Day off today as it is a Bank holiday. But I've not been idle; a few ideas are running through my head around a central theme for my second Portfolio for Unit Two. This portfolio is a demonstration of the image manipulation and montage capabilities that Photoshop offers more than the mechanics of techniques of taking images as it was for the first portfolio.
Anyone who knows a little about me will know that I am a nostalgic and melancholic personality at the best of times - my awareness of the passage of time, the loss of people from my life and the friends who I have 'lost' - or maybe misplaced - is a keen sense that I can never shake off for long. My poetry and lyrics are often about time and thus my idea is to try to capture an element of time and it's impact upon everything (entropy anyone?) in a few images. We have to use 'SMART' Tags, for this, one of which is 'achievable'. So capturing in a few images the way time affects us across the world? Easy... Stay safe snappers, keep clicking that button...
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A while ago, three of us went up to the Norfolk / Suffolk borders for a few days. As is our habit on such trips, we had a look round and got off the beaten track to go through villages and explore areas that are not specifically 'touristy'.
Whilst there, we stopped for coffee at a small village which had a multi-business quarter in a set of old buildings on a farm. There was a Tea Room, a Play Park for Kids, a second hand Bookshop, an Art Shop and one of those 'knick knack' shops that you find; selling everything from old clothes lines, iron boot scrapers, games from the 70's, small Hadron Colliders and Screen Calibration Systems for CRT and LCD Monitors... Yes, as we were looking around, outside on a metal shelf (but under cover) there was a 'ColourVision' Spyder2 Suite calibration hardware and software system (with Serial Number) in a box! Now, my main PC has two hp LCD screens run through an nVidia GeForce GT 730 GPU. They work well and as each are 24" screens, I have quite a lot of work space. But often I've been disappointed at the colours when putting them onto print or other media. I've known that different sRGB colour profiles from manufacturers can alter how an image looks onscreen and when printed, and the course I'm on is widening my understanding of this and other technical issues. But the box was in good condition, all the elements that should be present in the box were present, and when I spoke to the older gentlemen (who had that rich east Anglian brogue of a voice) it was obvious that he had no idea what it was. Risking a crisp £5 was not much of a consideration, so I paid him and merrily went on my way - never expecting it would work. This calibration device was created for Windows XP with Service Pack 3. Now I use Mac osSierra and Windows 10 x64 Creators Edition, so I was not expecting it to work - but it did! I downloaded a new version of the software from the ColourVision website, installed it and the hardware and as I type this, the first of my Monitors is partway through the calibration process. Who knows if it will improve (or not) my photography, but it is an interesting little device and I'm quite pleased that the profiles that the software creates can be used by programmes such as Adobe Photoshop, or ignored if the changes have a deleterious effect upon the results. As Miranda Hart might say - such fun! Happy snapping all, take care out there.... So it is May 22nd 2017; Hand-in day for all our hard work for Unit One on the course. One of our number hasn't been seen for a few weeks and we all wish her well, one is off sunning herself in Madrid and as for me - I've finished the three documents I'm handing in today and am looking forward to finally being free of them!
Part of learning anything is finding out what you would change next time. In this at least I've been successful; my underpinning knowledge for Unit Two will not need re-writing a number of times and them reducing and polishing a few more - I'm sure I have a handle on what needs to be done now and i am happy with the level of work I've produced for Unit One. As part of my Journal /Blog for Unit One, I wanted to come up with something a little extra, a little different. Thus, I thought I'd take a piece of music by my long-time musical collaborator Keith Melhuish ('Smoke', written for one of our projects on a poem of mine, but a really good fit for this application as well) and lay it over the images of my first ever Photography Portfolio. If you'd like to visit my YouTube Channel and have a look at it, please go here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwtHgAcNnRQ In some ways I suppose that you could say that it is not completely finished, the music is quite short, the words speed by as I wanted to get in some important information, and present it as a 'living' Portfolio - engaging as many of the senses as possible. This has worked well thus far, sight and sound are powerful senses for the human being, but I'd like to refine it and re-cut it and perhaps ask Keith to increase the length of the music by a few extra bars. The words either side of the work itself can be paused and read at leisure; the piece itself is only 2 minutes 41 seconds long and if I could add extra senses to the piece, it would be the smell of the countryside; the tang of fresh mown grass on the air, the sensation of a breeze through the branches of my trees and the feeling of a farmers field under your foot. Without those elements it is a very different piece, but nevertheless I am content with how it has turned out and I hope you enjoy it if you choose to visit it and spend some time with my trees. The second post today will be later this afternoon after class when the documents have been signed and dated, the responsibility for them passed to our Tutor and at least this first Unit done and dusted. Talk later snappers..... We are gradually dwindling in numbers - only Dean and I were at the session today and thus we had a lot of the Tutor's time to ourselves on Photoshop! An interesting session and i managed to hand in all three of my documents:
It was good to be finally 'free' of it all and the temptation to tweak elements of it here and there. Dean handed his in and I think only two of our classmates still had to do so. We managed to spend a lot of time on some of the different palettes that this amazing programme offers the dedicated enthusiast. A lot of these palettes are ones I've not really tried before, so we went through them in some detail before being asked to think about our ideas for the Unit Two Portfolio. This needs to have four finished photos, plus ancillary photos showing how the final one was achieved. Should be fun. No session next week due to the Bank Holiday. Until the next time snappers, stay safe out there... So yesterday was an interesting session. Our Tutor went through a few things outlining Unit Two for us and looking at how we might use some of our previous photos for Unit Two. We had a look at some composite / montage images by other artists including one of my favourite - Magritte. His juxtapositions of two disparate images in layers were sublime and helped us all (I think) to see what the next Unit is mostly about.
We looked at the pitfalls once more of using other people's work in your own and passing it all off as unique by looking at a very recent - and in fact still ongoing - 'scandal' in the photographic world. The Souvid Datta scandal (petapixel.com/2017/05/03/photographer-souvid-datta-appears-plagiarized-mary-ellen-mark/ ) has not shown the photographic world in the best of lights. The fact that he could freely use other people's work as elements in his own without it being discovered by any of the establishment who were handing him awards like water at a marathon is quite shocking. It took a single lady from India to start bringing it to people's attention and now, at 223, Datta's career and reputation lie in tatters. We looked at our Learner Log for Unit One, went through the Checklists and at least one of us handed in their Underpinning Knowledge and Portfolio early! We went through some feedback, had a look at Photoshop and some images that the Tutor had found for us to start thinking about for our next Portfolio and looked at a variety of options. We have to have 10 images, four of which are to be fully finished and the main part of the second Portfolio; the other elements are there to demonstrate how the finished four were reached. Then we became film stars for a few minutes. We were video'd in one of the classrooms speaking to the camera about our journey and our work. We had to keep it short - not easy for me as you can guess - and focused on our learner 'journey'. I did what I could to get everything pertinent in but the end was a bit scrappy as we couldn't find how to turn the darn thing off! Such is the fun of going first in these things. Then it was a bit of helping a couple of the others before the session finished, and then we all went on our merry way. Next week is Hand-in Day for Unit One - so I'd better get on with finalising my Under Pinning Knowledge! Stay safe all, keep snapping.... This week was Photoshop-centric. It included more input into the Health and Safety element of taking photographs, especially around the setting up of an ergonomic workflow space; and it delved a little deeper 'under the hood' of Photoshop.
We also reviewed understanding the variety of input sources, the quality of images and the copyright of images recorded. We looked at the licence-free sources for images that we might look at for inspiration and the salutary lesson of 'Souvid Datta' - a rising start in the photographic world who garnered a lot of praise and prizes and recognition for his work until it was pointed out to the establishment - who had not questioned the validity of his work at all - that some of his work had been doctored and used other peoples work without acknowledging them. But it was not another photographer or anyone from the photographic world who pointed out his malfeasance; it was a sex worker in India who alerted those who had not researched Datta's work at all of his deceit. Datta's career lies in ruins and the photographic world's reputation has not been enhanced by this incident at all. With the date to hand in our work drawing ever closer, I am awaiting my photographs to come back from the printers and after some re-working of them and a little adjustment; I am hopeful that they will look at their best for hand in. Stay safe out there in pixel land, keep snapping.... |
Alan MitchellI'm always trying to capture that fleeting 'moment' in time -whether by taking a photo or writing a poem. My attempts to capture that illusive feeling, sight, sensation or sound in some way is, to me, magical. Archives
March 2023
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