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:

Archiving My Negatives...

So yesterday was another day spent processing an old film I had and also spending 3 hours in the digital darkroom with just my negatives and the Hasselblad Flextight scanner for company! But I was kept occupied by the amount of scanning I had to do just to archive my negatives, had to do a bit of colour restoration too as it was difficult to find the right setting for my colour negatives from Barcelona, but I got thee in the end. Here are a few of the oldies that I scanned in:

This one looks much better when its been printed in the darkroom as the grain is not so visible, but wanted to put it up here as a more comedic image!

This is such an old negative and it needs a lot of editing still to get rid of all the scratches and imperfections...to be continued!

Orchid

Yellow Rose



Trees 2009



New York Negative Scans!

The Saxophone Man

So I finally managed to get some free time between work and general stuff at home to scan some of my negatives from my New York trip back in April. And it's safe to say I am pretty pleased with the results, although would rather get into the real darkroom with them rather than the digital based darkroom but time has not allowed it at the moment and I wanted to enter them in some competitions over the summer. I really feel my travel documentary, that is my 'main thing' if thats what you wish to call it, has exploded here, but then New York City is a place of exciting cultural experiences and the high grain black and white film photographs I produced are in keeping with the feel of the Big Apple! As soon as I got home I got set up editing the photos, getting rid of the imperfections and sorting out the exposure, just so that I could post it here to show you all. :) Here are some of my favourites, the quality might not be great because I had to compress the images so that I could post them here, but next month they will be posted on Flickr in all their glory, so make sure you check them out!



I observed this man for about 20 minutes, photographing him drinking his afternoon coffee and reading his paper



The subway by the Natural History Museum: mosaic shark



One way for peace...




Apparently people would hang up shoes on electric wires to show that drugs were dealt in that area





The road outside the F.R.I.E.N.D.S building with a classic New York taxi




Observers of a game of basketball





Brooklyn Bridge



Padlocks on Brooklyn Bridge

Naked Cowboy



St Marks Place, one stop shop for weird and wonderful things



Badge Hat Guy

Grand Central Station

The subway




 

BA Students shoot...

This photoshoot was at PCA in the Cove studio so I had a large space to work in which was great because the students pieces were quite large.
The first student had wooden tables so I used a diffused light by using a honeycomb attachment on the flash light, but she wanted the long shadows of the table legs in it as well so I only had to use two lights for the shoot, one main light with the diffuser which created the shadows and then a light to the side that was a fill in light. She wanted individual shots and then a panoramic style group shot of her work, which I acheived, then she accompanied me during the editing process and we cut down the photos I had taken so that only the ones she liked remained. Then she wanted a lower colour temp on the photographs so there was a slight blue tint like I had done on a previous shoot of her work a few months ago. This softened the image as the pure white background made it look stark and flat. She was pleased with the result and is creating a portfolio of the images for her final assessment. I have posted some of the photographs below:

The other student had metalwork and he had a very specific idea of what he wanted in terms of lighting, he wanted it to be low key with lots of shadows. Like before, this matched the theme of his work and the photographs became quite atmospheric and we had good fun just playing around with the shadows and trying to create a very dark predatory feel for the sculpture. I only used one light for this which was diffused by a softbox just to increase the spread of light so that I didn't lose too much of the large sculpture in the shadows. He was happy with the photographs and you can see some of them on his website: http://mkmmetal.weebly.com/ and I have also posted some below:

This image on the left was just an idea I had towards the end of the shoot that added a bit of drama, I just thought I would try out a few photos of it but wasn't taking it too seriously but he thought it was quite comedic and wanted to include the photograph in his archive of images!

Mike also wants me to photograph his sculpture outside on the moor so that their is the contrast of the metal and nature as well as being able to see his art in context of where it would be if someone purchased it.

The image below was a combination of his predatory animal sculpture and her deer table as the prey. They both wanted it for personal collection as well.

All rights reserved © 2012 Sarah Packer Photography

Pottery Shoot...

So the pottery shoot went really well, I did the shoot in the potter's workshop which had fantastic natural light and wooden surfaces that really complimented her art and the natural feel I wanted from the images. Before the shoot she told me she wanted individual shots, set shots and some of her working and of the workshop itself. I gave her the images on a disc the next day as she wanted the turnaround to be as quick as possible. You can see Susie Jone's facebook page here and my photographs: https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Bere-Pottery/312942658791834
Some of the pics are also below:

All pottery © Susie Jones at Bere Pottery. All rights reserved.

All photographs © Sarah Packer. All rights reserved.