Evaluation of exhibition

For this project I started out with the idea of pursuing pinhole imagery and I love the way  that project has developed into my overlapping pinhole multiexposed images taken on black and white or expired film.  This is definitely a project I would like to develop further.

There was an image I planned for my exhibition that I didn’t finish on time, I intended to create one of these images made up of overlapped images of Leicester landmarks, I am sad I never got the chance to do this as it would have been especially suitable as our exhibition was in the guildhall which is a Leicester landmark itself.   I would also like to try using a regular Holga, rather than the pinhole as I have seen some great results on t he internet of this type of image and it would open up new image-making opportunities as I would no longer be tied  to long exposure times.  I think it would be great to do a roll of faces/people in this way.

As far as improvements o this project go, I would have like more time to take more images as I felt some of my images were stronger than others.  I would have liked to make my pictures even bigger but that would have been tricky from a print perspective.  Because I felt there would be little interest in my sort of photography I didn’t get any cards printed but I think maybe I should have as on opening night at least 5 people asked me for one.  I did give them my website address (And this was printed on my artist statement) But its much easier to loose a written web address than a business card.

When I began the course I did not know what sort of photography I wanted to do or whether I could make some money from it.  This course has enabled me to try lots of new things and I feel now that I can attempt most photographic challenges with a reasonable amount of competence! However, I have found that the more commercial types of photography don’t really appeal.  I don’t enjoy shooting weddings/christenings/babies etc. I get much more involved in the more creative projects.  I especially enjoy working with film as I likr waiting for results.  I enjoy experimenting and seeing how things turn out and I like that it’s a bit more of a challenge to get what you want.  I have been messing about with film cameras for a while on my main blog http://www.liztylerphotography.com but I didn’t feel what I did had any value.  It was fine  to show it to internet people but it is not something I would show to, or share with others voluntarily.  I think the major benefit of the HNC is that is has shown me that the ‘messing around’ I enjoy doing, can be appreciated and is worth sharing.

I don’t know of I will ever be able to make money doing the photography I enjoy but I would like at some point in the future to have a body of work that I am proud of and can share with others.

Thanks for reading!

Opening night!

Opening night was a great success! I personally felt a massive sense of achievement and it was great to hear so much positive feedback about my work, I really didn’t think people would care that much about it. It was also great that some of my friends and family came who I didn’t think were that interested in or supportive of my work.

Me and my boards                                                       The amazing cake!!

 

Exhibition Statement

 

And once again we were in the Mercury!

Preparing for exhibition

A lot of work has been taking place getting everything ready for preview night! We have been busy sanding and painting the boards on which to display our images. Here are some photos of us setting up before preview night. We had to carefully bring all images and equipment from college and assemble the boards in the venue.

I played a pivotal role in the group by sourcing a cake, crisps and saalad ready for opening night!

There has been some stress though, I was unable to print my images at college as [lanned because one of my images was so long it required A0 foamboard and college had none in stock. As it was so close to deadline I found myself frantically ringing local foamboard stockists and receiving some eye watering quotes. Finally I find a printers who would print the images for me at the same price I would have been charged to mount them myself at college! Panic over

Also, I had to be moved to two boards due to lack of space but feel my pictures looked better for it!

Getting the velcro to stick my images on the boards!

The Bar

The Leicester Mercury also featured a preview in todays edition:

Final Six Images

These are my final six images, they will be displayed across 3 boards.  The order of images is intended to break up the ‘pinky’ tones

BOARD 1:

BOARD 2

BOARD 3

 

My artist statement should help people to understand my work and how it was produced.  This is my draft, I think it’s a bit wordy and technical

ARTIST STATEMENT:

MERGE

By Elizabeth Tyler

In this collection I wanted to explore what would happen if images were merged and blended for creative effect to produce images that capture the atmosphere of a time and a place.

As part of the HNC course I have worked hard to develop my skills using a DSLR camera but for this exhibition I wanted to pursue another of my interests, which is film photography. I used a Holga pinhole camera loaded with medium format film and experimented with various creative techniques. Pinhole cameras have no lens to focus the light, instead they have a tiny hole through which light enters and produces an image on the film. Photographs produced this way can have an ethereal quality, which can make ordinary places look extraordinary.

Once, when experimenting with the pinhole camera early on in the work I forgot to completely wind my film on between frames. This seemed like a roll wasted at the time but upon processing the film, the resulting images were much more interesting than single frames. As a result of this happy accident I started doing this on purpose and produced continuous rolls of overlapping multiexposed images. I also experimented with different film emulsions, including various expired films and cross processing slide film to produce dramatic colour shifts.

To see more of my work or to contact me please visit: http://www.liztylerphotography.com

 

I plan to print them all and mount on foamboard. All images will have a height of 297mm but the length is variable. I will print and mount at college as that seems the most cost effective way of doing things

Narrowing down my collection

In this post I will repost my favourite images so far and discuss their strengths and weaknesses to help me narrow down my selection for exhibition at the end of the month.  All images will be printed on form board of height 297mm and the width will vary image to image, this means some will be up to 1.2m long! I plan to print on foam board.  I hope to have 6 images to exhibit, 3 colour and 3 black and white

I definitely plan to include this image, although it is not a Majorca image it should fit with the stonework featured in the black and white Majorca images.  I like the angles and the mix of perspectives.

I like the yellow truck against the blue and the lead in lines.  However, I feel the blues are too washed out and there is a lot of dead space at the side of the frame

I really like the detail in the rocks/palm and sky.  The muted tones work well and it’s nice and sharp, however, is it interesting enough?

I love the image below, one of my favourites, it has a holiday feeling.

I like the surreal quality of the image below, the tiny jar of flowers look huge.  However, I think this roll of expired film was just too degraded and the colours just don’t work for me.

The image below keeps confusing me, I love the deep green/blues.  The large bleached out areas confuse me, sometimes I like their dazzling contrast, other times I don’t.  I think it has a beach, retro feel

I like the  image below but its not overlapping or multiexposed so could maybe be too small to fit in with my other pictures?

I really like the image below, I love the rings of sunlight and palm trees.  Colours are nice too

The washed out colours work well for the subject but I just don’t think these are interesting enough to exhibit

Love this one!  Nice and sharp and interesting subject

Unsure about this one, I like the boat but not keen on the right hand side

As far as editing decisions go I am leaving in the small inperfections as I feel they are in keeping with the style of the images.

Promotion

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To make sure people are actually going to attend our exhibition we are promoting it online and distributing this flyer/leaflet.

Indie gogo promotional campaign

To raise funds for our exhibition we have created an indigogo crowdfunding appeal!   This is a great idea, both to raise money and more importantly raise the profile of the event!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U69hg967QGc

UPDATE: We reached our target, WOOHOO!

Finding a venue

We had to find a venue for our upcoming exhibition.  We looked at various galleries and public spaces  to find the one that best met our needs.

We wanted:

1. A room large enough to show the work  of nine people
2. A room we could book for the week
3. Somewhere we could afford
4. To be allowed to host a preview evening
5. decent opening hours so friends and family to visit
6. We wanted somewhere accessible that had a decent footfall

To me, point six was the most important, our families and friends had probably already seen our work, we wanted a fresh audience.  Some specialist photographic galleries have very few visitors.  However, on the opposite end of the scale we were wary of putting them on the wall of a pub/bar/coffee shop as they may not be treated with respect.

In the end we placed a deposit on the Guildhall in Leicester.  This is a historical building, the oldest in the city.  It is a free museum which is open every day of the week and is currently very popular due to the interedst surrounding King Richard the Third who is buried in  the Cathedral next door!

Due to the age of the building we will have to display our work  on boards and we are not allowed to hang pictures on the walls.  We will have to think of how best to use the natural light available to best display the pictures.

Photo by S.Pantling

 

Art photographer inspiration and professional research

I looked up some other photographers for inspiration to help me develop my ideas and shape them into a body of work. As I had previously researched pinhole photographers for my mini project I looked for photographers who were doing creative art photography on film.

Susan Bowen photography
http://www.susanbowenphoto.com/holgaramas3/

Bowen is a fine art photographer who creates fine out images using a Holga 120 (Not pinhole) and overlaps the frames to create long ‘holgarama’ images. These are not dissimilar to the overlapping images I obtained in Cambridge by accident. I have seen these kind of images before but have not come across photographers who have created a large body of work based upon this technique before.As her Holga takes 6 x 6 images and mine 12 x6 her images are smaller so she has more images per frame than me which adds interest but is not something I would want to replicate as it does make the images more busy.

I like the way she organises her sets by subject. This will be similar to my exhibition set being all images from my holiday

Overlapping multiple exposures shot with a Holga. The anti-war march/protest, March 22, 2003, New York City, NY.

Although, not clear from the preview image above, Bowen’s shots are very sharp compared to my pinhole images and makes me want to try to make a panoramic image with one of my Holga 120 cameras!  There is no reason I should limit my panoramic images to pinhole cameras.

Bowen has enjoyed success as an art photographer and has had her work featured in exhibitions, press and public projects.  This interests me as throughout the course I have found myself becoming a little bored of the more standard commercial types of photography, e.g. weddings, having shot a few of these kind of events, I felt more that I was taking pictures to fit in with someone else’s idea of what the images should look like rather than my own.  I feel like art photography is more where my interests lie and it is inspirational to see somebody pursuing this less accessible route with positive results.  Maybe one day, I will have a body of work of sufficient quality to exhibit and sell to interested companies.

I have wanted to experiment with expired film for a while so I looked for a art photographer who worked in this medium

Brian Henry

Henry works with expired instant film to make creative, ghostly images.  I really like the colours in this image.  Obviously the effects I will get from my expired film will be very different as the colours and finish will vary depending on the emulsion used and how the film has been stored.

http://www.prymemagazine.com/blog/2015/5/17/qa-expired-eight-w-brian-henry

 

Here is other expired image I really liked.  To me this shows that this is worth pursuing.

http://www.shootingfilm.net/2013/12/wonderful-color-photos-taken-by-using.html

Holga 120WPC colour work Part 2

Here’s the second set of scans! I am still really liking these images. I am think th epinky tones from the Velvia work particularly well. Scanning the curing negatives is very time intensive!

Editing in lightroom has been minimal, there has been slight adjustments to exposure, contrast and sharpness only. The colours have not been altered at all and all come from the expired emulsion.