a range of detail and whole product shots. I booked the small studio at college and used a white background, 2 macro lenses and a Nikon D800E with two 150 arri lights and softboxs. I place each light to the side of the product so that the light didnt reflect off the glass and I changed my camera angle too.

In terms of post production I just needed to cool down the white balance and up the brightness and saturation. Here are the photos she picked for her entry:

There are a few things I would have changed such as the lenses, for the whole product shot I should have got a standard 50mm lens rather than using a macro. Also the shadows on the inside of the boxes were very hard to remove, maybe could have moved the light around more?

But Kate is happy with them so that's all that matters and she wants to use the rest of them for a book she is making. Overall, a successful shoot and quite proud of myself for overcoming the glass reflection issue!

Tracey Elliot-Reep

TRACEY ELLIOT-REEP SEMINAR

http://www.traceyelliotreep.com/



"If you wait for perfect conditions, you'll never get anything done"

 So I went to this seminar earlier this month at Plymouth College of Art about Tracey Elliot-Reep and her travels with her horses and her photography. As soon as I looked at her website and found out that she travelled I just had to go - because I am a sucker for a good travel story - and she had plenty!
She doesn't stay in hotels or anything like that she just rides her horses and camps, so quite hardcore if I say so myself, especially when she was doing it for 6 months at a time. She said of it "if you have visions and dreams you can endure...uncomfortable-ness."
And I wondered how she had the money to travel, Tracey said she'll raise money in the UK from selling cards, calendars and books and then with that money she then leaves for a few months to travel - so she never saves any money for the future, which is something I do myself and will probably continue to do!
"I've designed the life I want to live with my love of travel, horses and photography".

She has 9 horses around the world - America, New Zealand, the UK, Greece etc. She uses digital now but used to use colour transparencies and often recruits someone she meets to take a photo for her. She currently uses a Nikon D3000 camera.

Tracey was a lovely person and definately someone I could look up to and get some good tips in terms of travelling. Her photography was good although I am not a huge fan of 'animals in the landscape' shots, but love her photographs of the locals she meets.

Pre - Raphaelites Exhibition at the Tate Britain

I attended this exhibition 2 days after the Opening Gala for The Signature Art Prize on the 27th September 2012. I had planned to go to this a few months in advance because I am a bit of a PRB (Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) fan! I had only seen the wonderful works of Millais, Burne-Jones and Rossetti in books and now was the opportunity to see them in the flesh - and god were they huge!!

I loved the pure aesthetic beauty of some of the work and the poetry and story telling side of it was a huge appeal. What struck me most, was the brilliance of colour in the paintings, midnight blues, rust reds and deep bottle greens, all set against ornate frames. The subject matter focuses on nature, religion, love and poetry by Keats, Dante, Tennyson and Morte De Arthur by Thomas Malory. 

The art was seperated into 7 rooms/categories; Origins and Manifesto which included the work of John  Everett Millais and his controversial piece 'Isabella' 1848-9 as well as his beautiful Mariana (1851) which illustrates a poem, of the same name, by Tennyson and her positioning shows what appears to be a sexual yearning which mirrors the lines of the poem displayed on a plaque next to the painting;

          She only said, 'My life is dreary,
      He cometh not,' she said;
    She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,'
      I would that I were dead!'



Mariana (1851)



Mariana was incredibly beautiful to see up close, the colouring is astounding and the blue of her gown looked like you could reach out and touch it and it would feel like velvet! Obviously one of the well known signature styles of the PRB was their way of painting the colour directly onto a pure white canvas to make the colour vivid and bright - compared to other painters of the time this certainly made the PRB stand out.

Astarte Syriaca (1877) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is on the poster advertising the exhibition and it was much larger than I imagined it to be, it was the height of my living room floor to the ceiling! Kind of takes your breath away...

Anyway going back to the seven categories, there was 1. Origins and Manifesto, 2. History, 3. Nature, 4. Salvation, 5. Beauty, 6. Paradise and 7. Mythologies.

They included a number of significant loans, not least Holman Hunt's Lady of Shalott which has not been seen in the UK since the Festival of Britain in 1951 and has been loaned by the oldest museum in the US, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut.



The Lady of Shalott (1886-1905) by William Holman Hunt

 The Nature part wasn't much of an appeal to me as it was mostly landscape covering the work of Ford Madox Brown etc, so I had a quick peruse and then moved on to the next rooms. The room called Paradise had work by William Morris such as a cabinet he made depicting various women being kind and cruel to animals and also his Peacock and Bird carpet 1885-90.


Ophelia by John Everett Millais, one of the best-known pre-Raphaelite paintings, is moved into place at Tate Britain

There was also a few photographs by Julia Margret Cameron who was influenced by the Pre Raphaelite movement - her positioning and soft focus portrayed romanticism that is a major part of the P-R movement.
The Pre Raphaelites were actually very inspired by photography, especially the detail and the flattening of the image, which can be seen in the paintings of the landscapes and some of the religious paintings.
The image that I fell in love with though had to be Lady Lilith by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the golden red hair, the busy background, the symbolism within the painting was so alive and relevant. For those of you who don't know the story of Lilith, she was thought to be the first wife of Adam in the Garden of Eden, before Eve appeared on the scene! She was said to be sensuous, sexual, defiant, independent, strong and would easily fit into the label of feminist! But Adam couldn't handle it because he wanted a housewife who did whatever he wanted so she was called a demoness in the Bible and cast out of the Garden.
In this painting you can see the white roses which are said to have turned red when Adam saw Eve (they both blushed), they are white here to represent Lilith herself and her relationship, or lack there of, with Adam. The foxgloves represent perhaps a hint of poison?
The two candles and the garden reflected in the mirror obviously represent the Garden of Eden and the light of God, both of which are ignored by Lilith. Her long hair being brushed is often seen by art historians to represent her sexual desire - a very Freudian interpretation - but nevertheless probably true. She looks in the mirror at her reflection - self obsession, coldness, vanity. The poppy symbolises forgetfulness and lucidity. The chest with a lock implies rules, caged, trapped - how Lilith felt in the Garden of Eden. And finally her loose clothing, ready to fall off if the occassion arises, which it did when she was thrown out of the Garden of Eden and then fell in love with Samael, a fallen archangel.


Lady Lilith by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 All in all, it was a fantastic exhibition which I would have happily stayed for the whole day looking at! I was in my element and I then raided the giftshop for postcards and magnets! Oh and a book of poetry by Tennyson which I am half way through. I will leave you with a quote by Edward Burne-Jones that I absolutely love:

"I mean by a picture a beautiful dream of something that never was, never will be - in light better than any light that ever shone - in a land no-one can define, or remember, only desire..."

The Morning After The Night Before...

The Signature Art Prize 2012 (international award), Exhibition organised by DegreeArt.com. 

25th September 2012 6-9pm.

My profile on DegreeArt.com

So I was very nervous when it came to 6pm and me and my Aunt were sitting in Spitalfields Market in London's stylish Mile End having a light dinner before we went into the exhibition.
Eggs on toast devoured by a young woman with a nervous stomach is probably not the best combination but it was better than fainting in the middle of it all from lack of food!!
It got to 6:15pm and I felt it was an appropriate time (not too early, not too late) to head in, we reached the entrance of the exhibition and nervousness was replaced by excitement as they checked my name on their list and gave me a name badge. I crossed the threshold and was immediately given a glass of wine by a waiter in a suit and bow tie, I felt very...over my head, out of my depth, but at the same time...exhilarated.

We immediately spotted my photograph, it was placed next to a very large painting of a woman's legs and vagina by Seung Ah Paik, but hey I quite liked it (the same painting won in the painting category) and to be honest I was just happy to see that my work had arrived safely!

Me and my piece

The evening continued with me wandering around the exhibition looking at all the work by the 40 finalists, a fantastic mixture of photography, sculpture, painting and mixed media. I was amazed at the high standard of work and pretty much all the artists on display were graduates and as an international award they came from all over the place, so I must have been the youngest there and one of the only ones who was still a student. I have to say I have held onto that fact as much as possible to motivate me and I was told by my aunt that I have done so well for someone so young, so that left me with a happy smile on my face.

I met lots of artists like Jamie Green who did a mixed media piece, which was a metal sign with a rust effect and a face emerging from it. (See below)

Street Sign #1

Also in the mixed media category was a huge sketched canvas by Hyunjeong Lim, which I would have loved to buy if I could afford it! (it was £2000) The photo below is just a small part of it and doesn't do it justice, it's got so much detail and is something you have to see in front of you, in the flesh. 

Somewhere

I also spoke to William Darrell who had a very original and strange sculpture that made music through a kids keyboard, pipes and balloons with a sound reminiscent of bagpipes! I played it a bit and it is very noisy but love how interactive it is and it makes people laugh. It is also something I have never seen before, he showed us some pictures of his other inventions like the Deathstar which was a black tent thing raised off the ground by aluminium pipes/poles, which he was going to live in but unfortunately it leaked!  

Ballodica

There was also other art I loved and would happily have in my own house! The whole night was going great and there was a constant flow of wine and canapes being offered by well dressed waiters!

Here are some pics of the night:

Harumi Foster, Mule

People looking at my photograph

William Darrell blowing up his balloons!

So finally it gets to about 7:40pm and the founders of DegreeArt thank us all for coming and announce the winners (1 from each category, so 4 in total). Unfortunately I did not win, but I am happy to have lost to a photographer whose piece was socially relevant and beautifully done. You can see the winners work here http://www.degreeart.com/blog/announcing-signature-art-prize-2012-winners.

I was disappointed not to have won but who wouldn't be, and all the winners had previously won many awards and were all graduates, so maybe I'll win another year when I have a bit more experience behind me.  But hey it was a great night, great exposure for my work and lots of people liked my piece too. It has also given me the motivation to enter more competitions and maybe do my own exhibition back in Plymouth. I have learnt a lot more about the business side of photography and how to host an exhibition, which will come in handy for the future. 

I am so honoured to have been chosen as one of 40 finalists out of 500 entrants and the 9 other photographers there had some inspiring work, so it was great to be seen amongst them at such a prestigious international award exhibition in London.

Photos on the company website

So my photograph was picked up by the courier today from work, he was a very nice man who said he would take good care of it, so I am trusting him fully with the safe delivery of my photograph to the gallery!

In other news, the corporate photographs I was commissioned for are finally on the company website. You can see them on the Meet The Team page and on the Behind the Scenes tab on the left of the page.

http://www.broadley-speaking.com/meet-the-team/page/2/

Really happy with the photographs and it will be an ongoing 'job' as I will be taking photos of any new additions to the team, our work with our clients, the work christmas party, special events etc. The pictures will then be added to the website when and where needed.

The day has finally come...

A picture of my photograph framed and then a picture of it packaged and ready to go (in other words a before and after shot)...



Apologies for the reflection of my mum in the glass!



London here I come!

Have just got a sudden wave of nerves after packing my photograph, there are a hundred crazy thoughts going through my head, like 'will the courier pick it up on time', 'what if he gets lost', 'what if the glass breaks', 'what if no one is at the gallery to receive it' and a million other things!! But there is nothing I can do, I just have to cross my fingers and maybe pray to god that it all goes smoothly.
The next update will probably be on Wednesday morning when I will update you on whether I am one of the lucky few who gets selected to have their work on display in London until November. Until then....farewell.

My own little corner...

Was told by a friend that they read about me in the Herald the other day and so my mum instantly bought one! And here it is, my very own little corner on page 21....

Oh and update on my photograph: I picked it up from The Leading Edge Gallery on Monday, was a bit annoyed because even though they have had it for a week it wasnt even done when I arrived! The woman said that if I came back in 45mins it would be done, but she said it would be ready on monday so was a bit peeved to wait around. But it does look good in its white mount and black frame and it doesnt detract from the image, so very happy with the end result :). Also found a box to send it in and was given a few tips on how to package it too. Cant wait to see it up in the exhibition, with the frame the piece is now about A1 size, so larger than I first planned but the bigger the better right?!

Stressful times!

So organising for my work to be ready for the exhibition in London is much more stressful than I first thought it would be! I sent my photo to be printed 2 weeks ago to Focal Point Photographic in Exeter and they were absolutely fabulous. Only took a few days to do and I picked it up from Exeter on the following Monday. I decided on a 12"x18" print (the bigger the better right?!) on exhibition quality rag paper and it didnt cost as much as I thought it would, and the quality is really top notch! Definately using them again.

I then had the challenge of finding a framers and Tony Cobley recommended The Leading Edge Gallery in Ivybridge, so I popped by there yesterday with my print and spoke to Liz who was fantastic at giving advice to a newbie like me! We decided on a 3 inch white mount with a thin black frame to make it look more contemporary, I also had to sign it, date it and mark it as limited edition 1/25. Price was great here too and it will be ready to be picked up on Monday 17th, excited to see how it looks.
But the main thing that was stressing me out and making me pull my hair out was the delivery of my piece to the gallery, every courier I looked at online had bad reviews! It was a nightmare! But then I heard from my mum that my uncle has a courier business up in London and so I emailed him to ask if he could recommend or help me out at all. He replied saying to call his company, Scream Couriers, and say I was his niece and it would all be sorted for me. Called today and 20mins later it was all sorted, package due to be picked up next thursday and delivered safely to London. I guess it really is who you know in this business!

This has definately been an experience in the business side of photography, having to sign contracts and decide how many limited editions prints to do, booking the courier etc. I was crossing my fingers and toes the whole time!
Now all I have to worry about is packaging it well and making sure I get to the exhibiton on time...oh and what the hell to wear of course!

Got my invite in the post a few weeks ago too:


Signature Art Prize 2012 Finalist invite to the Opening Gala on 25th September 6-9pm



Finalist in The Signature Art Prize 2012!!

So I was just sitting at work this morning and checking my college email where I was reminded that I needed to check the DegreeArt.com website to see who the semi finalists were for the competition I entered. To my surprise my photograph had been selected!! Everyone at work just heard be going 'ahhhhhhhh!!' followed by a lot on incoherent babble until I composed myself and told them the good news, to which I received many pats on the back. You can see my entry by clicking on the link below:

http://www.degreeart.com/black-and-white/sarah-packer/beggar-woman-rome-signature-art-prize-2012-finalist

After 500 entries to the competition it was narrowed down to 40 semi finalists, which included me! The 40 semi finalists have their work exhibited for one night only at the Spitalfields Market, London Mile End and on that night 5 finalists from each category: Photography, Mixed Media, Painting and Sculpture are selected to have their work exhibited at the DegreeArt Gallery in London until November, the winners also receive £1000!! Then there is the People's Choice Award where the public vote for their favourite piece so there is an extra award to be won.
I have just received the email asking me to RSVP to the opening gala at Spitalfields and I will soon receive an email about sending the artwork to the gallery and signing a contract etc, so I am researching places to get a good exhibition quality print done up and also places for framing my work! It's all very exciting albeit nerve-wracking!
I will have to take the first week of college off so that I can travel up to London where I should hopefully stay with my aunt in Norwich to attend the gala so it's all moving very quickly! But I will keep you posted on what happens and maybe post a few photos from the night! Can't wait! x

Corporate Photography Commission Part 2

So I completed all those photos according to the brief I was given at work, my boss loved them, but the following week we received an email from Crunch Creative who asked for a few changes which can be seen below:

"Clean sharp images the lower the ISO the better (we can add affects afterwards)

Dont crop (please give us plenty of image around the subject)

As natural as possible (we appreciate that this is easier said than done)

Take plenty of shots (4-5 frames of each subject) don’t worry about shooting lots!

Think editorial, capturing the essence of ,a day in the life, not contrived"

To which I replied the following:

"Hi Peter,

David gave me your feedback of the photos/the brief you emailed. I have discussed this with him and have agreed to do some more photographs next week or as soon as possible, although there are a lot of staff on holiday at the moment so in terms of the individual shots I may have to do them gradually over the next few weeks.

The issue of the low ISO was due to the camera I was using and I too agreed that the grain was very high in the images; I am now going to be using a different camera with a broader ISO range and better control in the exposure. As the office has large windows on all sides it is difficult to not have blown out highlights behind the subjects and the exposure is all over the place, hence the high grain, but this can often be recovered in post production. David suggested the use of a step ladder to overcome the barriers in the office, such as the blue screens that divide the desks. There is also the problem with the distance between each staff members desk which creates difficulty photographing them interacting, but myself and David have thought to set up a few of these team shots and make them look as natural as possible, as it is just not feasible to capture them ‘non contrived’ in the office environment. I will also leave as much space around them as possible, as before I was cropping in camera - working from the images in the website samples I was shown.

You also mentioned adding effects afterwards and for your ease of use in doing this, I wondered if you wished me to send the images to you in their original RAW format or whether a high quality JPEG is better for you? I always shoot in RAW anyway and export in TIFF or JPEG so both options are available to you if you wish.

If there is anything else you need, you can contact me on the email below or via my direct line.

Thanks,

Sarah Packer

Account Manager

Broadley Speaking, The Cornmarket,84 West Street,Tavistock,PL19 8AQ, UK"

I have started shooting around the office today and it is going so much better now that I am using a different camera with broader iso settings and I also got hold of a zoom lens 70-300mm, so I don't have to be so close when doing the individual shots. I have taken about 200 photos since 10am so have been taking as many as possible with the new brief in mind. I am going to send them the images totally unedited so that they have more free range graphically and they can crop and position the photos to fit the website. Website should be up and running with the new brand on the 1st September so I have a lot of work to do in the meantime!!

 

August Bike Night Update

So as I said in my last post, I would put the link of the bike night website where my pics are on the homepage!! Hell yes! Check it out http://www.plymouthbikenight.org.uk/

Not all of my pics that I sent Pete on the disc are up in the website gallery as there were 3 photographers there that night so have to get a fair amount of images from each photographer up, but really happy with the shots and seeing the other photographers work gives me a few of my own ideas on what to shoot next time.
Anyways, I have to cook dinner now as I just got home from watching a friends band play (They're called The Eden Project and they usually play at The Wharf in Tavistock, check them out on facebook!). Toodle pip! x

Plymouth Bike Night August 2012

I was planning to write a post about this months PBN before I went but I have been working constantly all week and when I was given the option of going to bed with a mug of hot chocolate and the Dead Poets Society DVD or write a post on my blog, the former was the more appealing! But here I am now 3 days after I photographed this months bike night and edited all the photos, I am writing my post.
You may wonder why there have been no posts about the June and July bike nights, it was thanks to our British weather, which can't decide whether it is summer or not, that they were cancelled. But finally, August came and the day of the bike night looked promising, Thursday 2nd, so I grabbed my camera, left work earlier than usual and got the train to plymouth, getting to the Hoe at around 6:30pm. The weather was beautiful and with the sun slowly setting the lighting was tricky but when I angled the camera just right the shots were great and I love the slightly silhouetted effect of the bikes and the light gleaming of the metal trims and engines.
Once there, I greeted Pete (the organiser) who introduced me to some people who weren't at the last Bike Night and announced to them that I was the only female photographer at the event! I had donned my leather jacket to blend into the crowd and I have to say I have grown so comfortable around this community of bikers and they are so friendly and up for having their photo taken. And with this my confidence with photographing strangers has grown and although I still get the momentary dread in case they tell me to 'get lost' or throw me a simple 'no thanks', I still do it because it's going to be 50/50 anyway and I have started to become a good judge of character!
I also took into consideration pointers from Jane that I had received in a critique of my last PBN photographs. Such as the use of autofocus when capturing movement shots and considering the background of my images (such as including the landmarks of the Hoe, especially Smeatons Tower), she also advised me to try different levels so that it wasn't all eye level photographs.
You know it's strange how you can forget how much you enjoy doing something until you are have to do it again, I admit I was dreading going to the bike night after a full day at work and knowing I would have to catch the late night train was not appealing, but I had forgotton how much I enjoyed going to the bike nights, the atmosphere is just so chilled out and there is the live band there which I always like to get a few snaps of, just to practice a bit of band photography. It was a great band too, most of the hired bands do covers so its nice to have a familiar song in your head to take photos to.
But anyways, enough of my ramblings, you probably want to see some pictures right?! Well here are a few below, but once I have posted the CD of Thursdays photos to Pete then they will be up on the bike night website. There are also more up on my flickr page which there is a link to on the right hand side of the page under the post titles...

'High Voltage' drummer

Biker with a pipe

The bikers riding in

Photographs © All rights reserved Sarah Packer Photography 2012

Corporate Photography Commission

So I havent blogged for a while as I have been working full time and also trying to enjoy the sun whilst it lasts!! Which according to weather reports; is until next week...typical of England.
But whilst working hard I have been incorporating my photography into work, as previously mentioned in last months posts my boss had commissioned me to take the photographs for the new website. Working with a brief from Crunch Creative, the agency being used to rebrand the company, and with what my boss wanted the company to be portrayed as I set to work researching corporate photographers and sketching ideas.
The brief outline was for candid shots of each individual account manager and also team shots showing the interaction of the staff in the workplace. The individual photographs were for the team profile on the website and were required to be landscape format in black and white. The team shots were to be used elsewhere around the site on side tabs and borders etc and were to be a mix of black and white and colour, allowing me some creative freedom.
I went about photographing the staff working using a photojournalism style of photography, being merely an observer to catch them with natural expressions.
After the first batch of photographs it was decided that shots of the staff in headsets (we are a telemarketing company called Broadley Speaking so calling people is what we do!) gave a much too stereotypical view of telemarketing agencies so my boss asked if I could try to catch them without them on, which definately set more of a challenge for me!
My deadline for this assignment was Friday 27th July...so today! And I started two weeks ago so I managed to photograph everyone and burn the images onto a disc last night. This commission allowed me to explore a different style of photography; corporate, which is something I would never have considered doing before but thankfully I was familliar to the people and the environment I was photographing and this gave me a great advantage, in that everyone was comfortable in having me take their photo and trusted me to portray the best version of themselves. Which I believe I have acheived, my boss said he loved the photographs and has sent them to Crunch Creative so that they can include them in the designing of the website. I have learnt how to follow a clients specific brief and deadlines, and they want me to continue photographing office events and staff so that the website can constantly change and be updated with new images to keep it fresh. Once the website is up and running then I will post a link to it here so that you can see my photographs in their true setting.

I'm in a book!

The students work I photographed a few weeks ago...you know the tables and that, well she gave me a book with some of my images in and some of me working! Her work will be on display at the Summer Show and I am going to see it at the Private view today...cant wait! Anyways, see scans of some of the pages below: