So, this is my first blog post, that much is evident. I’ve blogged before specifically about projects I have done, including making a short film and a music video. I think the idea of blogging is awesome, but then again i think the whole concept of being able to click one button and your thoughts, feelings, work, anything can be seen by anyone around the world, well that’s just crazy. Anyway, I’m going to be posting my Photography module on here for anyone who’s interested and for the purpose of getting a good grade, I suppose you’d better know a bit about my photography past before I start.
So, my name is Ellie, I’m 18 years old and i study Media Production at the University of Lincoln. In terms of photography, I got my first camera when I was 5 years old. Granted, it was a click and shoot Barbie camera but it’s the thought that counts. I have taken pictures of everything and anything all my life. Throughout my school life, I did it as a hobby, posting pretty amateur stuff on my Instagram of generic things like the food i ate that day, or the sunset from my bedroom window. However, at my school, Photography was an option for A level. Of course, I had to pick it, and I think that’s when I truly fell in love with it. It wasn’t just taking free photos, which has it’s elements of fun in it too, it was about imagination, thought, emotion. I had 4 portfolios to create with 4 final pieces to sum up each sketchbook. For the coursework, we were allowed to choose a word to focus on and for our exams we were given a paper with 10 words to choose from.
In year 12, i chose the word Addiction for my coursework. I have always been interested in photographing things that people often forget about, like the everyday struggles someone has to go through when they’re addicted to something. I was inspired by a photography called Chris Arnade who photographed drug addicts in their every day life. This then led me to choose 6 common addictions, Internet addiction, Gambling addiction, Alcohol addition, Smoking addiction, Diet addiction and Drug addiction. For each one, I created an image that best describes how each addict feels on a day to day basic. I will post these photos separately so you get an idea of what I was doing.
For the exam part of year 12, I chose the word stripes. Most people went for the generic view of stripes, whether that be animal prints, barcodes etc. However, I wanted to do something different that had not been done before. I have always loved street photography, ever since i could press the shutter. With this in mind, I decided to visit several cities and photograph what I saw. Literally. People walking, riding bikes, moving cars, buses, buildings, it could be anything. What i eventually did with these photos was desaturate the photos and put one element of colour in each and then i created a huge line of skyscrapers for the exam. I cut all my photos into stripes and spliced them together covering the sky scrapers. I then called the piece “Summer in the City” which is a name of a song.
For year 13, I chose my coursework word, water. I was fascinated by the tiny aspects of water that are not seen by the human eye. I wanted to explore all types of water and the movement of it. So i did several different shoots. I did a black and white film shoot of natural waters, rivers, lakes, fountains etc. Shoots also included dropping fruit into water and seeing it’s splash, pouring coloured water over fruit, using a macro lens to photograph natural droplets on leaves etc, I even waited till it was cold and took some frozen shots. All of these photos were eventually made into a final piece where I created a shower with wires coming from the jet, I then attached the water photos onto it with pegs.
The exam was important this year as this is what I needed to get into Uni. I chose the word ‘postal’. I explored many different meanings of the word but finally came up with the idea of postcards. I’ve been lucky enough to travel from a very young age and as i said, with a constant camera in my hand, I had thousands of really good photos that were just stored away in a box. When mindmapping ideas for my exam, I came to the conclusion of making my photos in postcards from all around the world. And that’s exactly what I did. Through hours and hours of searching and editing, I made 46 postcards ranging from countries like America, Kenya, Italy, the list is endless. I then decided for my 15 hour exam, I would put all these ‘postcards’ through a door as if they’ve been posted. This was a very nervous time for me as I couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong during the 3 days. I got a huge piece of canvas and used polystyrene to create the door with it’s detail. I then stuck paint brush bristles in the gap for the postbox and stuck a golden piece of card over it like the post box flap. I painted the door red and then with a lot of care and time, I placed each individual postcard as if it was all piled up against the door and had created a pile onto the doorstep. This was probably one of my favourite pieces to create but I enjoyed every part of my photography course. I received high A’s in both my coursework pieces and A*’s in my exam pieces, resulting in me receiving highest achieving photography student for both year 12 and year 13.
Here are my year 13 final pieces
SOOOOO, after that long winded insight into my photography past, I am finally starting the photography module at uni! I hope you enjoy my blog, you’ll see a journey of how i progress i’m sure!
El x