Hmm, so I've not reeeeally been That busy lately, yet I seem to just pop on to DA on a regular basis to have a random look around without really sorting through things, which means I am currently just 55 deviations shorts of 2000 deviations waiting from my watchies for me to have a look at, and nearly 400 messages (mostly journals no doubt).

For a few months now I've been not instantly watching people I find interesting to try and slow me down. I now save them to a favourites folder for later reviewal to see if I'm still interested. But I'm still watching 689 people! I think I might go through and untick the journal options, for the some of the ones I never read at least...

Anyways, when I say I'm not that busy, it was actually my last week of uni for the academic year this week. But I'm slightly unsettled by how unbusy I was for that. I was unusually on top of my work and had it all done with no need to rush and plenty of time to spare... weird.

This week was basically a load of crits, looking at all the work over the year, I seem to be balancing rather delicately exactly on the boarder between 2:1 and First. Which I am finding most frustrating, I don’t seem to be able to push over that boarder *grr*

So as there are no people beginning with Q amongst all those watched people. I instead present Contemporary Lens Media year one. Though what I have on DA isn't everything and is often presented differently to how I did them for uni work.... so this is kind of a randomish selection.

Intro to Photo – I think the name sums it up…

First project “Colour in the Everyday”, I did blue arrow signs…


"Light is Everything" (or everywhere? I can’t recall off the top of my head. I spent ages light hunting for this one; had a go at IR; shot all kinds of things. I eventually boiled it down to two series, one had lots of linear stuff, railings, paving, shadows and such, the other had a variety of subjects unified by their featuring some form of light play. These are what I have on DA from both the final series and maybe a few randoms I made in the process:


The rest of the year's work for this unit consisted of lots of little projects that all went into a web published book. The first little project was a still life thing in which we had to arrange a variety of objects under studio lighting. I did several iterations of this one, the first was an Andy Goldsworthy inspired thing with minieggs, though I only did one shot before it was rejected for having to limited a variety and too small objects, so here’s what I have of those:


That rejected I did some of my favourite pictures of the year, balloons and paper planes. These were also rejected on the ground they had to limited a variety of objects so I didn’t develop them as far as I would have liked. I plan to revisit the idea:


So by this time I was getting annoyed and went crazy for my final idea and got the most ridiculous assortment of "stuff" I could. This series still didn't satisfy my teacher who claimed the brief required objects be photoed on a table top - despite my pointing out it quite clearly say no such thing and her agreeing once or twice!


Next was a portraiture project. We had to shoot on medium format and use ambient light, some of those:


Then another portrait thing, using studio flash, for which I have just one photo up. I basically shot Doctor Who style promo shots for my character in a film project:


And another portraiture thing, featuring workers and using on camera flash. I did the guy who owns my comic book shop and as it was such a confined and cluttered space shot on fisheye or wide-angle to give the images a bit more room. I shot on his delivery day to give me something to photograph other than the guy waiting at his till for a very infrequent customer to turn up:


We could also put some of whatever else we might of worked on over the year over than uni projects, so I put some of the images I didn’t use for my final series in the first two projects and my geometric autumn series:


And I also included what might be the beginnings of a longer term thing stalking this highrise building in Lincoln:


Right, one down... next: Intro to Video. The first two video projects were group projects and I haven’t put either up here. The first was an odd little narrative piece about a burglary. The second was a little documentary about people trying to sell you things on the street (I might see if I can find that later to upload it). The first single piece had to be a non-linear narrative, I did mine about a time traveller:


The next, and last project had to use single takes, so I of course did four in one, about the life of a cake:


Unit the third was "Visualisation" which is basically story boarding, idea generation and photo manipulation. The first project for that was to take photos imagining you were an animal. I chose a fly and got a distoritive lens from a toy to try and emulate compound eye vision:


The next project was to story-board a ten second sequence. I don’t have that on DA...
Then we had photoshop stuff I think, we had to find an old damaged photo, repair it, colour it in and then do something new and funky with it. Because I am insane I chose a photo of a crowd at a fancy dress party. I meticulous cleaned it, and restored a missing corner, then even more meticulously coloured it in. But all I have from that on DA is the final bastardised funkified version, which after all the work I did on the restoration I just went a bit crazy Monty Python like with:


Then more photoshop, we had to merge the faces of class mates, don’t have that here, and then merge ourselves with animals. So a flock of me-birds:


Final proper project was to do bit photomanipulation thing of our choosing. I delved deep into classic Hollywood effects films and B-movies and for once was inspired by all the research we have to do for our projects into other art. Which was nice, it was good to finally engage with that side of the work. My result; The Hollywood Plagues:


The actual final piece of work for the unit, was an unmarked bit of animation, group project:


We also had a history unit, but that was essay work so nothing here (my last essay was a comparison between Three Amigos and The Magnificent Seven). And the final practical unit was "Applied Lens Media". For which we had two half year projects. The first was "The City" for which I developed this film:


And the second was "The Body" which I developed several series of images.
1)

2)

3)

Finally I boiled all that down to these three images from the first series:


And so there we have it, a fair ol’ chunk of the outcome of a year on m new course. Weeeee. Hopefully next year I can bump myself over that line into Firstness.

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So a week or two ago "Crash" was on the tv and I gave it a watch (as one does to apparently good or otherwise interesting films) I came out of it thinking two things:

1) Wow, that film was like five megatons of commentary on racism with a plate of extra racism on the side.
2) Wow, that was really good... but I don't really understand why/how/what was good about it...

Anyways... People P, all of them (that I watch):


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I am confused, all of a sudden this deviation:

Has been featured three times, that's a little odd...

And now; People I watch beginnign with an O (of which there are very few):


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Don't fancy putting together a new feature yet, so same journal with a new bit on the front:

I'm thinking about entering a couple of photography competitions. They seem to be pretty open, no theme or anything, so any suggestions of particularly awesome *modest* pictures in my gallery?

I seem to struggling most at the moment on which if my flights I like most. I can't decide between these two:


Old bit starts here:
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So collections, bit weird that there be buttons for them EVERYWHERE, but nice feature, I like sorting things... and so I did, I've spent far to long as last night and today sorting my favourites into a plethora of folders. But grr the site seems to keep forgetting how I arrange them. Mostly that's fine as I have them largely random, but I want a trio at the top of each collection to sort of represent what’s in them on those little icons, and after having repeatedly put the ones I want there DA keeps forgeting them and jumbles them up again, grrr.

Anywhos, a deviation each from the people I watch beginning with N (there be not soo many N people...):


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Hmm, so we're doing, or rather, just finished, a studio still life project. Brief: Photo some stuff in the studio with (nasty/evil) artificial light. (illustrated with what I’ve put onto DA which doesn't necessarily reflect unified series of work, just the ones I like, and maybe rejigged so I like them some more)
Week one - Idea: Minieggs:

Problem: subject is too small, find another subject...

Week two - Idea: Paper airplanes flying through a blue balloon filled sky (the balloons sort of like inverted clouds, being blue rather than white...)

Problem: not enough objects, your composition must be filled (with *ahem* crap)

Fiiine, *James gets irritable* I will put so much stuff in these pictures it hurts:
Week three - Idea: All sorts of stuff dangling about for no apparent reason.


I liked the balloons dam it! *grumbles about having to make stupid pointless compositions because the teacher is old-fashioned, uncreative, joyless and dull*

Anyway, rant complete. A deviation from each of the people I watch beginning with M:


And did you know Giraffes are immortal? Find out more here: [link]

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