Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Printing for Portfolio

Due to my working methods throughout the brief being fully experimental I decided to continue this style of practice when deciding on ways to print my final imagery.

I thought that it would be more interesting to print on different textured papers keeping in theme with the fact that I have already been creative and experimental with textures within my editing workflow.

I therefore purchased 5 different types of artistic paper to test printing my final images on however on the majority they saturated too much of the ink, lost detail within the print and also the contrast of the image seemed ever so much different from my computer screen image.

After further researching I have come to realise that the images may have been printed much better if I had of used Ink Aid inkAID™to treat my non-photographic paper beforehand.


Ink Aid is a product that allows you to coat the surface of a high majority of alternative surfaces for which you are able to print upon and still achieve an excellent quality print.

inkAID™ coatings provide the ability to ink jet print on virtually any type of substrate with clean, clear, crisp imaging with brilliant colors and high definition.



There was 1 type of textured paper which added to the overall effect on a few of the final images, displaying a sense that the saturated colour in fact added to an old-style quality usually obtainable from film darkroom printing.

But with any type of finished print and any type of photograph they are all open to subjectivity therefore I decided to print all of my final images on two types of paper, 1 non-photographic textured paper & 1 glossy photographic paper, giving the viewer a choice on preferred output.

Contrast of Culture - Landscape & Portraits

Throughout the Professional Practice brief I set out to achieve imagery to which would attribute the up most of originality. By exploring using different tools within Photoshop, with the aid of Online tutorials via You-Tube, I came to learn how to use layers and be able to combine two of my original photographs and apply them together to employ a totally different representation of the real.

I have produced contrasting images from different parts of the world (Liverpool, England and Cape Town, South Africa) to allow the viewer to make their own conclusions by revamping straight documentation of a person or even a landscape.

My concept came to be 'to be able to show differences between culture, places and climate within 1 finalized image.









Sunday, January 8, 2012

Competitions

At the beginning of the brief we were asked to look into competitions which would be relevant to participate in relating to our own personal area of photographic practice. We would then work towards the set competition requirements as well as to continue to develop our own technical proficiency within our chosen workflow, guided by influence from the already professional photographers, and show evidence of our trials and errors.

The idea of us as Photography Students competing within photography contests is to allow our work to become more widely known and in the event of either winning or possibly being awarded as the runner up in any National or International Photography Competition, that this would certainly be an achievement to possibly securing more potential future clients within the fierce Photographic Employment Industry.

As I am a subscriber to a number of online photographic newsletter journals and have signed up to receive the magazine for

Professional Photographer

both sources have become great tools for informing you in regards to a high majority of national and international competitions which are held throughout the current and future years.

Below are some of the competitions I believe that are suitable to enter in regards to the style of photography I have undertaken on this brief. The majority of the competitions sourced are taken from both the Professional Photographer Website and the Photography Competitions Website

http://www.professionalphotographer.co.uk/Competitions

and

http://www.photographycompetitions.net/

The Professional Photographer of the Year Awards 2011
PPOTY 2011

The Categories

We have 13 categories for photographers to enter and the titles are generic to encourage as many as possible to take part. There will be a winner and runner-up in each category, plus Best Portfolio winner and the Professional Photographer of the Year title. You may enter as many categories as you like but are limited to one image in each, with the exception of the Portfolio Award.

Category 10: Student of the year

An open category for anyone in full-time education studying a photographic discipline

Sponsored by Light Blue Software

Light Blue Software











Category 12: Breaking the mould

Another open category for everything weird, wacky and avant-garde – have some fun!

Sponsored by Hahnemuehle









Hahnemuehle







Lets Face It 8Runs from 2011-09-12 to 2012-01-31 00:00:00

The Brief

The Portrait Award

As always we encourage entrants to interpret the brief in the widest sense, portraying your subjects with emphasis on their identity as individuals.



Sunday Times

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/travel/article848624.ece

The Sunday Times travel photography competition 2012

The Sunday Times Competition is one that I am interested in entering too in the near future, especially after recent talks with a work colleague in the hope of a visit to Pakistan!
Due to this competition also running every month I have also decided to enter a photograph from my collection taken from Cape Town, South Africa