communion sessions | Amy Holford - Sunflower.

This is the first piece of video/editing work I've done in a couple of year, I've been planning on shooting some stuff for a while now but never actually got round to doing anything. But I jumped at the opportunity of recording this acoustic session when a good friend of mine, James Hall, asked me to do so, as he could only provide sound recording equipment. To think that it's taken me hours to edit a four minute clip is crazy, so have a look and any feedback would be hugely appreciated.

Amy Holford is playing at the Head of Steam this Sunday night (25.03.12). Very talented young lady, beautiful voice so she's well worth a listen, check out her Facebook page for further information... http://www.facebook.com/amyholfordsinger

 

picture diary.

For this unit I was asked to create a picture diary made up of a series of photographs, which would demonstrate a story of some sort. Initially I was given out certain tasks to carry out, for example, write a list of potential people, events or locations I could photograph. Once I got the brief the first person that popped into my head was my nanna, straight away that’s what I knew I wanted my picture diary to be based on, obviously I came up with other ideas as a backup plan, but I was so focused on making a successful project on my nanna. I just had to think about what I wanted to take photos of... my nanna visits my house every Tuesday and Wednesdays, when she’s round she basically looks after me and my sister, brings us food, irons our clothes, tidies our rooms, washes our dishes, the lot. Which we are more than grateful for and we both know it’s unfair on her to run after us all the time but we’ve just gotten so used to it now that it's just became to norm. So initially I wanted to base my picture diary on all of those things I listed, capturing her doing the dishes and all the things she does when she’s at my house, but there’s so much more to my nanna than cleaning up for two bone idol kids. So I took this opportunity to stay at my nans a few times during the winter holidays, because I don’t go there as often as I should, probably because I’ve got used to seeing her every Tuesday and Wednesday. My nanna lives with her mam, on Sunderland Road, which she has done ever since I was born, so instead of actually taking photographs of my nan, I chose to take images of things dotted around her house which were of some importance to her, which she’d had for a long time. 

We’d sit for hours going through her cupboards looking through old newspapers and photographs from when she was at school, I heard some amazing stories while we were doing so, I’ve had a great time doing this project simply because I got to spend it with her, and hear about all the things she got up to as a kid, and stories about how my dad was when he was my age. In terms of actually capturing the photos, at times I had some trouble, the lighting wasn’t great meaning I had to turn my ISO all the way up to 1600, which obviously resulted in some of my images not being as crisp as I would have liked them to have been. At the time of my first few shoots I left my tripod at home, so after the new year I went and stayed at my nannas again, this time bringing the tripod so that I could lower the ISO, whilst using a slower shutter speed to try and get that crispness back. I’m more than happy with the results of my final photographs, I think there’s one, which isn’t of the quality of the others, so I might have to reshoot that one, or go over it again and re-edit it. But other than that, the feedback I’ve received from friends and family on my photos have been fantastic, obviously there’s a hint of biased behaviour going on when I ask friends and family what they think, but I think I can trust them to tell me their honest opinion on my work, so I’ll take their word for it. 

a tea party with Lily May...

During my latest photography unit at college we have been learning a little bit about photo manipulation and were given the task to edit a single person into the same shot at least 3 times. Usually when I get an idea in my head I stick to it and try my up most to see through that idea, and when I first received the brief for this college unit the first thing I thought was "maybe I could make my little sister have a tea party... with herself". So the idea stuck, thankfully the mother was a fan of the idea when I told her my plans, so she jumped on board and helped hugely with setting up the shot, buying props and all the rest of it (so, thanks mam). But after hours of setting up, hundreds of photos and endless editing, this was the final outcome. 

By the time I actually got round to taking all the photos it took in order to get this final piece, (which was hours!) the sun had gone down meaning the natural light just wasn't the same making it impossible to shoot anymore, but I would like to revisit this and add to it so that I have a body of work rather than just a single image on this subject, feedback would be fan-dabby-dosey.

where to start?

Due to the fact I've just created myself a new blog, I'm sat here thinking, where do I start? In terms of what photographs to use, do I upload my old work or do I start a fresh and only start uploading recent work and focus on upcoming projects rather than going over old photographs? Seeing as I'm basically asking myself these questions on my laptop screen I've came to a conclusion... I'm going to upload just some of my old work, just to get me started off with this blog, then just go from there.

1. This photograph was taken during a day of fishing with a group of friends, might be cheesey but I like it, it's sweet.

2. 

This is my 6 year old sister, Lily May, I took this when I was assigned to a project at college which went by the title of "Time", so I decided to focus on this time in her life where she is slowly managing to grow up a little bit.

3. Just for a mini college brief which allowed us to take photographs of the scenery around Newcastle.

4.

During an open training session at St. James' Park I took the opportunity to take some shots of the Newcastle United players, this being my favourite obviously, Danny Guthrie.

5. This was taken in the winter of 2010, thought I would make the most of the scenery while it lasted. 

6. I took this photograph for a 'winter fashion' project for college, model - Molly Wood.

I don't want to go into much detail about each individual image as these are pieces of work from the past, but anything I upload from now on will be fully explained in a lot more detail, I just wanted to get some of my old work on here to get me started off with this blog. But from the photographs above it's quite clear to see my work varies from one subject to the other, or it has done. Recently I've been trying to tell stories in my work, which some of these images do, and some don't, but I like for there to be a meaning behind a photograph. I believe photography is a great way of story telling, I like to look at images that makes me think a little, which is something I would like to inject into my own work, something that makes people think.

fresh start on blogger.

I've been trying to work out how to use this website for a fair few hours now and I think I'm getting the hang of it, I'm new to all this so bare with me...

The reason I want to start this blog is so I have somewhere to document my personal photography and film work. Previous to this, I used tumblr because a friend of mine recommended it to me, but I quickly noticed that everyone who uses it is either depressed, or wanting to kill themselves. Each blog I visited was exactly the same, everyone reblogs the same photos, there was no originality to any ones page, just the same old photos of the following...

• tattooed blokes.
• half naked women.
• fully naked women.
• people slitting their wrists.
• pieced noses and stretched ear lobes.
• people smoking weed. 

Which is basically why I stopped using tumblr, since then it's took me a while to realize that I wanted to start blogging again, but this time, I want to blog my own work, my own opinions and thoughts, my own life. I want to really try and make it into the 'photography world' so-to-speak, but at the moment I'm unsure as to what area of photography I want to work in, even film, I'm really interested in film and currently have a few projects in which I would like to complete once I've finished my college course.