Evaluation

Work experience

Mother Come Home

For work experience I am working at Special effect makeup technician for the grad film 'Mother Come Home'  I am also photographing the make up and sfx. I was hired after I photographed myself and the friends I did the make up for Halloween. This is the make up I have done so far.

These are various things that I have done on set and what I have been hired to do, I will be taking more photographs but the only time I have been on set was for the test shoot so that was for makeup and lighting. When we get onto set I will be taking more and when I need to  test makeup. 

Final product

These are images of my final. A leather cased book with a translucent cover over the front and the back.

the top of the film strips its unfocused, It was not till the image was printed that I realised how bad the quality was. It there was enough time I would change it but as there is no longer time to address this I will have to leave it.

120 and 35mm film

The last of my film. I forgot to include these before I wrote about making the book. 

When I finally processed the 120mm black and white film I wished i had done more. The images are exactly what I was looking for, its a shame the colour didn't work. 

the third image along was taken by Josie Evans when we went out for a drive, I asked her to take the shot and composed myself. There are other images I took whilst out on the drive but they are scenery shots and had nothing to do with the project. That day I finally laughed, the first time in a long time, i had to include this image. 

If i was to continue this project I would strictly use medium format film.  

Professional futures

In second year for professional futures I emailed a photographer that I was really interested in and had been for years, i was surprised to get a response but sadly he could only be reached the week after the hand in.

I stayed in contact with him and interviewed him anyway as it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to talk to someone that was on of the main reason I has such an interest in camera-less photography. i couple of weeks ago he emailed and mentioned that we has holding a talk at the V&A and asked if i would be interested in going. I went along and was able to listen to him talk about fin art photography which is one of the main genres of photography I am interested in. 

Some info as to what the talk was about. 

Thinking about what i want to do after university I realised my interest in fine art photography is one this that not only am I confident in but I enjoy doing. I am looking into ways to work in this genre (even if that is mainly entering competitions). I am still interested in archiving and curating but fine art photography is my main goal. 

Diary 4

These are the video diary's that I made, after this one I stopped recording myself as i found it hard to look back at them. Although my original idea was to cut up various clips of me and possibly use stills of the video diary's i found it incredibly hard to look back at them and thats why i will not be using them. It is a shame because I am incredibly vulnerable in these and they actually show what I am going through and you can hear my voice shaking and how tired I become later and later throughout the vlogs, I am just not comfortable with people seeing this side of me. Written word is the way i have chosen how to vent as people can't see me but I'm still communicating how i feel, plus is it extremely blunt and emotionless, this means people can read it how ever they please and take their own views of it.

diary 3

diary 2

video diary

Final piece

After thinking about making a book, i thought about printing out 3 large images (digital) along side them but after thinking and getting my book printed I realised that it would be distracting. The images in the book are colour and black and white 35/120mm film and the images that would be printed would be digital. Although I am extremely pleased with these images having both film and digital shows two different versions of events as one load of images have been edited to fit in with the theme and the other are natural. 

I had my book made in Boots as I realised that they did their 1 hour service there, I was integrated with the idea of making the book myself making it more personal but i also wanted the book to look professional. The images are still in the same format of letter on the left and the images are on the right so the first thing they see is the journal entries. 

Website

I updated my portfolio, I made myself a website on Wix. it was quite easy to do once I got the hang of it. In it i have included film, portraits, street and nature photography.

I have used different ways of laying them out as some images are bigger than others and look better when in a slide show. The main page is just a collection of all the images (ones that I feel show my better skilled edits or strong images on their own)

http://franjackson.wix.com/jacksonphotography

book making

Today I aim to start making my book, I still have to write the ending letter to myself but I can start laying out the pages to get an idea of how many pages I am going to need.

I am aiming to have this finished by Thursday but as I have never used InDesign before it is going to hard for me. I have the basics down and am starting to get the hang of it. I like the way it is shaping up but I want the book to be black or grey so I will have to learn how to do that tonight. I am still sticking to the images on the right hand side as they are the first thing that is to be seen and the writing on the left hand side.

Contests

I aim to enter 5 contests, 3 with a prize and 2 for exposure. I found a site that lists individual contests in an array of themes, from architecture to photos of the year. Most of these are free and you have to sign up but it does not take more than 20 minutes to create a profile (or you can sign in with Facebook)

https://www.photocontestinsider.com/ 

http://www.viewbug.com/ <<entered 2 today.

Some of the competitions have prizes such as camera bodies and some up to £3000. I have already entered 2 today and one has a grand prize of £3000.

Updating cv

Updated my cv to include more work experience, will add the lighting workshop as I worked as art director for the shoot.

new cv

I will also update my portfolio images and the images on my cv.

more notes

These are the notes that I have been taking every other day/week, I think they should go on the left hand side of the book and an image on the right. Some of them are just thoughts that have flickered in and out of my mind all day and some one them are detailed journal entries describing my day and how I have felt. I still aim to print and destroy a copy of the letter to myself and possibly write a reply so the book will start with depressions letter to me and I will write a reply back and this will be the last page of the book. 

I aim to also include image of myself that others have taken on nights out to show that I am not just one person i have 2 halves and each has their own life. 

film shoots

The original idea for this project was for me to use film to document how I felt and as the weeks have gone on i have used both black and white film and colour film to do this. I have also used 120 and 35 mm. I am yet to develop the 120 mm black and white but I can say the colour is unusable as it far too dark. There are a couple of stills i would like to use but I have cannot 100% say that they will be in my final. 

I have decided to print my final piece as a book and possibly 3 a2 prints as well as they are too good not to have larger. 

These are the images I have taken on film and scanned in. 

These are the the collection that i want to be in my final piece 

 this was taken when I was feeling erratic, my mood had just not been stable all day and I filmed myself earlier that night and hated the sound of my voice. I have stripped myself down and scratched out my face which I think is one of my biggest flaws. 

 my bed is my home, nearly all of the photos i have shot during this project have been taken here. It seems best fitting to show this. 

I like these images the most as they are raw and unedited, there are also impurities on the film like scratches. Most of these images are either out of focus or focusing on a different thing and I like the blurred look on them as they are shot quickly and without thinking (either when i have been at my lowest or when I have been having a panic attack) 

Quick shoot.

These image were shot the same day as the last shoot, they were taken that night after I had a breakdown. I think the realisation that people will see these image had hit home, not only that but this is something that I have had to deal with for the last few years and trying to show that in a time where I am accepting the fact that I need help was a little too much. I was editing the last set of images when I started to feel myself well up and shake. These are what I took.

It was really difficult to take these, I felt really uncomfortable taking photo's of myself crying which is why I went back to shooting my hands and how I placed them. 

These are my edits.

I didn't want to over edit these images so I kept them simple, the bottom image is being lit by my laptop and the top is by flash. The camera I have has a flip out screen so I can see how I want to angle the image. I like the bottom image because it is very raw, there is only a slight bit of editing done on this. The light off the laptop gives the image an overall blue tint. 

2nd shoot

2nd Shoot

I knew I needed to do another shoot and unfortunately I had no film with me so I played around with the dslr again. Before the shoot I had a panic attack as I had just filmed a video diary, I do not like the sound of my voice or what my face looks like when I talk (or ever for that matter) it's been something that I have had to deal with for the last few years as I have always said yes to helping out with shoots. When I have a panic attack I start to shake and my vision becomes blurry, I also tend to bite my hand or arm (I also do this when I get really angry) to steady myself. It is almost the same feeling as fainting as I have a tendency to do that too, mainly around blood.
Recently when I get really stressed out I forget lumps of time, when we were all in our group tutorial and were talking about our projects I was really worried about how mine would sound and because I stressed when it came for me to talk the words came out and before I knew it my turn was over. I still cannot remember those 5 minutes. I asked the doctor what this meant and she said that it is common for people with depression to black out moments that are hard to deal with. With this all said this was why I had a panic attack. 

This was also the same day that I started my medication and I started to document that as well. This shoot was in my room so the light was minimal and decided it would be best if I explored using flash. I quite liked the outcome and after a few tried to capture different angles of my face. I started to feel a little anxious about it and started to grab my mouth trying to calm myself down and decided to shoot it and see what it looked like. Throughout this I wanted to see how my face looked when it was under pressure as I myself have never looked in great detail at it. 

When it came down to picking my finals I was drawn to the images of my hands as they had more expression in them than the rest did. These are my finals. 

  

I have edited them multiple times as I am not sure what I prefer. I was thinking about making a book and having black and white one side and colour on the opposite but I have not looked into the idea yet. As much as I wanted to solely use medium format (I have 3 rolls to process) I do like these images as they are striking and quite emotional.