Final Image submission.

These three images are going to be the images submitted for the end of year exhibition and will be placed in the layout above. The images are going to be printed on a ‘Pearl photo board’ from the print bureau at the University. I went with this option as when spoken to one of my tutors about using a Foamex mount board they suggested the print would sit too far from the wall. To save money I didn’t want to be printing my photographs on a type of paper than having to find the right supply to attach the images too, to make them stronger. This way by using the print bureau I haven’t had to worry about looking for the right materials, plus the fact the board I’m using isn’t super thick but it’s just right for my display and not heavy enough I’d have to nail it to the walls.I’mm hoping to fix my images for the exhibition by using the double sided velcro tape.

Adobe Certified Associate

The Adobe Certified Associate (ACA) allows people to demonstrate proficiency in Adobe digital communications tools. You will become professionally verified Certified Associate.

http://www.adobe.com/uk/education/certification-programs.edu.html

With this, you can pick to specialise in a specific application, which is what you get accessed on from Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator. The list is below.

The exam what has to be taken to receive the Adobe Certified Associate will be done on an educational premises e.g. college or university campus. The exam will take 40 minutes to complete, 50 questions to answer and to pass need to complete 75% of the exam correctly.

Once passed the ACA will last for 3 years, it can be placed on any curriculum vitae (CV), websites and portfolios. We were told on the website that there are free study guides and all whats needed is to register and get an Adobe ID

http://www.adobe.com/uk/education/certification-programs/preparation-materials.edu.html

To prepare for the exam we were told you can get 100 mock papers and online training from https://gmetrix.net and an account is needed to access the online training. For the actual exam it is hosted by http://cirtiport.com/ and a registration is also needed aswell.

There’s plenty of time to practice and register for the sites as the sign up deadline is July.

Plenty of time to practice for anybody who’s interested in having a ACA.

Professional Practice: Layla Sailor

www.laylasailor.com

So today we had a guest lecturer/photographer, Layla Sailor. She was discussing with the photography groups her experience at university, after graduating, interests and influences, where she has worked to earn a living as well as discussing in depth the photography projects she’s produced from the good to bad.

First of all Layla is based in Manchester, United Kingdom. People view her as a fashion photographer but first thing she wanted to share with us is that she does not find herself in that way, more conceptual. Her degree work at the time was interested and informed by music and found herself incorporating this into her fashion/portraiture work by editing and overlaying.
Layla has been influenced by many from photographers like Cindy Sherman to films like Jacob’s Ladder and stills from that what gave her ideas for her own projects. She liked the cold, pale, ghostly look and found herself locked away in the studio for hours on end playing with the lighting and finding a technique.

After university got a job working full time at Calumet Photographic to start earning money and funding her photography projects on the side… Kokoshnik.

Kokoshnik is her best known work and is an on-going project she works on yearly. The concept behind it was after she made a look book for a designer who used patterns in different ways which then developed into a personal vision. For Layla its a way to celebrate and show beauty of iconography. The work had been used before in protest posters for Pussy Riot and been successful at broadcasting a political message worldwide.

Laylor Sailor deleveloped her skills and knowledge in motion picture and entered a fashion film award competition for SHOWstudio run by Nike Knight called Mystic Pizza.(http://showstudio.com/ and http://showstudio.com/project/fashion_film_award/layla_sailor_mystic_pizza)
Within a month apart from each other a friend of hers in Paris wanted to get a group or artists together and create an exhibition and Layla sent some of her work to him and that was called ‘Printemps paris’. After these two shows in two different places in the short space of time between the two, Layla started getting her name heard and past regections wanted to work with her.

She wanted to share with the group that even though most of the time we can hit a dead end with our work, just got to keep going, keep entering work, keep making the work and just one important show can set your career off even after years have past. DONT GIVE UP!

To keep making work and bringing in an income she worked several times with BOOHOO, did PR shots for Jelly and Gin, Metro Images and Whitney Port-Bits and Bobs fashion Jewelry. As Layla was in England she had the opportunity to manage more of a team, get the set builders in instead of herself, had plenty of video meetings. Whitney liked her work produced at the start of her career but that style wasnt recieved that well in America but that taught Layla to ask more questions. The work should of been more commercial to fit in with the audience abroad. All a learning experience.

Another project which happens yearly is her ‘ADVENT’ calendar. She shoots for 1 day only at the end of November, gets about 8 models or as many as possible to create an image to upload every day until Christmas. She has full creative control but likes to have different collaborators each year.

Other things she takes time in to have a break from fashion is photographing lighting and prop design for ‘The Secret Life of You and Me’ by Lowri Evans http://www.thelowri.com/the-secret-life-of-you-and-me-show/

Layla didn’t find this her best work but she found it important to share and speak about the work to the photgraphy group as it is ok for projects to not be the best, its ok to make mistakes it’s all about learning.

She shared with us information about her website. At first on her website was everything she ever did going back to her degree work. There was work she did not like and work whats been there for years. The work on your website should be work what interests YOU, its your site not a site for others. She had a full clear out of her site got rid of everything and kept what was important to her.

She has experienced in making music video’s – She had a go
– She didn’t like them so much
– But it paid the bills

I fairly enjoyed Layla’s visit to the university, even though fashion isn’t my interest. I found it good to get an insight in how other people who have gone though the same have experienced the industry and overcome situations and how you should never give up on a dream and passion you have.

COMING UP! http://instigatearts.org/

Professional Practice: Seba Kurtis

http://www.sebakurtis.com/

Today the photography course had it’s first professional photographer come to visit- Seba Kurtis from Argentina. He wanted to become a writer but found that he needed to force himself into writing.  Seba left for Europe after crisis occurred in Argentina and spent 5 years in Spain as an illegal immigrant. His experience in life as an immigrant has become his life long project, looking at different situations, places and how people move from one country to another.
For the majority of the talk, Seba talked about his personal project ‘Immigration Files’. Within Immigration Files you’d find he has created projects within, from ‘Drowned’, ‘700 Miles’ and ‘A few days more’.

The photographic project ‘Drowned’ all started off from his old family photographs and films which unfortunately got damaged by a flood. The damage caused the emulsion to wash away le aving little to the imagination. Seba came to realise the damage is him, the project becomes him. The identity of the images shows a sense of invisibility.

From the use of his childhood photographs, he made use of what he had and looked at both the front and back to see what the damaged had caused and used the pattern and water marks by influencing himself by drowning his own work. He loves the idea of not having full control over his own images but can be controlled as to what is shown to the audience. At the beginning of ‘Immigration Files’ his feelings towards and during the project was he was angry. He’s angry over the situation and problems people go through daily to survive in life and having been through this himself, encourages him to keep producing and showing this side of life. Although Seba Kurtis has overcome this and lives a very happy life in Manchester, United Kingdom, whilst going back travelling to these places he still gets emotional over it, it is a raw project, it’s his past.

During the lecture he was asked whether he will ever complete this project?
His reply:
Every year. Every year i think this will be it, but every year i carries on, moving to different areas, looking at different subject matters. This will be a lifetime project.

Professional Practice- Jo Slack, Redeye

The second talk of the day, after Anna Taylor from LOOK Photo Festival was a talk by Jo Slack from Redeye Photography network in Manchester, UK.

Redeye is all about networking, support and information for photographers or anyone interested in photography. It is a non-for-profit community benefit society across the UK and globally to support photographers at every level to build a network across photography.

Redeye have plenty of events and social interactions where anyone interested can get involved from exhibitions of work to meetings with other photographers to discuss projects and ideas. One way of showing work and meeting others is through the Redeye Lightbox course at CFCCA in Manchester. Lightbox is funded partly through NPO and partly through Creative skillset. It’s a national campaign which is a year long collaboration period with branding and print. Entries are called appon a judging panel who will review your work to see if participants will move forward. It is in its 3rd year and after recieving a record number of applications, this year 25 participants will show at a major photography festival, autumn 2016. To see this years part taking photographs can find them on…

https://www.redeye.org.uk/opinion/introducing-lightbox-2015-2016

As well as Lightbox, Jo also discussed the stages of a project management.

*Goals- who are the stakeholders?
*Deliverables- what does the project need to deliver to meet the goals?
*Schedule- a list of tasks for each deliverable with assigned roles
*Supporting plans-comms plan, risk management etc.

Creating a project schedule

*Work backwards- what is your end goal? How much time do you have?
*What are your deliverables?
*What research is needed?
*What tasks are there to complete?
*How will you evaluate your success?
*Don’t forget budget, time, scope-quality

To finish off Jo Slack gave us some Tops tips to take into account for the future…

*Common sense but requires good organisation
*Defined roles are key to good communication
*Things go wrong- good protection management allows you to deal with these things in the most productive way.
*Be aware of the schedule of your funders
*Utilise free online tools
*Don’t forget your goal

 

Professional Practice- Anna Taylor, LOOK Photo Festival

One of the first professional practice talks of the week was by Anna Taylor who works for LOOK Photography Festival and how to apply for funding from different resources.

http://lookphotofestival.com/

So first of all, there’s three ways to try to ask for donations to help support a group of people wanting to get out into the industry or just to support yourself in a project. So ways to ask for donations are…

Public– Arts council England, Local authority and Lottery funding.

Private– Corporate sponsorship, advertising, trusts, and foundations.

Individuals-Crowd funding, donations, major donors.

The main organisation to support the Arts is the Arts Council England (ACE). The ACE are guardians of public money allocated by Department of Culture Media and Sport and Lottery to the arts. They exist to make ‘great art accessible to everyone in England’.

ACE Grants for the Arts (GFA) funded by lottery and in 2015-18 the budget is £210 million- £70 million per year. GFA applications are an open funding programme to support new talent and ideas. They can offer grants between £1,000 to £100,000.

ACE receive 6,200 applications per year. Only 39% are successful.

Anna Taylor went through plenty of information for us students on what to do when wanting to apply for funding…

Writing a funding bid.
*Understand your idea and be able to communicate it clearly to anyone who asks
*Talk your idea through with a range of people
*Download guidance from the funder’s website
*Check your eligibility
*Talk to advisors
*Decide whether it is the right fit for your idea
*Build funding contingencies into your project

The Budget.
Before approaching any person(s) or organisations you must know your budget! Need to think through every element of your project

*Artistic spending- fees and wages, production, costs, travel etc.
*Making it accessible to the widest range of people- Braille formats, etc.
*Developing the organisation and people
*Marketing and developing audiences- websites, design and print, research, press, photography etc.
*Overheads- phone bills, postage, insurance

As well as knowing the full amount needed, the funder wants to know a summary of the ideas, any past projects, exhibitions, this helps builds trust with experience being brought into the project. They may also ask for a calculation of public audience viewing the work and how are you going to manage the project and the money they are investing in yourselves.

Always double check everything, first impressions are everything.

 

Graduate Catalogue discussion

Today we had Chris come to visit from Textbook Studios.

Textbook Studios are the company which helped design and print last years final year students exhibition catalogue.
He informed us on what they produced last year and the costings which they printed 300 copies, which costs £3,300 with a £450 discount.

The image above is last years catalogue. They came up with the idea not to feature any work on the cover as it would likely cause arguements and they wanted to avoid that and make a piece of work as a team they can be proud of. They went with 300 copies as Chris informed anything less would be difficult to print on matte at the price they are getting.

As well as Chris being in talking about the process the students made, we also had the opportunity to look at other styles of books on different types of paper and print from other companies.
G.F Smith produces good quality books as a custom made- one of books.

Also the Newspaper club is a way to get work out into the world quickly and cheaply.
This I don’t think is a good option to use as a final exhibition catalogue.

One of the examples shown to us which I liked the look of personally was a small paper (card) from the printhandbook.com as the quality of the images inside looked good and presentable as well as efficient, cant slip into peoples bag without weighing it down.

It was a good experience to view other books which have a unique design if you wanted your own book to stand out from the rest, from stitch binded to an accordian style. I think these styles are good for your own personal use to show creativity of a project through how you can present but as a group exhibition catalogue with 40+ students its likely to not all agree on a style so its good to keep things simple but professional.

http://www.textbook.studio/

https://www.gfsmith.com/

http://www.printhandbook.com/

http://www.asap-digital.com/

http://www.arcticpaper.com/en/Home/