Busy busy busy Photographing

This last week I found myself doing allot of photography so I thought I would write a long overdue blog about it. Saturday I was with Julian helping him with a project for Ark, we were going out to video interview some people on the street. Seeing i was meeting him at an empty shop in the Castle Arcade (where the Ark project is being held) I thought I would have a look around the shop, and I found the basement!





Next stop was doing the video interviews, I was on video duty for half of it, then Julian took over and I managed to get some shots of him and Allie in action





Also on Saturday was the National Military Day, I was just in time to catch the parade and then pop down to Cardiff Bay to see all the Military goings on.







After all that I was done and sunburnt a bit I was knackered, roll on Sunday, the day of rest. Unfortunately i got a text off Andrew saying he was going kite boarding, if anyone hasn't read Andrews blog I suggest you check it out here as he has recently taken up kite boarding and has been blogging about it. So off I went down to Aberavaon to meet Andrew and have a go at his kite, really suprised of the power of the kite, when the wind picked up it was dragging me across the beach! and now he wants an even bigger one. Unfortunately while I was having a go on his buggy the lines of the kite frayed and the fun was over! gutted!, but here are some snaps:





Next was Monday and a trip up to North Wales, me and Julian and meeting on Tuesday morning, so after the meeting we took advantage of the situation and headed to Llanberis to do some road side bouldering. I have done some indoor climbing but have never been outside climbing, Julian thinks this is hilarious as I grew up a few miles from Llanberis, never climbed, moved away and now i'm back there climbing! Here are some shots, Julian looking skilled, me looking like i'm hanging on for my life!







After all that, the last few days I have been trying to get out to take some photos for my course, I think I have decided on my theme 'Unloved/Left Behind'. Here are some more shots:





That is all... for now!

Photomarathon 2010

Yesterday was that time of year again, Photomarathon time. If anyone is unfamiliar with Photomarathon, it is a photograph competition with a twist: Over 12 hours you have to take 12 pictures on 12 given topics. It's not your physical condition, but your sense of improvisation, fun and creativity that is stressed throughout the Photomarathon.

I have taken part in Photomarthon 4 times now with a bit of success in the past, I have won a topic prize and i have won the public vote for one of the topics. I have never entered into Photomarthon wanting to win, to me Photomarthon is not about producing a great photograph but it's more about opening your eyes and appreciating the world around around you. The best example of this was last year where one of the topics was Welsh, on receiving this topic I stepped outside and in the space of 10 minutes I saw women dressed up in Welsh dress, someone wearing a Welsh t-shirt and someone carrying a Welsh flag. Coincidence? i don't think so, this just shows how thinking about a certain subject opens your eyes to what is around you.

This year was slightly different to the previous years though, this year they switched over from film to digital. I had mixed opinions about this, and still haven't made up my mind about it. There are Pros and Cons, the pro being you can review you image straight away on your camera and decide if you like it or not and retake if needed. The problem is this also a con, for every topic I had a set of pictures for this topic because i couldn't make my mind up which one I preferred. This simplicity of shooting on film was, once you had taken a picture then that was it, there was no going back, even if it was carp. Of course with digital this is not the case, you can take a picture, review it, delete it, retake is, review it, and so on. I nearly feel into this trap of taking to many picture and being indecisive about which one i wanted to use, in the end I just had to delete all the other and keep one for each topic. I think overall there will be a higher grade of photo this year, as people had the advantage of being able to review their images and delete the bad ones, eliminating the errors.

At the end of it all it was still a great day, lots of fun, lots of thinking, few beers and aching legs! I also had a little distraction this year, i was being filmed and interview for an S4C program, was quite fun when we were descended on by security guards in Cardiff Bay doing their best impression of a CIA agent wanting to know what we were doing and asking us to leave, world has gone mad!

Below are my efforts, unprocessed, exactly as they will be judged for the competition.

1. Entry Number / Giant



This topic is the first one every year as they use it to identify your photographs, but last year and this year they added a new twist to it by combining it with something. Last year it was Entry Number / Colourful, the year they added Giant into the mix, i tried to show my entry number as a giant number with a person standing within the number. It kind of worked...

2. Aroma



Nothing better than the aroma of bacon cooking... this was also lunch, yum

3. On a shoe string



While photographing this on my balcony I turned around to see my neighbours of their balconies watching me with what looked liked a few thousand pounds hanging from a show string.

4. Inspiration



There are so many things that can inspire you, but to me, just looking at the world around me inspires me and you can do that without your eye!

5. Up in the air



Seagulls are always up in the air in the Bay!

6. Arc



There are many arcs around, but i didn't want to use the usuall arc above you hear in an arch, so i found this.

7. Seven



What can i say? one, two, three, four, five, six, seven!

8. Fail



I like this as it's a double fail, bad spelling and parking in a no parking area, or should i say not parking area.

9. Old School



What's more old school than Converse shoes... i have a few!

10. Contemporary



This is Contemporary right?

11. Backwards



A mirror is not very clever, but i do like the shot and i got myself into my shots!

12. Identity



One of the most distinctive parts of your body.

So those are my picture, i'm happy with some more than other, but at the end of the day it was just good fun.

Thanks to all the Photomarathon team, really good event again, if you would like to try it yourself have a look here.

Geotagger’s World Atlas

Some people interpreted the Geotaggers' World Atlas maps to be maps of tourism. This set is an attempt to figure out if that is really true. Some cities (for example Las Vegas and Venice) do seem to be photographed almost entirely by tourists. Others seem to have many pictures taken in piaces that tourists don't visit.

Blue points on the map are pictures taken by locals (people who have taken pictures in this city dated over a range of a month or more).

Red points are pictures taken by tourists (people who seem to be a local of a different city and who took pictures in this city for less than a month).

Yellow points are pictures where it can't be determined whether or not the photographer was a tourist (because they haven't taken pictures anywhere for over a month). They are probably tourists but might just not post many pictures at all.

The maps are ordered by the number of pictures taken by locals.

New York:



Chicago:



Las Vagas:



Taken from here

Week 5 - Ffotogallery Course

I think this will be an even shorter blog that the last one, but again this week i have been taking more photographs to do with my theme, some more example below:









We looked at photo manipulation in more detail this week and looking at example of it through the years, quite handy seeing as i'm going to write about it for my Essay.

Some great examples are below:





Above is a great example from communist Russia. Unwanted persons, so-called "enemies of the people" were not only killed, but also removed from photographs where their presence was unwanted. The first image shows Lenin, with Trotsky next to the box, but in the second image Trotsky is no where to be seen.





Nikolai Yezhov, chief of the Soviet secret police, suffered a fate similar to that of Trotsky. This is very impressive editing, better than some people can do with photoshop.

Those are example of 'editing history' but what about editing peoples views of people?



The left image is the cover of Newsweek, who used the original police mug shot of OJ Simpson for an article they were running, but the right image is a cover from Time magazine, again using the same image, but this time manipulated. Time got into a allot of trouble about this as they have appeared to make OJ much more sinister looking at for some reason more black, raising racial issues.



I have already shown this image in a previous post, but this is relevant to this post. The above image is by Gursky and is an arial shot of the Bahrain F1 circuit, where he he decided he wasn't happy with one corner of the track (by the way designed by one of the greatest circuit designers) and manipulated it to his liking.



Gursky also created the above image, titles "F1 Boxenstopp III", the image appears just to a great shot of two F1 teams frozen in time mid pit-stop. The truth is both image where taken at separate races, in different pit lanes, and then digitally edited together.



Gursky's photographs are technically very good, but he has manipulated them look perfect and to his needs, which to me doesn't really carry any message. An alternative example of a manipulated images, that are again technically good, but have more thought about them, are images by Kelli Connel. Whilst on first glance the photographs look to be normal, but beautifully shot, photographs the truth is both subject are the same person. They were shot in different poses, in different poses/clothes, one subject feminine and one masculine and then digitally manipulated together.



Whilst Gursky and Connels images have used manipulated to be quite artistic, manipulation can be used in a bad way. The above shot came to light just a day or two after the 911 tragedy. It appears to show an image of a tourist on top of one of the twin towers just moments before the plane hit the tower. The image circulated around the interest with the story that the camera was found in the rubble of the tower... very unlikely.



Manipulation is heavily used to create funny images that circulate the internet, the above is a great example or how manipulation is now taking over the from the written joke, because people want a visual joke.



Another area where manipulation is highly used is in advertising, especially in the fashion industry. We are all aware of these images and how models are highly edited to make them perfect. To highlight this Britney Spears released the above image showing her before and after images, this really shows how much we are lied to in images.



In a total 180 degree spin on manipulation in fashion, the above image is of a model that has been photoshopped in the opposite way to be overly thin and look ill, this was to highlight how models are overlay thin.

Ok, that blog was even longer than the over one. The main purpose of the blog was to start collecting information for my essay, so apologies if it's a little bitty!

Week 4 - Ffotogallery Course

I think the blog is going to be a short blog for two reasons - one, we have started to concentrate more our final project now so have been discussing this in more detail - two, im watching The Goonies while typing this!

I'm not struggling for ideas for the final project, more struggling with choosing one and committing to it. So far I have though about the following:

Contrast - A set of pictures showing a strong contrast between two things, this could be old and new, hot and cold, chalk and cheese etc, here is an example shot i took below:



Cardiff Bay - Through not trying i have taken a few shots in the bay for the course (possibly living and working here has something to do with it) and again without trying i have shown the bay in quite a negative way, this is the way i see it unfortunately. Here is an example shot i took below:



Random Objects - I'd like to find an object in a scene that is out of it's usual environment. Here is an example shot i took below:



Different outlooks - I always think people spend to much time looking in one direction, so i want to take picture of something everyday from a different angle to hopefully highlight a beauty in it that would normally be missed. Here is an example shot i took below:



Manipulation - Seeing as the course is about using the computer to edit your photo i wanted to shoot a scene and manipulate certain elements in the picture so at 2nd or 3rd glance things don't seem quite as they should be. Um, no example of this... yet!

There are more example of all of these on my flickr.

As well as the final project I also need to write an Essay, i think i'm happier with this and i'm going to write about Photo Manipulation through the years, right from the invention of photography.

We had an attempt at re-creating a a style from photographer Diane Varner, she takes a normal landscape/nature photograph and in manipulates it (to much in my opinion) to make it 'pretty'. Here is my attempt, before and after:





Hey, the blog wasn't that short!