Martin Parr

Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer and photojournalist, he is a member of Magnum Photos and focuses on the aspects of modern day life of people, and is also a member of Magnum Photos. He started working as a professional photographer and has taught photography from the mid 1970s, he was recognised for his black and white photography, but then he switched to colour photography in the 1980s.
Since 1994 Martin Parr has been a member of Magnum Photos, and has had almost 50 books published and has ha his work featured in over 80 exhibitions worldwide. The images that he produces are very bold and burst in colour and he likes to add humour to his work. The way he creates these bold colours is by using a ring flash, Macro Lenses and high saturation film. As well as taking photographs he is a collector of postcards and other objects to show popular culture, since the 1970s Parr has been publishing postcards and have become very popular with the public.

For this task I was to take a minimum of 3 photos that were inspired my Martin Parr, which enabled me to look at themes such as colour, humour and people. I decided to look at colour as I thought I could capture some bright close ups.

                      This is my favourite image I took, as I think it looks natural and that the cups and teapot have just been left n the table, and it doesn't look as if it has been purposely set up for the photo. I also like the contrast of the colours, especially how the yellow teapot and the flowers stand out from the rest of the objects which have a more pastel colour.

http://www.martinparr.com/index1.html

This is another image that I took, inspired by Martin Parr. I wanted to try a different approach to my previous image. In some of Martin Parrs work he takes pictures of people on the streets, in a normal day to day setting where none of his work is set up, it is all natural. In this picture I wanted to try and get it in the style of one of his pictures with the people in their normal setting. Also by having the bright colours on the two signs, which I altered the contrast to make them stand out more. I think that by doing this shows more of a similarity between this picture and Martin Parrs work.

Guest Lecture- Jade Birchnall

Today, On Wednesday 1st February we had a Guest Lecture by Jade Birchnall who is currently a photography student at Manchester Metropolitan University. During her talk she explained her work and some of the projects she has done during her time at University.

Some of her work that she showed us today was very interesting, she showed us a project she recently did which was focusing on the effects of senile dementia, her grandmother suffered from this illness so it was particularly interesting as she could relate to the topic herself, which gave it a more personal feel. In one part of the presentation she used the voice of her grandmother over one of her images that she exhibtited. These images included a note of instructions for her grandmother to read, such as visitors she will be having in the day and this note included what they had to do. As well as photographing this she also contacted the Nursing home named 'The Little Sister Of Poor' which is a Roman Catholic religious institute for women who suffere with Dementia and this particular Nursing Home was run by nuns. During her time in  the Nursing home she did portraits of the people who lived there. During the lecture she said that she felt awkward whilst in the home and she had to build a form of trust with the residents before they would allow her to take the photos.

Her main choice of camera is a medium format but she also took a lot of photos using a film camera but this made the images grainy, which she wasn't keen on, so then tried using a lighting kit to enable the images to become less grainy.

The next set of work that Jade showed us was completely different from the previous work she had done. She visited The Baby Platinum Gentlemans Club to photograph the peole who worked there, who were mainly strippers. She went here with her friend named Amy Clarkson so they could both take different photographs where Amy took full body shots of the strippers and Jade took photographs of different parts of the body. I think that the images that jade took were much less provocative than the full body shots which came across as quite intimidating and were quite elegant.

I enjoyed the talk from Jade, especially as she is of a similar age which I think made it more interesting as nit gave me an insight to what could be in the future for myself. Not only did she talk about her own work but she was able to give information on what University life will be like and how it differs from College, which was really helpful.

Jill Cole - Guest Lecture

Today, Wednesday 18th January we had a Guest Lecture, Jill Cole who is a Documentary Photographer and artist. In her work she uses the environmental issues that occur on a day to day basis and portrays that within her work. Not only is she an Artist and Photographer but she participates and conducts her own lectures in order to show others how her wok is influenced. During her lecture she talked about her current project she is doing, in which she uses a layering technique where she takes a number of photos and layers them on top of one another and bring pieces of each image through to the top layer giving off really interesting effects. I like the way she wants to show the different layers of the forest by using this technique.

One piece of her work that I really like is called 'Between here and there' which created in 2009 consists of her putting birds into individual bags and photographing the movement. At first I didn't like the idea of the birds being confined into a bag and then photographing the struggle of them trying to get free, But at the end of her work she writes what exactly happened and what the images were trying to show. The birds were part of the National Nature Conservation and were waiting to have their identification tags attached to their legs, so while they were waiting she was able to photograph them, as soon as this had happened they were then released into the wild again, and none of the birds were harmed. The idea of this project was to show the movement and how fragile the birds are.

http://www.jillcole.com/