In the final session, I handed in my final product which I have produced at home. It was only going to be a half session today because it is also the final day of school. This was good because most of us had nothing to do (apart from finishing off sketchbook work).
For my final product, I bought a photo album and put my photos in the photo album. Before that, I written on the sides of the photos the characters feelings/emotions towards each other. When the characters leave, they reveal their true identity. The girl wearing loads of make-up wipes it all off. On the sides of that photo, I smothered it with lipstick and blush. For the girl dressed up as a man, she takes off the wig and wipes off her drawn on beard. On the sides of that photo, I added fluff from the wig and black pencil marks for the drawn on beard. In the end of the photo album, there is a quote saying 'first impressions always count'.
I handed this into Mr Hind and he was really pleased with my work. He thought my idea worked great. I am proud of what I have achieved because I have done this all by myself.
Finally I finished off some annotations in my sketchbook. This was quick because I have done some in last session.
The Artefact Unit is finished. I am positive that I will get a good grade for this as I have produced some fine work and worked to the best of my ability.
Today, it was the final session of printing, sketchbook working, maybe photoshoots, feedback, absolutely everything. This was one of the most stressful days for me because I was rushing everywhere, trying to get everything done and dusted. However, to make the day more annoying for me, nothing was going according to plan...I'll start off with the positive things first. In my own time, I managed to organise a photoshoot. As I got to the place where we would be shooting, I was more focused and determined than the test photoshoot because I had a film camera. If I get the light exposure wrong or even mistakenly taken a photo by accident, I cannot delete that photo and start off with the same amount of shots I am left with, it is not digital. During the photoshoot, I tried my hardest not to do this. I found it difficult to do because I only use a film camera once or twice and I am not used to using one. I used a mixture of shots with a high shutter speed and a low shutter speed, low angles, long shots to close-ups and a few focused and unfocused shots. In the end, I think I have done well. Although I think I have done well, I only can find that out when I print these photos. I would need concept prints to check the photos.
Back to today's session. I went to begin printing in the dark room. At first, I printed my concept prints to see what the pictures looked like on a smaller scale. Most of them looked fine. Unfortunately, there were two or three bad photos. I was pleased about how I have done because I am not used to the film camera. Next, I tried to do test strips. I could use these to see which light exposure I should use for my final prints. Normally, I am amazing at producing these. I got the hang of making them a few weeks ago. However, when I developed, fixed and washed the print, it was distorted and had white gaps inbetween each exposure part. It took two or three attempts to get one or two test strips. They were not perfect, but I had no time to loose on the final prints. As I got to the final stage of printing (final prints), I noticed a few scratches and marks on my prints. A few of them had got to do with the paper being scratched, some had got to do with my developing because I either held my finger too long on the paper whilst developing, overlapped prints whilst developing or spilt some fix onto the print before it was developed and the rest were either too bright or too dark. I did print some with a light exposure of 2.5 seconds and some with 4.5 seconds. I know I did not spill any fix onto the print before developing because some people were mistakenly splashing the fix whilst fixing or just messing around with it and throwing it on other people. So in that case, I had to do the prints all over again. After another round of printing, most of them came out fine because the light exposure 
was set onto 3.5 seconds. There were still some bad prints which included marks and scratches. This was the point were I had enough. It was almost the end of school and I did not have time to go through every piece of negative film to find the photos what I am looking for. Instead I did another round of printing to try to get all of the prints perfect. At the time, I was more serious and more focused than before. I was quite stressy to my classmates which was inappropriate but I had to get the work done in time. Finally, all of my prints were fine. (The photos around this paragraph are the prints in my sketchbook).I did not have time to finish off sketchbook work. Fortunately, I will have time in the next session, which will be the final session.
My target would be in the future, not to take it out on people if you are having trouble with work or being serious about work.
Next week will be the final Artefact Unit session. I will talk about my final piece. Plus, I will have a chance to finish everything in my sketchbook which is leftover.
Again, this will be a short post because I have not completed much today apart from some unfinished work in my sketchbook, being a model for James once again because he did not get a chance to complete his test shots and I presented my test shots to Mr Hind plus receiving feedback from him. Moreover, it was more of a busier day for James.
Firstly, I had to do sketchbook work because this was the second last day of the Artefact Unit, also I knew tomorrow was going to be havoc because I have to do final shot printing and finally completing my sketchbook work. So, I had no choice today but to concentrate today really hard even though I do not have much to do this session. However, I have got to organise the final photoshoot in my own time after this CRAM session; that is when it gets stressful. There was a few annotation pieces i needed to finish because I had more important things on my mind the past few weeks e.g. photoshoots, research, etc. Other than that, it was mainly annotations today (artist research annotations). I managed to accomplish that.
James photoshoot was soon, so I went to receive feedback from Mr Hind for my test shots for my concept 'First Impressions'. His reflection to the photographs were great. He liked them a lot which was good. Unfortunately, I have to do them again. And to make matters worse, I had to use the film camera which is manual. I only had a chance to use these cameras once or twice in the whole unit. I was quite unconfident, but there is no turning back now. Fortunately, Mr Hind's comments gave me a little boost of confidence. After this session, I would have to organise a date and time for my models. Hopefully, they would have time this week.
It was time for me to change roles, from photographer and worker to model. James had to do his test shots today because he did not get a chance to use the camera last week in our own time because I was using it for my photoshoot. I was worried if he would rush his work, not complete it to his best standard because it would be all my fault. This did not happen as we took time. I even came up with some shots as well.
My target would be in future, to complete tasks earlier. This would result to less work, less stress in the last days and great time management.
Next week, I will be printing my final shots. This week (in my own time) I will be doing the final photoshoot. I will talk about how the photoshoot went next week as well. Hopefully after next week, I will finally assemble my final piece which is the 'First Impressions photo album.
In this session, there was not much work done. So, this is going to be a pretty short post. Probably the shortest I have posted in my life because I am so used to CRAM that I do so much work. However, this did not happen today. Anyway, today we were supposed to be doing our test shoots, some picture research and to finish off some work (optional).
All I did today was planning what I should do for my final piece, photography wise. For my 'First 
Impression' concept, I wanted to have two people just meeting each other. However, they are hiding there true selves and their personalities. To do this, one person should be wearing loads of make up to cover their 'true selves' and one person could be wearing a boy wig and boy clothes to again, cover their 'true selves'. This links to the main topic 'Believe' because when you meet somebody for the first time, you expect to believe what they are just from their looks or the way they act. However, do not judge a book by its cover because people are not what they seem to be.
Last week, I had a bit of a struggle with 'Impossible Things' 
because there are so many 'Impossible Things' out there. Although I was still struggling today, I had a brief idea. I found some sticky gloves which reminded me about 'superpowers'. Then I found out that 'Impossible Things' and 'Superpowers' have a link with each other. Meanwhile, I thought of having some sort of 'gooey superpower' added to my test shoot by using my gloves that I have found and I could buy some goo or putty for my goo superpower. But for some reason, I do not like this idea. I do not think it is 
going to work. I would rather not do a test shoot for 'Impossible Things' because I really like my idea from 'First Impressions' and I think it is possible to do. Plus, taking the 'Government' idea to account, I do not think it will be possible to do the idea because I need loads of people, loads of costumes and loads of money to do the idea. I do not think this concept should be test shooted. It would not work and I am comfortable with my 'First Impressions' concept. I think I will be using this for my final work.Next, I did minimal picture research. I used a website called 'Alamy' to find pictures for my main topic 'Believe'. That was all. Sorry.
My targets for this session is again to finish off work when you have nothing to do. I need to get out of the zone when I just chill when I have nothing to do.
Unfortunately, I did not do my photo shoot for 'First Impressions' because all of the cameras were taken. On the other hand, Mr Hind let me sign out one camera so I can do the test shoots at home or another location. I will need to find models this week.
Next week, well. I do not now what I am doing next week. Possibly showing my test shoots to Mr Hind and, that's it I think.
- Impossible Things
- First Impressions
- Government
I had to create ideas for these three concepts by thinking about 
how it is going to be presented, what sort of art shall I use and how I should photograph it. I knew this was going to be easy for me as I am a creative thinker. Other people such as James Calling are not so creative so I tend to help them. I knew this task was supposed to be 'independent', however I am willing to take the risk because James helped me with some things such as being my partner in photography, etc. One idea I gave him was to do a big book for one of his concepts (storytelling). This means that he will be using 3D art.
For my three concepts, I got straight to work with them by thinking of different ideas for them. I wanted to use different pieces of art, so I have a wide range to choose from. First of all, I started with First Impressions. I had an idea of having a photo album saying "When We First Met" or something like that, and inside the photo album is photos of two people just meeting each other for the first time. On the album paper could have writings on the edge that could relate or symbolise their relationship and the topic 'Believe'. This piece includes 3D art. Secondly, I began with Government. For the photography, I wanted to do something metaphorical. Usually, the government tell you things that you believe and then they sort of 'stab you in the back' or lie to you. So, taking the 'stab you in the back' point, the photography could 
include the government talking to a few people or persuading them. The setting could be a posh or professional party. The people who are persuaded by the government have a knife stabbed in their back. They are completely fine, its just a metaphorical thing. I do no really know how it will be presented though. I thought of a table (could be an office table) with a massive knife stabbed into the table so the knife will be standing on its tip. Under the knife will be the photos and in the draws will be the photos as well. I do not know what to do for impossible things because there are so many impossible things to choose from. I will focus on that concept next week.
My final task of the day was picture research for my three concepts. I have three pictures of reach concept and annotated these in my 
sketchbook. I found out that two of my concepts do not have that much art related to them (Government and First Impressions). These means that a lot of my ideas on these concepts will not have been done. I need to come up with something never done before on Impossible Things because there is a lot of things done in that concept.
My target would be not to get lost in track of my work if I have nothing to do. There is always something to do such as add to your annotations, etc.
Next week, I will not be here for half of the session because of a Science Exam. Apart from that, I think I will be developing my ideas again. Possibly some test shoots for the concepts.
I was nervous in today's session because I was going to receive my project brief for this unit. Plus, I did not think I was ready photographic wise because I only used the manual cameras once and everybody else in the group used it twice. In previous units I was not afraid of receiving my brief because I was prepared. Anyway, in the beginning of the session, we got told our brief. We did not receive it on paper, we had to make notes on it and write it in our sketchbooks. Our project brief was to create a piece of art. However, it has to be a specific type of art. The art has to be:
- Photographs
- Black and white (negative)
- A mixture of things
- 3D/Instillation
- Suspended from the air/Mounted
- Different shapes
- A book (optional)
- Something out of the box
- Personal to you
- Can give a meaning/Gives an impact to audience/Gives a story/etc. (optional)
I knew this was going to be hard because I have no idea what to do! Our teacher gave us a topic to help us (or confuse us in this case). This topic is called 'Believe'. To help us, I and the rest of the class did a brainstorm about 'Believe' (what comes to our head when you think of 'Believe'). In the end of the brainstorm, I had to come up with three different topics which relate to 'Believe'. My three topics are:
- Impossible Things
- Government
- First Impressions
water again for our photographs because it is one of the main things in 'Dali Atomicus'. We were so carried away with water, that we used water in every photo we took (except the self-portrait of me with a surreal face). I actually used the camera again. Unfortunately, it was not a manual camera. 'Dali Atomicus' is surreal and I wanted my photos to be surreal as well. I found the most unusual thing in the most unexpected place you can find. I found a used condom on the school fence and I thought that would be a great idea to use this because it is surreal. I had the idea of pouring water all over it as well to emphisise the surreal-ness. People thought it was quite disturbing in a good way which is good because I wanted to practice making an impact on people when it comes to photography. Even Mr Hind had an impact when he saw the image that I took. One artist called Franceca Woodman took disturbing negative photographs such as naked woman, women being hanged and more women being crushed by doors. These created some kind of impact. Fortunately, people loved the sense of impact, but they were still disturbing. This made Woodman a very famous photographer. However, she commited suicide at the age of 22. The best image that me and James ended up with was the water being thrown into the air. I actually took this image and I got the timing right. The water created a pattern and it captured every individual water droplet. I am proud of this and I and James have worked exeptionaly hard today to get these images. In addition, it showed the concept of 'Dali Atomicus'.
My target again is to control my 'temper' if things do not come right (if I cannot think of an idea for the project). The brainstorm helped me a lot. 
Next week, I will be focusing on mainly what I could do for my project. Plus, I could try to develop my ideas from my three topics that I have chose by creating drafts of some sort. It has been fun actually taking photographs and making the best one for my group. I am pleased with myself.
such as the well known 'Dali Atomicus' which is a image of many random things going on, such as cats being thrown in the air and drenched in water and Salvador Dali (a surreal painter) jumping and painting in the same time. 'Dali Atomicus' is a surreal photograph as it has random things going on. One random thing that I picked on was Dali's facial expression. His facial expression could refer to the image itself because his expression is weird as the image. This possibly suggests that the photograph shows Dali's personality because both things are surreal. Also, it has many photographic qualities, for example the water is a lead-in-line and most things are in the rule of thirds. It could give a sense of depth or meaning as the image creates many questions in your head e.g. "why are there floating cats?" or "why is Salvador Dali painting?", etc. No wonder it is a famous photograph because it is very clever how the image is done. Nothing is touching the floor.
As I said earlier that we had to do our research by doing some photography, we done this by copying the image 'Dali Atomicus'. In my group was James Calling. I was given a digital camera instead of a manual camera today. I knew this was going to be hard because digital cameras have quite a slow shutter speed. This meant that my group and I are going to have a hard time getting the timing right for the water being thrown across. I would of preferred the manual cameras because you can set the shutter speed. Plus, when you press the button, the camera immediately captures the shot. I volunteered to be the 'model' because James did not want to be jumping in the shot for some reason. I would of liked to use the camera because I really want to get used to taking images, however James is stopping me do this. If I carry on like this, I will not be prepared to take any photos because my photography skills are quite minimal. To make it look like 'Dali Atomicus', I decided to lay a chair on a fence because it almost looks like the floating chair or the paintings. Then, we had an idea of throwing water because that was one of the main things in the Dali image. I figured out that everybody in the class was using the water idea. It was the toughest shootings we have done so far because of the timing and the slight delay from the camera. We tried counting in 1, 2, 3, then take the image and this made a difference. I only came out with two images because the rest was poorly taken (because of the timing).
Finally, we did a brainstorm about what ideas we could use from the 'Dali Atomicus' photo to put on our final piece. I took a lot of ideas from the water that I could use for my final piece. One idea that I had was to have a waterfall and people/objects pass through the waterfall. This would be taken in a fast shutter speed because I want to capture every water droplet and the things passing through, plus the Dali image used a high shutter speed.My targets are not so get under pressure if when it comes to not get certain images right, i.e. timing in 'our version of Dali Atomicus'.
Next week, I will be receiving my brief for the project that we will be doing. I think that we will be doing further research on 'Dali Atomicus' and possibly some photography (I hope manual cameras).
Unfortunately, I was not here for most for most of this session. I had a work experience interview in the morning so i 
did not start the starter activities and the beginning of today's task. Today, I only did the developing, fixing, drying the film to make it negative and made some prints such as contact prints, final prints and test prints. I will talk about this later. However, I have missed taking the actual photographs for the task. I am really disappointed because I desperately wanted to develop my photography skills as I would like to know more about taking photos manually not digitally (the camera doing the focus, exposure, etc. for you). The reason for this is because I have found out when I used the manual camera the first time with James, I and James did not take loads of shots. I am upset about this as everybody in my group is one step ahead of me. I just hope that I can practice photography next week as I will be able to know how to use the manual camera properly and more professionally.
As I cannot explain the 'taking photographs' part of this session, I shall talk to you about making the film negative. Not one of my group members did the negative bit because I was the only one in my group which knew to do it (I might not be one step behind everybody now). So, to do this I took the film that they prepared for me earlier (put it in the lightproof bag and cut the film, reel it, place it in the container, etc.) and placed it aside. Then, I made the developer by putting in 540ml of water instead of 270ml and I made sure that was 20 degrees Celsius plus I added 60ml of developer instead of 30ml in the water and poured that inside the container (I had to put double the amount of everything because my group used 2 films instead of one. I occasionally had to shake it and bang it on the table every each 
minute. After a couple of minutes I poured the liquid in the sink and washed the container. I put some fix inside the container and waited for 10 minutes (I also had to shake and bang it on the table each minute has passed). When that has finished, I poured the fix in the carton where it came from, not the sink. I it quite useful because you can use the fix over and over again and you do not have to throw it away. Plus, fix is expensive so saving the fix is quite handy. Finally I washed it for ten minutes. When I took the film out, it did not turn out right because I have not left the fix long enough. Other people have done this as well. So, I had to leave it in the fix for awhile and wash it again. Fortunately, the film came out fine. I left it out to dry so when I come back from lunch, the film will be dry and ready to be used in the dark room.
inside the negative file. James held the negatives for me so I can cut them nice and straight. When that was completed, I went inside the dark room. This time, I was more used to the strange red and could see more. I used the contact print maker first to make contact prints by slotting in the films in one half and put the photographic paper in the other half and closed the two halves together. I used the enlarger machine to shine white light onto the contact print maker. Then I develop, fix, wash and dry the photo, then they come up. I used these prints to see what my photographs will look like if I printed them. Meanwhile, I made some test strips to see the different shades of light on my photograph. This helped me choose the shade of light I want for my final prints. When I made the final prints, I kept on looking back at the test strips to see what kind of shade I would like.
In this session, we were going to be going something special. We were going to make our photographs in the dark room. Again, I was working with James Calling. I will be making different types of prints with James, such as contact prints, test strips and final prints. I know it does not look like there is so much to do however, it takes such a long process making negative prints. You can not just send them to Boots and let them do it for you, they can not do negatives. If they did, it would take them forever!
Firstly, I took the negative films out of the drying cabinet. I cut the unnecessary bits of the film (where there is no photography and is completely black) and put them in the bin because they were no use to me or James. When I got the bits of the film I needed (I only have 7 bits of useful film) in a negative file to protect them from scratching because they are very fragile. Next, we went inside the dark room. The dark room is dark (obviously) and shined red light. It was red because the film does not react with red light, it only reacts to bright white light that can only be found in the enlarger machines which prints the 'photographic light' onto photographic paper. We were going to make contact prints to see what the photographs will look like if we printed them but contact prints are minimised versions of these (they are the size of the films). To make 
these, you have to take the films out of the negative file and put them in a contact print maker. It has two sides, one for the films and one for the photographic paper. So, once you have slotted the films in one half and slot the paper in the other, you close the halves together. When they are in place, you shine the bright white light from the enlarger for 5 seconds. Finally, you develop (for 1 minute), fix (for 4 minutes), wash(for 10 minutes) and dry it(30 seconds or less). The first time I and James done it turned out to be a failure. We printed on the wrong side of the paper which made the print black. In the second time, we done it.
The second part of printing was the test strips. For this, we only used half of the photographic paper. Test strips show you different shades of light for the photograph of your choice. To make test strips, I covered each section of the paper by two centimetres and shined light to each two centimetre section but in different times for each section (e.g. 2/4/6/8/10 seconds). Finally, you develop, fix, wash and dry it. I chose to do one without film to see different light shades. It turned 
out great, it shows the best light shade in the middle. Next, I did one with film. It was rubbish because the sections were out of place, jagged and left white bits between each section. Fortunately, the test strip still shows the shades of light.
The final stage was the final prints. The test strips helped me with this as they gave me information on which shade of light I should use. This time, I used a whole piece of photographic paper. I chose to do one photo with 4 seconds of exposed light, another with 6 seconds of exposed light and one with 8 seconds. In the end, I came out with three successful prints and no mistakes made. Mr Hind said that my first print was perfect. If I get a chance next week, I will make a photograph with different sections of exposed light so it looks different.
My target for this week is to not loose track of work if I get it wrong and just press on. I need to get less distracted by people in sessions and make more prints.
Next week...well, I do not know what is going to happen next week. All I can say is I am very proud of myself for producing fantastic prints. I think it is very easy. I hope we will go in the dark room again next week.
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In today's session, I began by starting a completely new unit which was called the Artefact Unit. This unit is very different to the Performance and the Campaign unit. This is because I and everybody else will be working individually. I personally think this would be challenging for me because I have been working in a group or in pairs throughout the CRAM Media course. I have rarely worked as an individual. Also, this unit is mainly about art. Mr Hind told me that we will be creating our own pieces of art. However, our art has to be three dimensional. This meant I have to use sculptures, etc. Plus, we have to accompany this with our own photography. Unfortunately its not that simple. We will be creating 'wet photography' (basically black and white photographs). Our main task is to create your own piece of art including pieces of 
photography and 3D art which expresses our feelings and also shares a point. I already had ideas whizzing through my head in seconds. Although I had loads of ideas, I am going to have a hard time choosing one. I might have to talk to Mr Hind about this. But first of all, I needed a point, one of my ideas in my head was a point about teeth (I really do not know why I came up with that, it just came in my head!)
The film camera only has a 26 picture space. Not only that, we were given a word and we had to take pictures that correspond to that word. Our word was 'pattern'. I thought this was a hard word because there was not many patterns to choose from in the school and outside the school. Plus, we had to take them in a professional way (by fiddling with the focus, exposure, zoom, etc). I knew this was going to take a very long time. When you take a picture, you have to check the shutter speed every time. If the shutter speed is too fast, on the screen comes a red + sign. If the shutter speed is too slow, on the screen comes a red - sign. When you get the shutter speed right, it comes up with a green spot. It functions differently in different lighting. Everything is done manually in every picture, a digital camera does it for you. I think I took some good pictures. Unfortunately, we only took seven. After shooting, we headed back to the photography room to develop, fix and wash the film, plus dry it.
because the film will be ruined if it gets exposed in sunlight or any kind of light. I cut the film, reeled it and put it into the box. This was difficult because you had to put your hands into the sleeves of the lightproof bag, only doing these task with only the sense to touch, not see. Then I took it out and put some developer inside the box. I had to wait seven minutes and shake occasionally. Then, I poured it out and added the fix. I had to do the same but wait four minutes. After that, I poured that out and washed the film for ten minutes. Finally I took the film out and it was completely negative so it cannot get exposed to sunlight. I put it in the drying container. I have to wait until next week to take the film out.
Finally, I had to do some background/artwork research about some famous artists. The three artists were called Tracy Emin (famous for her bed sculpture), Damien Hirst (famous for cutting animals in half) and Antony Gormley (famous for his metal sculptures). All three artists have the same thing in common, they like to do three dimensional art. The three were unusually interesting for some reason as some of their pieces are quite strange.
