I took a group of my year 9 students to the Sydney Gardens in May 2009. The brief was to explore the park photographically. I talked about camera angle. low, high, up down, focus, detail, framing, human content, narrative...
With a group of 18 students, each with a digital camera and a couple of hours in which to take photographs, we ended up with nearly 2000 images. Such is the power of digital. It was also the most beautiful day on which to take photographs, with that combination of dark cloud and bright sun, the rain having washed the air clean - a crisp bright light.
This gallery is a collection of self portraits that I have been collecting over the past year or so. I like the photos that feature random strangers. Over the past year I have also become increasingly aware of myself in photographs taken by others, and then tagged and flagged in Flickr, Facebook etc.
These are a collection of the photographs that I have taken over the past few months as I have been walking up into the mendips on my early morning walks, recording my thoughts for this project. Most of the photographs have been taken on my iPhone, other times I have taken my compact Leica with me. Some of the photographs taken on my phone I uploaded directly to Flickr, with a location tag. I have been building up a map of these photographs in
FlickrThese are silhouettes that I have created in Photoshop, taken from photographs taken by students during this project, and designed to mimic the create - a - scape, mscape and other related websites. This type of background illustration seems to be very poplar at the moment, sparked off perhaps by Apple’s iPod advertisements.
I started collecting signage last summer, with the intention of introducing the silhouette project to my year 9 group in the autumn term. Included here are just a couple from that collection, along with some that I have found since, and included as an example to the students I am working with now, and as another example of collecting. A project that I have done with students in the past is to take photographs of circles, or the alphabet, or a particular colour, and the most addictive of all - take photographs of faces. All this could be used in some way as back up for the Sydney gardens sessions - as in the photo marathon idea below.
Lomography - 1st set of photographs taken with my Lomo - I first came across
lomography about 8 years ago, on an HP conference in Cyprus. Since then I have had a number of students interested in this, Andre and Renee extremely so. I have also found a couple of Lomo LCA cameras at the local car boot sale, £3.00 each... one of which pictured here. They essential idea behind lomography is “taking as many photographs (Lomographs) as possible in the most impossible of situations possible and from the most unusual positions possible, and then having them developed as cheaply as possible. The result is a flood of authentic, colourful, crazy, off-the-wall, unfamiliar and often brilliant snapshots.” (link above)
This very small collection of photographs were taken over an hour or so this Easter as I was experimenting with a mediascape in Bristol Docks.
Photographs taken during a school trip to the Saachi Gallery in Kensington. The begin to have a painterly and abstract quality, reminiscent of a Howard Hodgkin, Albert Irvin or Patrick Heron.
A lesson with Year 9 - each student had a camera, and took photographs around school, with the shutter plane parallel either to ground or sky. In some ways reminiscent of work by the Boyle family, and perhaps Richard Long, although I am sure he would not think so. Like looking at the ground from an airplane, but also the process of walking, looking down, recording steps. My idea of creating a map that will move with you as you walk - the surface under your feet, but on the screen.
These are a selection of old photographs and drawings of Sidcot School that we used in the Sidcot Remembered mediascape. I was particularly pleased in finding a photograph of a previous art room, and also that the bench in the photograph still exists.
A short photographic record of work in the park over the May half term holiday
A short photographic record of year 9 students experimenting with cameras, PDA’s and audio recorders
This selection of photos were taken with the disposable cameras that we left lying around the park in May. An extension of this would be to address disposable cameras, leave them on public transport with a message to take a photo, leave on another form of transport, and post back to the address once the film is finished. There might be a brief description of the project and a url for people to see the resulting images.
From the park we could hand cameras to passing narrow boat owners.
