Artefact Blog Michael M

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.