Wednesday 29 August 2012

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

Wednesday 22 August 2012

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!!

 

Friday 17 August 2012

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

Sunday 5 August 2012

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