15th July 2010

For the last couple of weeks I have been doing lots of practical work, including taking lost of pictures, drawing out what I want my end product to look like, deciding who I want in my pictures, and how I want them in my pictures, deciding where the pictures are going to be taken, and doing lots of editing on the photoshop software.

I have found that photoshop is a very useful and good thing to use when editing my photos. But then I also found a website called picnik which is a free online editing programme, and some of the pictures that I edited on there are...

In my final piece I have decided to have the whole piece in black and white and then have the fairies in colour, preferably in chrome so that they would stand out more and look more beautiful and bold/ bright. My idea is to have two of my friends dressed up as fairies and the pictures are going to be taken around lots of trees, idealy in a forest type surrounding. The way the word believ comes into the peice is that you have to believe that fairies are real and that the surroundings that they are in is a magical and strange place for them to be in. The forest/ trees are going to be black and white so that it would make it seem dull and dead, but in a different aspect it is really a beautiful place.

I feel that this is going to work quite well, as I like the contrast between black and white and bold colours. In this project - Artefact, I have learnt quite alot... How to use focus on a digital and film camera. How to edit them on the computer. How to effectively use angles when taking photographs, and not just standing in one place at one level...

I have decided to borrow the CRaM camera again this week so that I can take some pictures over the weekens. I am doing this again because I don't feel that what I have produced, and the pictures that I have taken arent quite right yet, and I'm not fully satisfied this them. This time I am going to have two fairies, because, to me, it seems more magical and makes you believe more.

Hi Emily

Please try to include pictures to illustrate your points. Your strongets posts are where there is more detail.

Thursday 10th June 2010

In todays lesson we were split into two groups, one group was to write down ideas for their final peice based around the word believe. I found this word quite challanging and tough to come up with ideas for. The other group had to go out and take test pictures using some of their ideas from the Dali Automicus photo or just ideas that they want to use for their final piece. I did the 1st group in the morning and the 2nd in the afternoon.
I found the 2nd group quite fun as I was working with Tia, and my test shots where based around water. I had the idea of putting the water into a jar or glass milk bottle and then to try and drop the glass capturing it on the camera when the bottle hits the ground. We tried this about 2 or 3 times butn it didn't work as the camera had a delay and we didn't time it right. We then decided to change it and we were just messing around with the water when we saw that the wall looked very effective when the water was coming from the top of it like a waterfall. We then decided to try and use colour water using some food die, but it didn't work as well as i hoped it would as the colour didn't show up very well in the picture. We also tried dribbling water into a chain and lock which actually looked quite good, and the food die poured into the water looked great.

27th May 2010

This lesson we looked at at painting called Dali Atomicus by Phillipe Halsman. I liked this picture and found it very inspiring.

We discussed the techniques he used and how they were created. I liked how he had used the water in this picture as it is a good main feature and lead-in line.

20th May 2010

This lesson we looked at last weeks work and discussed what we could do to improve it. We separately talked to Mr Hind and he talked to us about our books and our blogs, and again how we could improve them. He told me that in my blog I have to talk a lot more about how I feel, and what I think.

This lesson we went out and took pictures again. This time we had to words to base the photos on, they were: Pattern and Texture. I worked with Tia again as we think that we make a good team. I found this week fun as the words we were given were hard to work with but the challenge made it fun.
Some of the things we took pictures of were: wood, flowers, leaves, bricks etc
I found that the picture with the leaf and the bark of the tree was most effective as is shows both smooth and rough textures.
When we came back we went into the dark room to do our contact prints. We then had to choose which pictures we wanted to develop. I find this easy to do as i feel I am quite confident at it. We then had to produce a test strip so that we had some idea of how long to keep the light on for when coming to our final prints.

Hi Emily

Remember to include what you learnt, how you got on, how you reviewed and refined your work and what you felt you achieved.

13th May 2010

Today we developed our film strips.

We firstly had to create a contact print, which is where the film strip and the photographic paper are in contact with eachother when deveolping, then we had to do some test strips before doing our final prints to see how long we need to expose it to the light. We lastly did some final prints.

Test strips- we had to test to see how long we needed to leave the light on for the final prints. We did this by using a peipce of cardboard and covering all but one strip of the paper, then leave the light on for 2 seconds. You then have to move the cardboard along and leave the light on for another 2 seconds. You keep on doing this until you reach the end of the peice of photographic paper. You are then left with a peice of stripy paper with different tones on. You then find the strip that looks the best and you look to see how long it was under the light for and you use this information when printing your final prints.

6th May 2010

This lesson we changed groups. We are now doing a unit called artefact.

We learnt how to put a film into a camera, then we got into pairs and gives a word. We then based our picturesa that we went out and took around this word. I worked with Tia Waterfield, and our word was isolation.

Me and Tia decided to take pictures of a glove, a duck, a flower, a pidgeon, a car and various different bins on their own. We also decided to take a picture of Tia holding a piece of paper with the word isolation on it because we both thought that it would look kind of good.

When we all came back we took the film strips out of the camera and then put them in chemicals to turn them into negative film strips. We then looked at some artists. They were: Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley and Louise Bourgeois.
I didn't really enjoy any of their artwork, especially Tracey Emin, as she seems to me, that she is obsessed with sex...