"Say hello to my little friend..."Ive tried so many times to find a decent page, a website or a decent blog to start up. To be honest, I don't even know why I've got one. I keep getting told by people in university that I need one, and that it would help with my studies, and will help get people to notice the work I do! well, here goes...
... I'm at the end of my 2nd year in Glyndwr university, I've got my assessment next monday, shit, thats tomorrow.. well, I've done most of my work for this terms projects. Iv'e only got my PDP to write up and to finish my Photo Editorial.
Thing is, I've been doing a little bit of travelling this year, in february I went to India with my partner to help talk and promote the Glyndwr solar car team in several Indian engineering universities. That was an experiance, India is definatly a country that opens your eyes, It's rough as arseholes, the beggers see a white person and they're all over you, every baggage handler wants to take your luggage and children come running at you from miles, it's a nice country, don't get me wrong, but the people are somewhat deprived of simple luxuries, without much help from the government... it gets complicated, but it breaks your heart. Anyway, point is, we went there for a couple of weeks, I really wanted to use the experiance in my work, so I decided to do my Photographic Editorial, (magazine article in other words!) on the Taj Mahal, 500 words to talk about it and lots of photos to make a double page spread... pretty easy to be honest. The story that goes with the Taj is a love story of a sort, I'm not really into love stories, but it fitted the scene, me and my partner had a lovely time there, so thats where that headed, I completed a trial version, I just need to sort the layout.
Another one of my projects was to take 6 photos of broken grandeur/ decay.... once again, I thought this was perfect for india. Althoguh I felt it difficult to go around taking photos of starving people, beggers and children, it fittted perfectly. But after a while, I took a couple of photos of beggers, (after I gave them some money, wouldn't be fair otherwise) and then turned to the animals.
I love animals much more than humans, anything with four legs and a tail I'm all over it in the most high pitched voice I can muster, I'm not proud of being such a girl when it comes to fluffy things, but the little buggers just get me everytime! So, when I saw all these animals, Dogs, Pigs and Cows (which are supposed to be sacred in India, but do get treated quite badly) rumaging around starving aswell, donkeys and ponies being beaten and scarred, Ox's getting smacked with sticks, it broke my heart even more... this was also the decay of India, a third world country. It fitted the project, and who am I to step in and tell them they are wrong, their country, their culture, their life. Good luck to them! :)So I came back thinking, great, Ive taken so many photos, so far so good. Back in Wrexham, I've been playing with them on photoshop, cropping, contrasting etc, until a month later, where me and Tom got asked to go to St Gervais, France on a skiing/snowboarding holiday at my dads flat. I wasn't exactly going to say no, and by this time it was the Easter holidays, so off we went, and once again I was thinking about work, how could I put this in with any of my projects.
Considering I was slap bang under Mt Blanc, I thought about looking at the landscape for a book cover idea, I took a couple of stitcher photos to see if I could do an entire sleeve, I then had to find a book to go with it.... I took a good couple of Gb worth of photos out there, and luckily one was a picture of a moth on the wall. About a week ago today, I still hadn't found a book to go with the mountainous stitcher photos, while looking in Waterstones for a book I found one with the title, 'The Behaviour Of Moths' by Poppy Adams. Its weird how unexpected things happen, so there was my photo of a moth, the book cover was abit naff anyways, (in my own opinion) so I redesigned that one. Cheers France!
And a couple of days ago today, we came back from Cyprus. Needless to say uni wernt happy bout me going abroad so close to my assesment deadline, and also with the risk of not being able to return as of the volcanic ash situation. But I went anyway, I'd rather be stuck out there than here! After working my ass off leading up to the holiday I was left to decide which project to work into the Cyprus holiday, so I could say it was for work purposes and not just a family holiday.... it was just a nice coincidence the family was out there alreay! My only film project was to do a non-narrative film, when it comes to films, I'm not really that clever, bright or imaginative! Photographs are easy, I can play with them, I can get different angles, I'm good at looking at things in a new light! But with film, for some reason I struggle, hard. All I could think of doing was a few time lapse clips of the different beaches we were on, put them together to make a sequence and put one of my favourite tunes to it... this being The Pot, by Tool! After I came home, and with a couple of days to go before my big interveiw with a tutor I've hardly seen all year, I've just completed putting it together, and it doesn't look too bad! I like it, Time lapse films are great, I just need a better battery pack so my camera can last longer!
The other projects I've had to do in between getting on planes, was food photography, sounds easy but it really isn't, you have to make food look interesting, how is food interesting? it all goes down the same way! To be fair, it was alot of fun, we ended up making a castle out of biscuits, (project title being, 'Biscuit Bonanza') drank a bottle of wine, ('grape expectations') and in a Cyprus food store we found mounds of vegetables that I ended up doing an 8 page porfolio on instead of the one image, ('vegetable visions')I also had to reproduce an album cover, I did a friend of mine. Luke Day is an extraordinary musician well known around the mid wales area, and I asked if I could use him, I found an old photo and reproduced a Julian Opie style image in my own style! Thank you photoshop!
Modern masterpeices was fun too! instead of sticking to the brief and choosing a classical painting everybody knew, I choose to find classic iconic photographs instead. I went along with the punk scene and reproduced pictures of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, using a couple of mates, Amy Sayers and Karis Tomlins. They were awesome models, Kaz has pink dreads, and Amy had blue backcombed big hair, punky alternative outfits and bright make up. They were perfect for what I wanted to do. We started off in the studio, trying to get the poses right, but lighting as an absolute nightmare, I'm not too good at indoor photoshoots. So after a while we went to the 'Hobo Bridge', so named as its renowned for crackheads and smackheads and homeless going there every night and doing their stuff, there was dirty needles everywhere so we had to be carefull where we stood! We had bright lighting and a good atmosphere that blended well with the style of photos we took.. after we completed the work, the girls went on a mad one and started using their own ideas for posing, we had a completely different photoshoot where they just performed for the camera, generally having a really good laugh dancing around and pretending to be zombies, (something which amy is now using my photos for, for her own projects, shes studying her MA in childrens illustration)Well, now I've got most of my work done, I've completed the tasks that was set for me to do for this term and made many more accomplishments, all the photography is done, I've even done the film, I've travelled a little and found bettter experiances, I've learnt many things, I've got a blog, Ive got a website, a couple of art pages, well to be fair, I'm all over the web now, this blog, im on cargo collective, stashphotography, deviantart, stashphotography, www.stashphotography.co.uk, (yet it's not finished and maybe doubt it will be) and even flikr... stashphotography! Im on facebook, tasha gilbey, and I have a myspace account, I've even got a twitter account but I hardly use it, I don't really see the point in that one!
... and why do I keep spelling phootgraphy like that!
My goal in life is to have my own photography business, or to be really successful with my images.... I've never done this before, but this year I have tried so hard to work my hardest, to finish work, to acheive something! And I really feel like I'm getting somewhere! I know I'm in for a tough time over summer, personaly, but I'm looking forward to finding out what I can achieve if I put my mind to it, and stop being a lazy bum! Something I've always wanted to do!
I think I'm definly going to post again, maybe tomorrow after my assessment, even if it is a waste of time, its good to get all this info of my chest!Oh and another thing, I am open minded, if you want to reply or leave a comment... do...negative or not!!! I'd like to find out what other people think... I'll even put some pics up to have a look at! :)
