Nadeem Chaudry 

Nadeem is a textile artist that goes to uni, He has managed to get a lot of the work he has created into galleries so he can show the world what he does. Nadeem gave us a talk at college on how he started out and to this day is slowly pursuing his life goal as a textile artist. 

Nadeem is a Pakistani Muslim born and raised in England but has a few members of his family that are from very different ethnic backgrounds such as his grandparents and parents who were actually brought up in africa. 

Nadeem bases most of his art on thoughts from his head which relate to sexuality, religion and culture and the way he sees each subject and what they each mean personally to him as an artist. A lot of his work is mainly based around sexuality though which we saw a lot throughout his presentation. Some of his sculptural pieces can be very striking but beautiful at the same time. I feel that a lot of his work is hard to understand when you first look at it because some of his sculptures are not at all like what the average artist would normally create.

I love that some of his work needs an explanation as this means that when people first take a look at his work it is up to them to decide in their own minds what his pieces might mean, i think Nadeem likes to leave a lot of the work down to each individuals imagination because that way it becomes more exciting when he reveals to people what his piece is actually all about and it is also interesting to find out what other people's first impressions of his art were. 

Here are some images of the sculptures he presented to our group at the talk and explained to us... 

Fujifilm competition update wednesday 26th march  

Originally for this shoot I had planned to take black and white film images of people walking around Burton town just getting on with everyday life.

When it came to taking the images I changed my mind last minute as i felt taking pictures of people just walking around was a bit too original and had been done too many times before so I wanted to do something a little different.

In the end i decided to look up some photographers on the internet i'd been given the link to by my dad and i came across some great location images of dangerous and dirty slums visited by photographers who had taken a real interest in the way that people live in those conditions. This inspired me to try and recreate some of the scenarios i had seen in some of the images using the dark room in college as my location.

I set up a tripod in the dark room with the camera on top to help keep the camera steady when taking my images. I set the shutter speed to 300 and kept the shutter open for 5 seconds for each image to make sure i captured every image properly.

I used Molly and Kirsty as my models for these images and got them to sit down on the floor in the dark room and used bits of rubbish and molly's coat as props to help create the scene. I also turned off the light while taking these images and used the torch on my phone as a spot light directing it at molly and kirsty, again this was to help set the scene and make my images look a little 'doom and gloom' like those taken by the photographers that visited the slums.

I really enjoyed doing this shoot as i thought it was a really interesting idea that not man people had attempted to do before, it is also very different from anything i've ever shot on film before.

Proposal 

For this competition I have decided I am going to take my images in digital first to practice and make a final decision on what i would like to photograph in film. 

At the moment I have a couple ideas of what i'd like to photograph using film. I am definitely going to shoot in black and white film because I prefer it to using colour film as I feel it always looks a lot better when it's been developed and gives it a nicer feel

 I think i'd like to take black and white portrait images of people out and about in town with other people in the background walking past, getting on with the usual everyday things. Or I think I would like to take black and white fashion images of women wearing clothing that is seen as the most on trend  outfit to wear today.

I will make my final decision on what I would like to take images of by firstly practicing taking them using a digital camera before i move on to taking the rest of my shots in film. 

Fujifilm competition 2014 introduction

Every year Fujifilm give young photographers the chance to present their photography skills and the chance to win prizes by entering their competition where you can take as many photos as you like using a Fujifilm film roll and then send copies of them off to the website before the 31st of March (closing date for the competition)

It can be any style of image you like, The only rule is to take the images using Fuji film roll, you can also submit as many images you like, they can all be linked or all be different.

 Previous enteries: 

Here are a few examples of some of the work that has been submitted for the Fujifilm competition in the past few years..

 Over all winner in 2012

Runners up..

 

Overall winner 2013...

Runners up...

 

Rankin: 

Rankin (John Rankin Waddell) was born Glasgow and brought up in Hertfordshire. 

He first studied accounting at Brighton Polytechnic and whilst doing this course he realised that his heart was with another  subject other than accounting and dropped out.  He then went on to study Photography at Barnfield college in Luton and then progressed onto London college of printing. Whilst Rankin was at this college his met and became very good friend's with a man named Jefferson Hack. 

Hack became a very close worker with Rankin and once they both graduated they decided to start a magazine together called Dazed & Confused. In 1999 Rankin and Hack founded Dazed and Confused film & TV. This soon became the first ever mast-head television broadcast. In December 2000 Rankin decided to launch his own magazine and named it RANK. He also publishes a magazine called 'AnotherMagazine' and recently has started publishing a new magazine called HUNGER. 

His magazines (especially Dazed & Confused) have featured many well known celebrities such as Kate Moss, Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue, Spice Girls, Vivienne Westwood, Queen Elizabeth II etc. 

In 2009 Rankin did his own photography project called 'Rankin Live' inviting many people from across the Uk to have their pictures taken and participate in some way or another in his project. 

I personally love Rankin's work as it is very different from many other photographers work as his is more raunchy you could say and seems quite saucy and revealing to  the usual photos we see of people but this is what makes Rankin's work unique and him such a good artist/photographer. 

David Severn

David Severn is a man who creates work that influences others to want to do what he does best which is taking pictures of everything and anything that catches his eye and thinks will make a great photo. He is known as a social documentary photographer and is from Nottingham where he was born and still lives today. Each year he visists the famous 'goose fair' which is an event that happens once a year in Nottingham. Severn likes to go round the fair ground meeting all sorts of different people that help to run the fair and travel with it. A few times he has been to the caravan park close by where the people that travel with the fair live and are constantly on the move taking the fair to different locations with them. David likes everyone to see his work and loves to inspire young people to be who they want to be, he helps to achieve this by making his work accessable through various networking sites which he is part of such as Facebook and Twitter etc. One of the many projects of David Severn that really caught my eye was called 'thanks maggie' this is of a series of photographs which show the greater cultural areas of Mansfield and people completeing their usual day to day activities, going about life as normal as he takes the photographs. This particular project caught my eye because i really liked the way in which David took the time out to watch these people and photograph them even though they weren't doing anything special. This shows that there is always a potentially great picture to be taken around you everyday weather it is of something unusual or just something simple such as people doing daily activities. Throughout his work Severn likes to take several pictures of the people around Mnsfield and also parts of the land that he can then connect to the pictures he has taken of the people and pair them up showing the relationship between the peopleand the land in and around Mansfield. I feel that using the internet is a great way to showcase your work to others and also help people to find ways of getting more photography work. David loves to travel to different places to take his photos and talk about his work to help inspire others. He takes a lot of portrait images and a few of these have won an award. During the talk at college with David Severn he spoke about a website that he uses callled flackphoto.com, This website shows a lot of work from other photographer's and quite a few times David has interacted and even met some of the photographer's whose work he has viewed and thoroughly enjoyed on this website. David is also very interested in getting to know more about the photographer behind the images he enjoy's viewing and reading their bio's about their lives etc. He has luckily ended up working alongside/with some of the photographer's he has found through this website and created some truly inspiring landscape images.

William Eggleston

40 years ago William Eggleston was the man that bought colour Photography into people's lives.

Eggleston was born in Tennesse in 1939 where he still lives and works today. he has been in the Photography business for around 50 years now. Eggleston has a real passion for his work and completely loves what he does. You can tell this from the way that he speaks about Photography and the concept of it.

If someone were to go up to him and ask what it was he was photographing he would usually turn around and say 'life today', He'd say this because he believed that it was all he could say to make people understand his work.
As a photographer you can never explain exactly what it is you are photographing, You can only show people when the picture is taken and hope that from seeing the final image they will also see the reason behind the image and understand it.

William very rarely titles his photographs as he likes to treat every image equally weather it be of a person or an object, They are all equal in his eyes. He limits himself to only taking one photograph per item as he believes that taking too many images of the same thing later becomes confusing and messy.

Eggleston was 18 when he got his first camera. This was back when all pictures were taken in black and white and he developed every photo he took himself. He believed that people should never take anything in a photo for granted as each and every space counts and is very important, even if it is just a white space, it is still an important part to a photo as it helps make up the image. William Eggleston actually spent 6 years attending various uni's around the country to become an artist before he discovered photography, But never managed to graduate. In the 60's when he started his career in photography he would rarely dare to take any images of people as he felt he would be invading their personal space. But when he did take any pictures of a person he would do it in such a way that the person/people wouldn't even notice that they were being photographed. His most famous photograph (untitled) was taken in the home of his best friend JC in Greenwood, Missisippi, Who was later murdered by being hit round the head with an axe and his house was then set on fire. The photo William had taken is known as 'The red room' This image relates to the murder of his bestfriend, The image portray's death, pain and murder with it's strong red colours throughout the image. He later became close friend's with Andy Warhol, A famous pop artist who introduced him to filming and Eggleston then went on to make his own film which he named 'Stranded in Canton' which was mainly based on his drunken, musical friend's at house parties and nights out. Eggleston was well known by his family and friend's as 'a ladies man' as he always seemed to have a few women on the go at once but they were all happy and aware of eachother. To gain an understanding of how a camera works, William loved to experiment by taking cameras apart to take a look at how they could capture an image inside out, He was fascinated at the thought of what he would discover. The way some of William's pictures are taken make it seem as though the world could be another place, unreal or even make believe. He treats everything he see's equally weather it be a person or an object, nothing is judged as more important than the other. Sometime's Eggleston will take an image which to some people will look like nothing, he calls this 'photographing democratically'. He doesnt really explain what is going on in his photos which can create an atmosphere of aprehension and unease for those that want an image explained. There is a book on William Eggleston named 'The Guide' which contains his most personal work yet, showing images of his family and friend's, some are of such private moments that have occurred within his family life. When William's work was first published through his own exhibition, the paper's critisized it as 'dull' and 'one of the most boring exhibitions yet' This was because the public struggled to understand his work and the modern concept of it because at that time colour photography had not been widely recognised. The more Eggleston published his colourful photography though, the more people began to accept the idea of colour photography and modern art and so the paper's that had once critisized his work later apologised and started to praise it. Eggleston believed that it was good for people's character to do something spontanious every once in a while and so he would often use the younger members within his family to photograph whenever he had an idea of a good image. No matter what time of the day it was, even early hours of the morning he would wake the youngsters and line them up on the porch outside the house to photograph them. Some of Eggleston's closest friend's would describe him as a free spirited contemporary photographer whom certainly lives his life to the full and is a very talented/gifted artist. As well as being a full time photographer Eggleston also enjoyed playing the piano and was rather good at it as he could often learn how to play a song after hearing it just once. He would only ever play the same song twice as he liked to learn how to play new somgs. William decided to show some of his work to the head of Art school in New York who was electrified by his work so offered him his own show presenting the first book of colour photography so that Eggleston could make his mark and show his work at it's best in the exhibition in New York. His work has now spread massively throughout the Art world, running through to music, fashion and even movies. Eggleston's work is a wide range of photograph's that sum up his life and the images continue to be added to the story behind the life of William Eggleston.