My Database of Contacts.

I have listed below groups of people or organisations, which I feel, are useful contacts within my Professional Practice.

Technical staff at PCA:- Photography, Photoshop, Film.

Subject specialist staff at PCA:- Photography Teaching Staff, Graduating MA Students, Art & Design Teaching staff.

MA Students at PCA.

Wedding Industry:- Hotels, Bridal Retailers/Fashion, Make-up artists.

Events:- FOCUS on Imaging, The Photographer's Gallery, British Art Show, Westcountry Bridal Fayre.

Organisations: BIPP, artfund.org (Art Pass).

Services/Suppliers: Spectrum Photo Labs, South West Photo Mounts, SIM 2000.

Need:- Model, Costume contacts.

Module: Experimental Practice - Reflective Journal

The brief for Experimental Practice required ‘stepping out of ones comfort zone’ and to work ‘collaboratively’ which sounded exciting but also invoked a sense of stubbornness about the way I work. I am a very independent practitioner who is protective of her work. I am loathed to share any success of results in my work with anyone else. And like many artists I am very protective about the outcome of anything that has my name attached to it. I also realised that I was quite narrow in my ambition – I had started an MA to broaden and develop my own practice of photography, not to start all over again with a new medium! When these feeling subsided and I focussed on the task in hand I realised that I need not jump into a medium which was completely unrelated but that perhaps, as suggested, a film would be an excellent transitional piece. But how would I, a very busy Lecturer, be able to achieve this? The very position of being a lecturer in Art & Design was the perfect location to be. Part of my role I the academic team is to promote the course and acquire more students and therefore I came up with the idea of producing a short promotional film for the course.

My proposed project was to work collaboratively with the ED Art & Design Academic team at Plymouth College of Art to produce a promotional film for the course. The plan was for this film to be used on the college web site, for the particular course area, and in other advertising media including a potential presence on a city centre screen.

I began my planning for the production of the film by firstly mapping out the various areas that I would need to plan. These areas included meeting with the Art & Design academic team to discuss their ideas for the project, booking a camera induction, arranging an experimental shoot, booking a software induction for editing, designing a storyboard, liaising with students for filming and booking filming time etc.

My initial steps were to email the team and ask for feedback to my proposed idea and then to ask for a meeting to be held to discuss the criteria and requirements from such a film. During the meeting we discussed the content and style of the promotional film for the course. I proposed a basic storyboard with the team, which they agreed upon but also, added some other ideas as follows:-

The film needs to be shorter than 10 min perhaps just 5 in order have impact and keep the viewer’s attention.

The style of photography used in the film was also discussed and it was agreed that the style should be according to the target audience for the course. Our target audience is predominantly the 16 – 21 year old group as we are competing with secondary schools for student number increase. NG (staff member) recommended a less corporate feel and perhaps the use of hand held camera filming and spontaneous responses from students being filmed.

TV (staff member) also suggested that it would be very useful to include students in part of the film making (camera work, lighting etc) this would ensure that the final film was collaborative and would be an excellent learning experience for those students who have a keen interest in Photography and Digital Media.

It was agreed that I would leave the film camera in the staff office to enable staff and monitored students to film exciting, real and spontaneous occasions occurring in the everyday teaching and learning in the ED Art & Design classroom. I will then combine this footage with the staged interviews and filming of the various subject areas for the course.

It was also agreed that I would organise a group of students from the 1^st and 2^nd year cohorts to be part of a film crew and organise students to be interviewed.

TV (staff member) also suggested that we use still images from previous classroom activities to support the filmed footage.

I felt that this collaborative discussion was truly beneficial as it brought to my attention areas that I had not considered and alleviated some of the responsibility that I felt about the final outcome.

My next stage in planning was to research other films that have been produced for a similar purpose within an arts context. I therefore looked at a film produced by staff in Plymouth College of Art. This was to promote and provide information about the ERC (Equipment Resource Centre). This video is played on a screen just outside the ERC and on the college portal; it features the staff members in their workplace setting.  The staff are explaining what they do within their role and what the ERC provides for students. The film uses a combination of video with recorded voice and text on a black screen to partition sections of the film with information. The film was not made with a tripod but rather uses hand-held camera work. Initially it could be assumed that this is unprofessional and has an amateur feel to it. On the contrary I think that this was a deliberate attempt and provided a non-corporate feel to the film ensuring that the viewer felt relaxed and the lack of formality of the ERC context.

The next step on my journey was ensuring that I had an induction into the Digital Film Camera, which I booked with Simon Jerwood (Film Tech. Demonstrator - PCA). He explained the functions on the Panasonic DV camera, which is quite a basic video camera. His induction was very clear and I felt that, even though I am a Photography Lecturer, he did not assume prior knowledge. I was able to relate my 2D image knowledge to many of the camera functions. Although I definitely stepped out of my comfort zone when it came to planning a film, using story boards and thinking about sound etc I felt somewhat reassured that my technical use of the camera would not be too difficult. I discussed with Simon my need to learn about software for editing my film and he recommended that I conduct an experimental test shoot to familiarise myself with the camera and the techniques. I then book an induction into Adobe Premier for editing.

I therefore carried out a test shoot, which I did by filming the Production at my children’s school. I carried this out by using a tripod and just setting the camera to record the whole production. On reflection this was an experiment which did not test many filming skills such as panning and zooming etc. None the less I was able to use this piece as a test for image and sound quality and also my very first attempt at downloading film to my MAC.

My first attempt at downloading the film was not the easiest thing I have done. Initially I tried to use Adobe Premier but without success as I had not yet been inducted into the software. I then tried using ‘I movie’ which was very straight forward and I successfully transferred my film to my laptop. I realised from this how important my induction into Adobe Premier would be. As a result of this test shoot I decided that I would need to research into the basic skills of filming and the areas of consideration. I read ‘The Shut up and Shoot Guide’ (Artis. 2008) This was a very practical guide on planning for film/documentary making and provided me with hints and tips on planning for; lighting, clothing, location, composition (inc Dutch Angles), focal length for particular shots and editing shots like ‘cutaways’. It also made me aware of a ‘Talent Release Form’, which I will need interviewees to sign for their permission of the interview footage of them to be used in the film.

Before the induction that I had into Adobe Premier software I prepared my self to take in a large amount of technical knowledge that I probably wouldn’t use straight away. I did this by arriving at my induction early, armed with a large notebook and pen and I didn’t book anything in my diary for immediately after allowing plenty of time for me to ask questions at the end. During the induction I made extensive and very detailed notes realising that I would have to refer back to this at a future and probably distant date in order to edit the film independently. Although on reflection this induction was perhaps premature I feel that it was valuable seeing how a film is edited, as the way it is filmed impacts on the process of editing it.

Realising that my film would not be completed for the indented date I decided that I would edit just a small part of it to present to my peer group. This proved to be fraught with challenges and unsuccessful. I will therefore arrange for more technical support in editing.  The film is still therefore in production as my role as a Lecturer has demanded a priority on my time and although much of the filming has been carried out during my teaching there are other areas including interviews and artistic introductions that I will still need to conduct. I have realised that producing a very short promotional film can still be very time consuming and include a tremendous amount of planning. I have really enjoyed stepping out of a familiar medium and I feel that being in the shoes of a student again has given me licence to ‘not know’ and the need to ask questions. My role as a lecturer in the arts has required that I am asked and expected to ‘know’ but I now realise that there are times when we all need to step away from what we do know and develop through feeling uncomfortable and taking risks in order to broaden our creative scope.

Bibliography

Shaner, P. and Jones, G.E. Real World Digital Video. California: Peachpit Press, 2004

Artis, A.Q. The Shut up and Shoot Documentary Guide. Oxford: FocalPress, 2008

Watts, H. Instant on Camera The fast Track to Programme Making. London, 2004

Plymouth College of Art, 2011. The Equipment Resource Centre – Meet the ERC Team. [online] Available at http://myportal.plymouth.ac.uk/equipment-resources-center [accessed 9 December 2012]

Module: Activating Research - Statement of Research Relevance

My research into texts on image manipulation and how people have stepped into an alter ego is relevant to my practice as a social photographer. I have worked in the field of Wedding and Portrait photography for about 15 years and I am intrigued by the way people want to see themselves and how they seek an alter ego. They aspire to a ‘fairy tale’ wedding and require airbrushing and falsifying. This is an unstated requirement; the same person would criticize the airbrushed and enhanced model of a popular fashion magazine. I would like to take this argument and turn it around – why is enhancement frowned upon and yet at the same time welcome with open arms. Can this enhancement actually be a psychological therapy? Viewing ourselves in a more attractive way can be more ‘confidence’ building than untruthful.

I would like to develop this area of portraiture using image manipulation and playing with alter egos as part of my practice as a social photographer and enable people to see it in a more positive light.

Module: Activating Research - Research Archive (Article on the Ethics of Digital Manipulation)

"The Ethics of Digital Manipulation 

How can we believe anything we see anymore? With today's technology, we can literally do anything we want with images.

In the example see above, we have changed the red color of M8, the Lagoon Nebula, whose main spectral emission lies in the red portion of the spectrum, to blue with a simple adjustment in Photoshop.

When photography was first invented, its overwhelming power came from the fact that it recorded nature more realistically than any other art form had ever done before. Because of this, people trusted it and believed it portrayed "reality" and "truth".

But, just as story telling could portray the "truth" with an accurate accounting of the facts, it could just as easily become fiction. Fake and manipulated photographs - visual fiction - began circulating not long after the invention of photography.

With the invention of motion pictures, and certainly television, the public came to know that not every picture they saw was necessarily factual in its depiction of reality."

 See comments and reference on my Bibliography.

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Module: Activating Research - Research Archive (Article in Photoshopped Celebrities)

"Researchers quantify just how badly your favorite celebrity is Photoshopped

Photoshop is a reality in the world of photography, but it gets out of hand when advertisers and fashion directors completely transmogrify the original image, creating an unrealistic and impossible result. New research proposes a way to codify how heavily Photoshopped an image is. The only catch? The industry has to cooperate with it.

Image retouching can be used to simply correct colors and get stray hairs out of someone's face, but fairly often strays into the realms of the ludicrious. An outright ban on Photoshopped images does nothing to differentiate, and is a blunt tool that disallows an important piece of software.

This new method compares the original image to the retouched one, and compares it on two fronts: geometric changes (that's the heavy duty reshaping and morphing) and photometric (sharpening, blurring, removing spots, killing wrinkles and the like). Between these two measures it creates an automatic rating from 1-5, a rating which corresponded pretty closely to how a group of humans rated each image, in tests.

It's been pretty well established that the rampant over-use of Photoshop in advertising and editorial imagery has produced an unrealistic standard of beauty, and has had a negative impact on the self-image of many. The research proposes using the automated system to create a rating so that people automatically know just how retouched the image is. The big problem is that since it needs to compare the original image to the final version, it relies on someone handing over the original to work, which means the advertisers need to agree to it — something I'm not entirely convinced will happen."



See comments and reference on my Bibliography.

Module: Activating Research - Research Archive (Nick Knight)

I found an article on ‘The Independent’ website written by Susannah Frankel. She wrote about the controversial fashion photographer Nick Knight. This article discusses issues relating to my area of research into manipulation of an image and in particular within portraiture.

She quotes from his book called ‘Nick Knight’ and written by himself. With regard to manipulation of the truth within photography he states

"Where do you start? When Roger Fenton went out to the Crimean War to show the reality of the battlefields, he ended up dragging around the corpses to make a better composition. Originally, photography was seen as a better recorder of truth than painting – that's why it became popular. It's taken us 100 years to realise that actually that is not the case and neither should we want it to be. Photographers aren't machines that have no feelings and no opinions, they're storytellers; they manipulate the reality in front of them to tell you something interesting about it – and that holds true of everyone from Diane Arbus to Helmut Newton. That's why we keep looking at their work. The whole idea that photographers today are a bunch of deviant misfits producing pictures of people that somehow twist the truth in a malevolent way is ridiculous. Which camera you choose, which lens you choose, which lighting you choose, which angle you choose to shoot a subject from – all these things are crucial to the way that subject will ultimately be perceived."

Frankel then states ‘The birth of digital photography and the power of Photoshop image manipulation in particular have only fuelled the public's suspicions where any so-called distortion of reality is concerned. "But it's just a way of having more control," Knight argues, "and a lot more possibilities. It's a way of exploring the parameters within an image which is extremely exciting."’

I found this article to be one of the few written positively and arguing the case for manipulation. Photographers as artists do not always deserve the criticism thrown at them for enhancing or beautifying. I am convinced that artists through the centuries have never forsaken their right to tweak or adjust their creations for a more aesthetically beautiful piece.

This study of Nick Knight in no way labels him as an artist only seeking idealised forms to work with. In the 1990’s he photographed Sophie Dahl a model who was distinct due to her figure size in comparison with her extremely thin counterparts of her time. Through his use of selected lighting, camera equipment and digital manipulation he emulated the size 14 figure allowing us, the viewer, to see her looking her best and not discriminating what would, in a ‘media’ context, be deemed unacceptable. 

Module: Activating Research - Research Archive (Cindy Sherman)

This unique, New York born, Photographic artist has distinctly made a reputation for herself by creating images using herself as platform to communicate ideas about the female role in society. Her questionable and somewhat grotesque images are not to be considered as self-portraits but uniquely a means of questioning society and the media on the matter of portrayal of women.  Cindy also uses her work to question the role of an artist. Photography, to her, is just a medium to carry out an idea and show the world a concept.

I am excited by her diverse range of stereotypes she has chosen to portray. My area of enquiry is initially placed in the realm of female identity and the effects on sitter and viewer. I am particularly interested in her body of work started in 1977 on ‘Film Still’ whereby she plays the role of stereotypical characters from ‘B’ movies – the housewife, the prostitute, the woman in tears etc. In much of Cindy’s work she has overtly used costume, make-up, wigs and stage sets showing a strong commitment to intent.