Wednesday, 4 November 2015
Saturday, 26 September 2015
Life Drawing Session (23/09/15)
On the 23rd of September, we did a life drawing session. I was quite nervous for the session as I'd never done it before and also I rarely draw in my own time so I didn't feel confident about it.
We sat down in the classroom and was introduced to the model before we began doing multiple quick two minute gesture drawings which consisted of the model walking around in circles and we had to capture a pose and draw it on our paper. I didn't exactly like the gesture drawings as the model was constantly moving and I couldn't focus on a particular part to draw and I found this really irritating.
After, we began to do longer poses, starting with 5 minute poses and going up to 15 minute poses. I started off using pencil but realised it wasn't as striking as I hoped on paper and too 'neat'. I switched to using charcoal and felt like this was bolder on paper and I could also use it to smudge and shade in certain areas of my drawings.
After practicing life drawing for a couple of hours, I felt more confident in drawing and focused in what I was doing.
Overall, I found the life drawing session helpful as it allowed me to try out and practice my drawing skills, something I rarely take an interest in. I've also never had to draw portraits of a person standing in front of me so it was also another dimension of drawing I had never tried before.
We sat down in the classroom and was introduced to the model before we began doing multiple quick two minute gesture drawings which consisted of the model walking around in circles and we had to capture a pose and draw it on our paper. I didn't exactly like the gesture drawings as the model was constantly moving and I couldn't focus on a particular part to draw and I found this really irritating.
After, we began to do longer poses, starting with 5 minute poses and going up to 15 minute poses. I started off using pencil but realised it wasn't as striking as I hoped on paper and too 'neat'. I switched to using charcoal and felt like this was bolder on paper and I could also use it to smudge and shade in certain areas of my drawings.
After practicing life drawing for a couple of hours, I felt more confident in drawing and focused in what I was doing.
Overall, I found the life drawing session helpful as it allowed me to try out and practice my drawing skills, something I rarely take an interest in. I've also never had to draw portraits of a person standing in front of me so it was also another dimension of drawing I had never tried before.
Tuesday, 22 September 2015
Introduction to sound design (21.09.15)
On the first day of sound design, I was quite intrigued to the subject as I'd never studied the subject in education before and was interested in what I would learn. Our tutor for this part of the course, Seb, told us about the two projects we would have to complete for this:- The first project was to create a sound piece that was one minute long that told a journey without the use of non-diegetic music/soundtrack
and
- The second project was to create a sound piece to accompany a movie scene/iconic photograph.
The majority of the day was introducing the class to the different types of sound in film, such as diegesis which I was familiar with already from studying film previously. We also looked at how sound is used to help us understand reality and that it's very important in
Out of the whole day, I found the most interesting part was thinking about sound/creating sound for still images. I had never thought about adding the sound to a still image before and I now look at images differently and try to imagine the sound happening in the photo. It has put a whole new perspective on viewing photography that I had never even considered before.
Thursday, 10 September 2015
Gallery Trip (Photography) 08/09/15
In Photography, we are currently doing research for our topic of Identity. To make us as students think about what we want to photograph, we went on a trip to a range of London galleries on Tuesday, September 8th, to give us creative inspiration and also start off our thought processes.
I found the trip overall very helpful as the exhibitions and artists we visited yesterday were all linked to 'identity' and I got to see how each artist expressed the topic in their work, giving me a lot of insight and a vision into what I want to create in my own work.
First of all, we visited the Victoria & Albert Museum in Kensington to see the exhibition 'What Is Luxury?'. The small exhibition housed a number of 'luxurious' objects and focused on the production of these objects and questioned the importance of luxury in today's society.
The item on display that caught my eye the most was the three small diamonds. Each diamond was made up from everyday, inexpensive, unusual items.
The first diamond was made from gunpowder, metal and glass, the second diamond was made up from armadillo roadkill ashes, and the third was made from The Superman 3 soundtrack, paper and glass. Although I didn't think that all of the exhibit displays related to identity and memory, the diamond display did make me think about and challenge the value of luxurious items in today's society and how some people use money and possessions as a way of defining them as a person. To me, this diamond display is trying to show that although these items look expensive, they're really made up of worthless materials which tells me that luxury items aren't really what we should be valueing in life.
Next we visited the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. The artist, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye paints pictures of different people and I really enjoyed her artwork as the use of low lighting and low angles created striking focus points and overall made an effective image. The close up shots of the subjects also made the paintings more intimate and surreal and I feel that in terms of identity, these paintings captured the subjects in a compact and close space which to me as a viewer it almost felt like the subject was
standing there in front of me. The paintings were also very detailed in facial features and I also found it interesting reading about the exhibition online is that none of the subjects featured were real people and they were all either made up or taken from different types of media (books, images etc.)
'You And My Friends' was a series of 9 images all taken at various Morrissey concerts. In terms of identity and memory, these images captured the expressions of numerous unknown and unaware fans as they watched the show. I really liked how the 9 people were identified as different races, ages and genders but they were all identified and unified together as having the same music taste and shared a love in the same artist. I feel that the calm and peaceful atmosphere I got from the display was captured through the soft lighting and pastel-like peachy oranges and reds and the shallow depth of field creates a sense of intimacy as the subjects face stands out and is in clear focus whereas the rest of the crowd are in a blur. In terms of memory, I thought about the subjects and how they cherish the moment and I also thought about it from the photographers point of view as Mcginley is capturing a moment that would be forgotten and left behind.
'UKG' was another photography series that consisted of images taken from 1999-2001 in the UK Garage club scene which was extremely popular at the time. I felt like I related to this series the most as I grew up around family members and family friends who were heavily influenced by this scene and so I had some background in the genre and the culture behind it.Again, I liked the initmate close ups of the different clubbers and how the pictures are taken 'in-the-moment'. You can also clearly tell from their clothing and style what type of people the clubbers are as they're dressed quite smartly.
Lastly, we visited the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square. This was the gallery I least liked but the exhibition we visited related to our topic of Identity the most.
The exhibition included pictures taken and edited by students from a London secondary school. They took pictures of themselves and wrote on them, digitally edited them etc. to reflect their own identity. I liked the concept but overall it wasn't something that I was interested in or wanted to develop a response from.
Overall, I enjoyed the photographers gallery the most as the portrait photos were what interested me and made me want to create my own response from.
I found the trip overall very helpful as the exhibitions and artists we visited yesterday were all linked to 'identity' and I got to see how each artist expressed the topic in their work, giving me a lot of insight and a vision into what I want to create in my own work.
First of all, we visited the Victoria & Albert Museum in Kensington to see the exhibition 'What Is Luxury?'. The small exhibition housed a number of 'luxurious' objects and focused on the production of these objects and questioned the importance of luxury in today's society.
The item on display that caught my eye the most was the three small diamonds. Each diamond was made up from everyday, inexpensive, unusual items.
The first diamond was made from gunpowder, metal and glass, the second diamond was made up from armadillo roadkill ashes, and the third was made from The Superman 3 soundtrack, paper and glass. Although I didn't think that all of the exhibit displays related to identity and memory, the diamond display did make me think about and challenge the value of luxurious items in today's society and how some people use money and possessions as a way of defining them as a person. To me, this diamond display is trying to show that although these items look expensive, they're really made up of worthless materials which tells me that luxury items aren't really what we should be valueing in life.
Next we visited the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. The artist, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye paints pictures of different people and I really enjoyed her artwork as the use of low lighting and low angles created striking focus points and overall made an effective image. The close up shots of the subjects also made the paintings more intimate and surreal and I feel that in terms of identity, these paintings captured the subjects in a compact and close space which to me as a viewer it almost felt like the subject was 
After, we visited The Photographer's Gallery to see a number of exhibitions including a music photography exhibition named 'We Want More'. As I have done event photography in the past, I was intrigued the most by this gallery as I was familiar with the style of photography and two displays that I was attracted to the most we're 'You And My Friends' (2013) by Ryan Mcginley, 'UKG' (1999-2001) by Ewen Spencer.
These three displays included photography taken at a number of concerts and music venues but all differed and told different stories in their composition, lighting, camera shot and angles.
'You And My Friends' was a series of 9 images all taken at various Morrissey concerts. In terms of identity and memory, these images captured the expressions of numerous unknown and unaware fans as they watched the show. I really liked how the 9 people were identified as different races, ages and genders but they were all identified and unified together as having the same music taste and shared a love in the same artist. I feel that the calm and peaceful atmosphere I got from the display was captured through the soft lighting and pastel-like peachy oranges and reds and the shallow depth of field creates a sense of intimacy as the subjects face stands out and is in clear focus whereas the rest of the crowd are in a blur. In terms of memory, I thought about the subjects and how they cherish the moment and I also thought about it from the photographers point of view as Mcginley is capturing a moment that would be forgotten and left behind. 'UKG' was another photography series that consisted of images taken from 1999-2001 in the UK Garage club scene which was extremely popular at the time. I felt like I related to this series the most as I grew up around family members and family friends who were heavily influenced by this scene and so I had some background in the genre and the culture behind it.Again, I liked the initmate close ups of the different clubbers and how the pictures are taken 'in-the-moment'. You can also clearly tell from their clothing and style what type of people the clubbers are as they're dressed quite smartly.
Lastly, we visited the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square. This was the gallery I least liked but the exhibition we visited related to our topic of Identity the most.
The exhibition included pictures taken and edited by students from a London secondary school. They took pictures of themselves and wrote on them, digitally edited them etc. to reflect their own identity. I liked the concept but overall it wasn't something that I was interested in or wanted to develop a response from.
Overall, I enjoyed the photographers gallery the most as the portrait photos were what interested me and made me want to create my own response from.
Wednesday, 9 September 2015
Day 1: Introduction to the Media Production 07/09/15
On the first day at Ravensbourne on my foundation course in Media Production, I was very excited and nervous because I didn't know what I would be expecting. It was a new learning experience and also a new learning atmosphere which I had to get used to.
I was introduced to Othello and Alice, two tutors who were photographers who started off by showing us their previous work and projects and also explained their research behind it. I found this quite interesting as through this I got to learn a bit about who they were and what they were into through their photography. I especially liked how they explained their thinking process behind their images and how they experimented and expanded their ideas through exploring and looking into the history of their subject topic.
They then introduced us to the history of photography. I found this part quite informative as it was brief and to the point and showed us images taken and equipment used throughout the last 170 years. I also got to learn about some of the pioneering inventors who helped to develop and improve the technology used in photography. Although I'm keen in photography, i had never seen some of the inventors before so it was interesting to see how photography was processed and some of the cameras used before the digital age. I think this brief history lesson was helpful as I wrote a lot of the pioneers names down and went home to further research about them.
Research was a key part of the day and the tutors expressed the importance of researching and documenting the process while here at Ravensbourne in our sketchbooks and blogs. This was helpful and insightful as I hadn't ever had to keep a sketchbook before so it as a new thing for me and I was glad that
Lastly, Othello and Alice introduced us to our topics for photography; Memory and Identity.
We had to split into groups of five and discuss what these two topics meant. My group decided to do a small brainstorm on what we thought these topics meant and the different sub categories that fit into identity.
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