Guest Lecture- John Myers

Today, on Wednesday 29th February we had a Guest Lecture, John Myers who is an Artist after doing a degree in Art where he specialised in Sculpture and has had a successful career out of building sculptures and having them exhibited in numerous Galleries. As well as Sculpture work he has done a bit of Photography which too, has been successful and has had his main work exhibited at Galleries across the Midlands.



One of Myers projects that he spoke about during the lecture was named 'Middle England' which has shown to be his most successful piece of work, which consisted of a number of portraits of individuals as well as famillies living in Stourbridge and the black country, but most of his images are of people he knows. The main people that John Myers looked up to and inspired him were Diane Arbus, August Sander, E.J Belocq and Lewis Hine.

His work is mainly shot with a 5x4 format camera, where he uses natural light instead of artificial lighting. He also likes to shoot his photographs in a documentary sort of style, so he captures the people in their natural setting without having to set up props or any other extra objects.

http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk/programme/current/event/495/middle_england/


 As well as portraiture he also did a series of photos which were of televisions and substations, which I didn't really understand why he wanted to photograph these objects. I much prefer his portraits as they have more meaning, and can tell more of a story with the expression of the people or by how they are acting in the picture, due to him taking natural photographs.

Extreme - Fujifilm Student Award

For this assignment, which is going to be completed over four weeks, in which we are going to be entering the 'Fugifilm Student Awards'. The assignment title is called 'Extreme' With this I will be able to choose any subject to which I feel is portrayed as being extreme, whether this being Weather, sports, or body piercings. We are to take our final images on film camera, being either colour or black and white film. We are not able to edit our images as digital cameras are not allowed to be used.

There are many definitions of the term extreme, but is mostly commonly know for it meaning dangerous or exceeding the degree of the matter, and going beyond the average or ordinary. When the term is used within Extreme sports it can be defined as being dangerous or hazardous.

As there is a large field in which extreme can be connected with, so using the internet I was able to look at different types of 'Extreme' During this time I came across many subjects that I could use, these included:

*  Hairstyles
*  Tattoos
*  Face/Body paintings
*  Sport
*  Make overs
*  Fashion
*  Close ups

For my Extreme theme, I decide to choose to do Extreme close ups of household objects, I decided to do this as there are a lot of things I am able to do with them, and will not be limited to what I can take photographs of, these could include flowers in the house, vases, ornaments or even different sections of walls/ wallpapers.

http://www.fujifilmstudentawards.co.uk/

These are a few images from my first photo shoot of close ups, I randomly chose objects in my house that I thought may work well and give me different ideas to develop them further or relate new images to them. The top image is of roses, I like the idea of photographing natural things in different environments, and the colors I thought were quite vibrant so by therefore doing a close up shot you can see the different tones of pink. The image in  the middle is just a simple house decoration hanging from a drawer handle, Although it is not all completely in focus, I think it works well by having the top of the heart in focus it allows you to see the contrasting colored pattern on the decoration. The next image is one of my favourites.