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:

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.