Portfolio

One of the point mentioned on my PDP is that I want to update my photography portfolio.
 Whenever i take new photographs I tend to sort through them and put them straight onto my online portfolio which is on Flickr. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/lauren-morris/). Yes, this is useful for people who browse the Internet or people who want a digital portfolio but not all people want to look at work digitally, physical portfolios are always wanted.

I have been meaning to update my physical portfolio for a long time but never seemed to get round to doing it and this was the perfect opportunity for me to actually do it.  I had quite a lot of photographs in my previous portfolio but I scrapped all of them as I don't feel that they are good enough and are of a high enough standard at this point, so I felt it was better to start totally from scratch and go for my most recent work's that were of better quality and show more of the area that I am interested in and want to focus on in the future.

I started by looking through all of my photographs, focusing on the most recent ones where my work is better developed through the practice that I have had. I scrolled through Flickr and also looked over all of the recent files that I have put together with my photographs in.

I selected a certain amount of photographs that I feel are better and more successful than others and send an order through to DS colour labs to get these photographs printed.

One thing that I noticed when I was looking through all of my photos is that I have always known exactly what it is that I am interested in and what I want to photograph - but one thing that has changed is the way that I am photographing things. I am paying a lot more attention to the little detail and concentrating more on the framing and contents of the images which is a good thing cause the images need to have a meaning and significance to create an impact.

booksbookbooks!

Like mentioned in a previous post reading more books is something that I wanted to focus on achieving with this personal development plan. Over the past few weeks/ months I have read a lot of different books whether it be just a couple of chapters or the whole of the book to help gain a bit more understanding of everything. The books that I have been looking at and reading are not just necessarily photographer based though, i have been looking at a lot of different subjects and just really trying to gain a better understanding of a lot of things to do with photography and the way things work.

With my dissertation being within the stage of research and beginning of being written I have been reading a lot of books for that so I have gained a good amount of knowledge from looking at the different books for that. The type of thing that I have been looking at are the culture of photography and how we are affected by it with things such as manipulation and editing. So as well as reading about photographers and reading books by the likes of Sontag and Burger I have been gaining knowledge from various books and sources.

Blogging

One of the development points that I have put on my development plan is that I want to keep up to date with my blogs but adding more information and research to them as I go along, making post more frequent rather that not posting as much as I should. At the end of the day the blogs that I produce for the different modules on this course are my way of showing my findings and my method of thinking / way of working and producing work, I need to be able to show all of these things in their best way, so blogging more frequently is a good way to do this.

I have started to post updates more often that I have done previously, although I sometimes haven't actually posted anything I have gathered information and written it up ready to be added onto my blog, whether it be saved via draft of written up elsewhere ready to be copy, pasted and published.

Updating my blog more often was something that I felt I needed to be on top of when it came to the module titled 'Advanced Photographic Practice' this is due to how I needed to be very informative and post all of my findings and research as well as the progress I made throughout the assignment so that my methodology and thought process could be seen and understood quite clearly and the get my point' across in the simplest way possible. 

Again this is something that I have tried to do more often on this blog as well, I have thought about the different points that I want to make and the type of posts that I could put together, basically I have started to forward plan a lot more and think about what it is that I need to write within the posts that I publish, as well as how often I am posting these things. I have so far managed to post more frequently on this blog, even though I haven't publish loads of post I have been updating it with information more often that I usually would, trying to keep up to date with the work I have done as it progresses.

PDP

Here is my updated personal development plan, like stated in the previous post studio lighting skills is not something that I want to develop on at this moment in time as I don't really feel that I could benefit from it and there are other things that I could benefit from more at the present moment.

I have taken out that point and added in a couple of new ones that I feel I could benefit from and would help me a lot more when I come to the end of this course.

The different points that I have added at this moment in time are to update my photography portfolio as this is something that I have not done since starting this photography course a few years ago, and to keep up to date with publishing posts on the blogs that I have going for the different modules I am undertaking throughout this photography course.

The points that are on my personal development plan at the moment are all points that I feel I could benefit from and ones that I am thinking seriously about. I am already developing on the points by putting them into practise, having already achieved one of the points that are within my development plan by learning how to use a new piece of software.

I feel that I could still maybe add one or two more points onto my development plan, there is definitely one point that I am going to add that I feel I could benefit from but I am going to carry on thinking about the different things that I could benefit from at this moment in time on this course.

What are my development objectives? [what skills, knowledge or experience am I missing?]	What activities do I need to undertake to achieve my objectives?	What support/resources do I need to achieve my objectives? [what can the course offer?]	Target date for achieving my objectives	Actual date of achieving my  objectives
Developing skills on different software - Adobe Premiere	Learning how to use the software and the way it works. Experimenting with the different features it has and learning how to develop my own videos.	Basic training on how to use the software and then the time to experiment with its features.	1st November 2013	30th October 2013
Reading more books.	Read different books with different subject matters to gain more knowledge.	Access to books from the library, lots of books with different subject matters.	Ongoing (In progress)	(In progress)
Update photography portfolio.	Go through all of my photographs, get them printed to see what will work to showcase my work.	Good quality prints to go within a decent portfolio.	July 2014 (graduation)
Keeping up to date with blogging.	Regularly update my blogs keeping them up to date with  the work that I am doing.	Getting online more often and updating my blog' frequently adding the different things that I have learnt.	December 2013 (Also ongoing)	(In progress)

Development....

Over the past few days I have thought quite a bit about the different things that I want to get out of the time I have left on this course, and from looking over the points on my personal development plan that I have at the moment I have decided that there is one point that I don't really have much interest on developing on, that being the studio lighting skills. Yes it is something handy to know about but I think the only way  I can actually develop on them skills is to simply familiarize myself with different lighting set ups through research of my own and practice - however I generally dislike working in a studio so I don't really see it as a development point that could benefit me at this time on this course.

Reading more books....

Since starting back at university in September I have come to realise that I don't know as much about photographers as I should do considering my course is in its final year!

So something that I wanted to do was broaden my knowledge of photographers and photography itself and I felt that one way I could do this was by reading more and looking at different books. Seeing the different styles of photography and finding out about the different photographers that have taken these images and understanding their working style.

I have started to read different books and look at different photographers work, I have read On Photography by Susan Sontag, started to look at The Key Concepts in Photography by David Bate as well as Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes both of which I am still reading and working my way through.

I have the book Art Photography Now by Susan Bright which I have looked through to see different photographers work.

The Photo Book - From cover to cover filled with different photographers work. This is a great book for finding out about different photographers work and their style. I have had this book for a long time but never really seem to take any notice of it but it is now my go to book for finding new and inspiring photographers work as it is everything you need all in one place!


I still feel like I have a lot more to learn about different photographers and this is something that I am definitely going to work on and progress within the next few months so that I have a better understanding and better knowledge of lots of different photographers work by the time I finish this course next year.

Adobe Premiere

Now that I have finished putting together my video and I have had a little bit more time to use this software and more of a change to learn how to navigate it properly and use all it's little tools and such I feel a lot more confident using the software. If I were ever to need to put a video together in the future for certain projects I now feel a lot more confident in the fact that I know how to use this editing software where as I literally wouldn't have known where to start with it a few weeks ago.

I was a little daunted by the fact I had to use a software that I had never used before a few weeks ago, but once I got to grips with it everything was fine. I now know the main important things you need to know to use the software and put a video together. Things like opening a sequence (suitable to the type of video size you want), how to import videos and images into the sequence. Also with videos you can either use both the moving image and sound or just import the sound and vice versa with the moving image. I now know how to piece a video together using both moving image and stills, fading in and fading out, adding in different layers of sounds and adjusting the different volume levels to suit the situation with the image/ moving image.

Studio based skills - Lighting

The other day I spent a little bit of time in the studio experimenting with the lighting set up' with Shannon, Becky and Laura. None of us have ever really had that much experience with studio lighting so we wanted to set ourselves the challenge of experimenting with it and seeing what we could come out with. I must admit I am not a fan of working in the studio, therefore its not really something that I have focused much attention on throughout the past few years.

To start with we had a little bit of trouble with the light trigger which ate away at quite a bit of the time slot we had booked in the studio therefore we didn't get as much time as we would have like to experiment with the different types of lighting effects.

For some reason the equipment we had was also very temperamental, one minute it was working fine, the next it wasn't, this was something that we couldn't quite figure out and it was a little bit frustrating.

In this studio session we experimented a little bit with side lighting and here are some of the images that were taken:

During this studio session we only really experimented with one type of lighting, that being side lighting, we were looking at how the position of the light - being at the side of the subject would cause shadow on one side of the face as the light could only get to the side of the subject that was nearest to the source of light. The photos above are all taken using side lighting and were just an experiment using the studio lights.