Micron July

Here are a few of the photos I took and edited from July's Micron with Ewan Pearson. This month one of my photos were used for a flyer as well which was pretty cool! Getting my photos out there! 

August's Flyer

This is the photo that is used in next month's flyer!

Let me know how you feel!

Micron June

Here are a selection of my photographs for the 10th of June's Micron with Paul Woolford and Micron DJs...Fancy Dress!

2011 Final Degree Show

This will be me in a year's time. It is a scary thought, but also quite a satisfying thought to see how far I have come. The actual degree show itself was fantastic. I have never seen so many people in our University building before. It was great to mill around with people and discuss the artworks. So many different varying ones! But of course the work I took the most interest in was the Interactive Arts year. The range of work was so varied, and most of it was so different to stuff I would have even thought about. There seemed to be a lot of installations. It was good to have a look at what the 3rd year have been up to so that when it comes to our time I will know how to prepare for a professional end of year exhibition. At the end of the year, my tutor Will said that what I need to do to improve is stick to one idea and follow it through rather than try lots of different ideas here and there. My problem is maybe I have too many ideas and want to try them all? I need to learn to be more professional and focused for the future and know what I want, and then perhaps I will be more successful. Looking at the 3rd Year's final show has scared me into wanting to do the best I can, but also looking greatly forward to showing what I can do. All I need to do now is commit, commit commit 101%....

Creative Transit Exhibition at Cavendish bar!

So as a collective of artists, we finally got an exhibition at the Cavendish bar which turned out to be a great success. The vibe was very relaxed and it was a great chance for people to get together. As usual for an exhibition I wanted to create a new exciting piece of work; so carrying on from the idea of beastly mythological creatures, I decided to use the shapeshifter idea and just use animals to look like humans. I liked the idea of portraiture as it is quite a human thing to do; to get professional photographs done of ourselves or our families. I thought it would be funny to do a spin on this idea and use animals posing for photographs like humans instead. I decided the most realistic way of doing this at first would be to use Photoshop and crop them in that way. I love creating work with amusing effects so I was really pleased with the finishing result. The exhibition went really well and it was so good to see everyone's work on show and see what everyone is capable of.
Below is my first attempt at guessing what kind of animal would work for this project. It didn't work that well for me as the neck was awkward coming out of the body and it didn't look quite right. This was a good first experiment to seeing how it all went together as an image, even though I didn't use it in the final piece.

I decided the best animals to use would be aggressive animals as it was quite fitting linking in from my last project, 'Beastly.' I then ended up using these 3 final images for my exhibition and decided to keep the same title for my exhibition pieces:

Here is the final exhibition outcome:

Micron May

Hello everyone. You are now looking at the new Micron club photographer! The first gig was in May which was a collaboration with Future Everything! So no pressure or anything. I found it a little difficult at first as I've never done night time photography before, so the settings are completely different. Still, I think for my first effort, these pictures aren't too shabby :) This is only a few of the collection I took. I uploaded them myself on their facebook page, and they are even gonna add them to their website!! Wahay!

Kiki Smith

"Born" by Kiki Smith

Through the 'Visual Body' lectures I had, I came across an artist called Kiki Smith, who also works with animal/ humans together. The first image I saw of hers was a deer giving birth to a fully grown human which gives us the impression the deer has had sexual contact with a human. Birth is a natural thing, and the way we view her sculpture is probably the opposite. Her work with animals and humans however does seem quite sexual at first. Beastality, which is wrong anyway, makes it very strange to look at, as it's totally unnatural. However, I do like her work as she combines animals and humans to create new mythologies, which of course is what I've been looking at. This way of looking at it, mainly the deer represents rebirth. Creating something brand new. Let's try something new. Well why the hell not! Let's introduce animal/human hybrids into the world and fuck it up.. ha imagine that...

FutureEverything

I have just signed up to Volunteer for the FuturEverything and EuroCultured festival in Manchester which I'm quite excited about. I just need to hear from them now, so I will keep you up to date. I will be interested to see what they say, as on my application I just said that I really want to help with artists and musicians, as I think it will be a really rewarding experience in learning new skills, and putting my own to use.
The application form to sign up is here:
http://www.surveymonkey.net/FE2011-Volunteer

FuturEverything looks really exciting, I've seen posters around town, and I think it will be a great success, so I'm just hoping I get my chance too.
Here's the website:
http://futureeverything.org/

Telephoto lens

I found some ducks in my back garden back in Knutsford and I couldn't get a close enough shot, so I remembered my dad had a telephoto lens, and so I borrowed it for half en hour. The quality of the lens made the photos look so clear even when focused from far away. Just wish I could keep it for myself! I would love to further experiment taking close up shots of british wildlife, and make the most of the wildlife here and see what I can find. I want to improve my photographic skills so that for the future I may have a slight chance of being a photographer for a national geographic or any travel magazine... well everyone has to start somewhere....