Category: PHO701:Coursework

Week 1 PH0703 Independent reflection

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I’m still juggling my commercial practice with personal work and whilst there is not a lot of work to be done due to Covid I am prepping myself for when commissions start again, keeping in touch with clients and networking via social media, adjusting my website to portray more of my aims for the future, thinking about future strategies.This time of reflection though as allowed me to re evaluate my past working practices and how I would like to change them with a more balanced approach to commercial and personal work, with an emphasis on the personal.

At the moment I’m finding social media in particular Linkdin and Instagram invaluable tools to show work, whilst I use it often, at the moment it as become ever more important, for example I have been shooting lockdown project that I have been posting on instagram with great results and feedback.

Whilst this project may not end up being the one I shoot for this module, (it may be in a different form)it will certainly be an influence and a logical progression.

I have been cycling to keep fitness levels up and in order to continue I set myself the goal of cycling to all the professional football stadium in London. After getting to the first one I took some smartphone pictures just as a record to begin with and realised I’d stumbled upon a project I really liked and could revisit which if it takes this route I will do using the references I already have to reshoot on a large format film cameras method of photographing things I  have not used in many many years.

If however I do not shoot this project in shooting this one I have been inspired to shoot one similar, very much in the new topographic genre looking at Estate Pubs,the social history and their use as hub of community.I intend to combine the use of photography, both portrait and landscape with aural interviews,to explore the changing face of our cities.

A406/Architecture

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I woke to to a heavy mist and decided one of the images I had in mind to shoot at night might actually suit this weather.I do plan to still shoot it at night and compare the options in the final edit.I was lucky to find another shot too,one I had been hoping to find at some point,it was actually very close by.These three images below explore the architecture of the road and the invasion of space.Similar to the work of Nick St Oegger’s work looking at the M4 extension opened in 1966,his project Bypassed also explores the physical effects of the architecture as well as the economic and environmental and the way that as effected the town of Port Talbot.Much like Nick I want to understand how living so close to the road and in particular where houses and shops and businesses have been demolished to accommodate it alters peoples lives for the positive as well as the negative.The Psychological landscape.

A406 . Dean Belcher

I particularly like the way the pillars mimic the two large entrance pillars on the original Lea valley flyover built in the 1920’s mile or two up the road which were knocked down when the road was widened (Image included) in the mid 1970s.The original flyover was the first of it’s kind to made of reinforced concrete.

Original Lea Valley flyover with pillars 1960s courtesy of Roaders digest

3 images by Nick St Oegger Bypassed

POSITIONS AND PRACTICE PHO701 18/19 WEEK 4 COLLABORATION

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Week 4 Postions ans Practice is Collaboration week. We spoke about the process of collaboration then set out to fulfil the task of colaborating in groups of 2-3. Our task set was to post a piece of poetry,prose or lyric,some words that meant something to us.I’m not much of a expert on petry per se but I do like a good lyric,poetry to me !  I posted ‘Life is just a bowl of cornflakes,you wake up every morning and its there” not too profound but it lends it self well to interpretation.In my case and so it seems Juanita who joined me it explores the ordinary,the stuff thats always there but you never see.Like a lot of photographers,I see a lot more pictures than I actually take,I think Henri Cartier Bresson said something along these lines and I agree.So Juanita and I set out to photograph our surroundings,me in suburban London her in suburban Bristol.I think what surprised us both the most was the way we had without knowing it mimicked each others work,all be it hers was a bit more ornate and perhaps gentler and mine was very brutal and a little angrier in aethestic but interestingly both exploring the same thing.Which as with lots of collaborative projects deviated a little from the original plan and ended up exploring more about Humans effect and relationship with nature and how now matter how much concrete and bricks we lay down nature seems to always win through.I think you may see that in the zine we produced,where we laid out one image from my work alongside Juanitas and vise versa. Above from the top you will see my images followed by Juanitas followed at the bottom by the zine.Hope you enjoy it.