Niall Read

Visual Commication Student at BCU / / www.niallread.com

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My final blog post for the People and Places project. Here’s a quick shot taken on my iPhone of my final production & installation. 

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GIF

Here’s a GIF of my final photographs from the People and Places project. 

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Evaluation

From the from the beginning I felt like I was going to nail this project while constantly aiming to further develop my visual communication theories, ideas and skill set throughout the ‘People and Places’ brief. My group and I a little bit nervous at the start with our two words ‘EAT’ and ‘PLAY’.

At first we were worried that since they were such simple words our final product would scream out cliché; However, this was soon resolved when I began researching my area (Curzon Circle / B3) with online check-ups and site visits. I quickly became extremely astounded  by the canal within my area. With such a heavy mix of bold colours from the graffiti, the reflections from the water and wide use of lines from the brick work, the area was engulfed. The colours and reflections shaped my progression towards to use of artificial props such as powder paint, smoke bombs and smoke machines.

We decided that our target audience are students due to the city being one with several universities. Choosing students as our primary target audience meant there wasn’t so much need for target audience research as we were part of that demographic.

Alongside the project work, I would wonder around the campus meeting new people both creatives and athletes alike. Since I come from a background shooting extreme sports photography I wanted to translate those skills into my group’s project.  I joined Birmingham City University Extreme Sports team to get an insight of the city with who and where the sports occur. From socialising, I found myself in the middle of a thriving skate community so I thought it would be ideal and practical to photograph these people within my brief. However, since I have never produced a skateboarding photoshoot before, I needed to research other practitioners mainly to understand the sport more. I have found it easier to create stunning photos. Quickly I saw many similar photographs, extreme wide-angle or fish-eye shots. Straight away I had two thoughts on the general skating photo style; one, I own telephoto lenses due to the sports I have an background in and two, wanted to create a more professional feel. I decided to approach the brief with a clean mind of skate photography. Instead I want to create an cinematic approach with the use depth of field and using ‘The Golden Rule’. The most relevant photographer I did research was a long time inspiration; Laurence Crossman-Emms’, who produced a series of work in the world famous ‘Crankworx Deep Summer’ photo challenge. I admired his use of speed lights for syncing flash; after some research and practice I learned how to re-create the photos in a similar surrounding. This was crucial when it came to my smoke machine shoot.

I had three main ideas for photoshoots. All of which would require a collaboration of creatives for it to run smoothly. But boy, oh boy. It sure did. I was luckily enough to get the help of two fellow visual communications students. Charlie was my model and athlete, a huge bonus that he was not only talented in his creative field but on the skateboard as well. The other two helped by filming behind the scenes and under my directions applied the smoke or powder when required. I couldn’t have succeeded without their professionalism and support. I quickly found that the use of a portable smoke machine which was powerful enough and cheap enough was not possible. After a bit of digging on the trusty internet and a few chats with an old collogue I decided to use baby powder, the substitute was amazing. It required more help than the machine would have needed yet approximately 300 times cheaper. With this shoot I had to edit in both Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5. Ps was used for mainly cloning to help the ‘smoke’ fill the frame, I feel my image manipulation skills triggered my old love for editing once again. Then in Lr was to simply colour grade the images, alter any tones and reduce the noise since I was shooting at early hours of the morning with an fast shutter speed, the ISO was boosted dramatically to 4000 or 6400.

However the biggest excitement for me with this project was how many areas of visual communication I could explore. With the brief being so very wide it allowed me to develop and further my skills within photo, film and animation. I decided the assemblage of mediums would suit the broad student audience. Since I was lucky enough to have behind the scenes footage, I was eager to edit together the madness which showed how fast paced yet smoothly me and my team worked together to create some wonderful photographs.

The only setback for me with this whole brief was the collaborative element, I don’t know wether I was far too keen to get making and dive into the project but it felt like my group were reluctant to join in with my developments or allow me into their creative process so we could truly collaborate. However, I felt it was a huge opportunity which was missed; four photographers working together could have created something spectacular instead it was a constant feed of negativity and laziness with no photoshoots on their behalf being produced until the last week when we shot together. With this set back we decided that it would be best to create an event to work towards so we could individually develop our final pieces for a collaborative exhibition at the end running along the theme of ‘Play’. Yet I had final pieces finished by week six, leaving the final week plenty of time to pull together to make sure the groups work still tied together so it wouldn’t be useless with our theme.

Although there was not as much group collaboration as I would have liked, I made sure my effort was completed and persevered with my own work. Although I feel the lack of support restricted my ambitions, I did not let this discourage me. As a photographer I will have to adapt to working with people of different styles and ways of working, something I have realised in this project. Another restriction was money, as using the additional props costs money it’s difficult to fully execute all the experiments and ideas I have in mind as i’m limited to a very small budget per week, this being said it pushed me to manage my money better and work more professionally as I would have to make critical visual decisions on which ideas to push forward.

Overall I feel this project has been a great success, with the amount of free time to experiment I’ve been lucky enough to explore a range of smaller photographic projects and ideas. On a whole I’ve loved our ‘People and Places’ project.

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Lecture 5, Protest

In our final lecture, we learnt that ‘Protest’ has been heavily featured throughout the history of art and design, yet I felt like there wasn’t any in terms of photography within the lecture. The key words that did feature at the lecture are as follows;

PROTEST – Include in themes today.

EMPOWERMENT – Where art and design use a vehicle for shifting the balance of powder towards the powerless.

PARTICIPATION – To engage directly and even contribute to a social or a protest.

REVOLUTION – Important aspect to highlight within the theme protest.

ACTIVISM – Social change and challenging existing social and political behaviours and values.

REBELLION – Is usually the driving force or fuel for protest.

During 1950s America, teenage rebellion was starting to become recognised with an identity. We were shown a clip starring a young actor called James Dean which set the course for a new genre of an teenager. In Rebel Without A Cause, Dean plays the son of a middle class American couple who exemplify middle America by displaying all the assumptions and prejudices of arcane social attitudes. The film follows the struggle for Dean’s character to throw away childish things and chart his course for adulthood through the development of his own identity. This reminded me of Matt Wolfs documentary of the ‘teenage’ years. He shows that as an teenager, and as a young activist, that they felt like their actions were changing the world. Then perhaps as an adult they wouldn’t feel empowered in that way. But as a teenager, fighting for gay rights, They were changing the world in some small way, even if it was just one's own little world.

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Lecture 4, Production

In terms of the creative industry, production has changed dramatically. This obviously reflects within art as well as the consuming would. Typography / text is an crucial aspect to any successful poster or advertisement. Newspaper layout design was an important part of the early 19th century. There was originally no variation or no emphasis. Just blocks of text since type design wasn’t invented. All newspapers had the same appearance and style. In order to producing large sums of newspapers it was cheap and easy yet was mainly used with metal moveable type was incredible technology and allowed for cheap mass market printing. This was largely uninteresting visually and difficult to read. Moveable metal type was durable and allowed huge numbers of copies to be printed from the set type. There was no opportunity for emphasis or visual style as metal type tended to break at larger font sizes. Wooden letter press type was only occasionally used for creating wedding invitations and posters. Letter press posters became popular. Different varieties of type were being used, colours, names, images and sizes were all being involved.

The dramatic change in letter press and printing dramatically changed the way consumers ‘consume’. For example, the Bauhaus Book cover design used clean and efficient typography to create clean and effective communication then the clever use of colour gave it balance and emphasis. Bauhaus poster design used simple production techniques to create dynamic visual

effects, often with limited colour. As well as letter press, production in the West has changed through a greater focus on the service industries, It is perhaps easy to assume that, as we work increasingly in virtual environments, that working practices have improved and bear no resemblance to the harsh production practices of a hundred years ago. With the norm becoming ‘mass’, this created a question of whether trades such as photographers will be needed since anyone can now buy an decent DSLR camera or even take an acceptable photo on their smartphones.

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The final edits from my groups collaboration involving powder paint and light painting. We involved these two aspects into the photography for the wild use of colour and shapes. 

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One of my final shots from our powder paint shoot, accompanied by a couple of behind the lens photos.

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Lecture 3, New Perspectives.

My third lecture is based around new perspectives. This attracted us into analysing propaganda from the Russian revolution starting around 1917 due to the need for mass communication in Russia. Since literacy was poor, simple messages were created and posted around cities, towns and villages to communicate with Russian muzhik - There was massive building programme in the newly formed Soviet Union after WW1 communications and electrification of the country were the main priorities. This first step lead to other forms of art over the world. This involved the wars and political elections. Some examples of artists who incorporated this into their work are: Rodchenko, Gustav Klutsis, Barbara Kruger and Shepard Fairey who is famous for his 2008 Obama poster, which was similar to the Jim Fitzpatrick poster. This was based on 2 solid colours of red and blue. The poster was based around the influence of propaganda posters.

We took a look at David Carson’s work from the 1990’s which can be traced back to the introduction of computer generated images and type, where abstraction and fragmentation through cutting, pasting and layering created exciting new design elements which enable dynamic page layout where type (often called ‘grunge typography’) was treated as image and image as type, in other words given equal weight. This is a perfect example of early image manipulation and how he cut, pasted and layered. What Carson did was champion the idea of the graphic designer as an artist thereby drawing our attention to the graphic aesthetic and what we now refer to as the graphic arts. A new style was emerging in the graphic arts, Carson was making communicating to a new generation of readers who wanted exciting new graphics and fewer long articles. This notion of a new aesthetic or new vocabulary, is a common feature in all radical shifts in art and design practices which I want to trace back to the Russia in the early part of the 20th century.

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Play Photoshoot - Behind the Scenes - Final edit for submisison

Here’s an in depth visual production, filmed by two friends and edited by me, including final photos from my smoke bomb shoot featuring Charlie.

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Lecture 2, Abstract 

In our second lecture we learned about abstract art and photography and how it lunches to break away from the traditional and original story telling of objects and life. Instead representing itself within different shapes and colours but to separate and withdraw from something else, due to this it makes it a reductive process, through observation, reducing it to it’s essence. We are now completely used to seeing abstract visual imagery all around us. Abstraction continues to inform contemporary design. Photography has always relied heavily on the external world to provide its subject matter. 

The camera is a device which has always been celebrated for its ability to capture and record reality. But photographers now are also post producers, and post-production is a process which is closer to painting, drawing and illustrating than it has ever been. This work by Michael Wolfe shows abstracted visions of Hong Kong’s High rise buildings. His main technique is the cut and sliced method, when I was starting out in photography and creating images of the surrounding areas I explored similar ways of manipulating photographs by turning them into either panoramic edits or quirky and unusual results very similar to Pierre - August Renoir, which was a combination of half photography / painting.

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Junction Improvements at Curzon Circle

Birmingham Council will be implementing the following works to reduce congestion at Curzon Circle, these works are shown on the plan available for download below and include:

Upgrading existing pedestrian crossing to Toucan Crossing on Lawley Middleway.

Carriageway widening on Lawley Middleway approach to the roundabout to improve highway capacity.

Reducing the size of the central island to increase circulatory lane widths.

Providing shared use pedestrian and cycle facilities at Curzon Street and Lawley Middleway.

Providing circulatory road markings at the roundabout to improve lane discipline.

Providing additional signs to the existing parallel cycle routes to promote these routes as an alternative to cycling through the busy roundabouts. 

Construction of the scheme is due to start in July 2015 and will last for approximately 3 months. Every effort will be made to minimise the impact of the works on the daily life of the City, but there may be some local delays

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Contact Sheets

Contact sheet for our groups powder paint & light painting photoshoot.

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Behind the scenes

Behind the scenes edit from my Play Photoshoot edit, filmed by a fella Viscom L5 student & edited by me.

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Before & after colour grading using Lightroom 5.

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Play Photoshoot

Here’s my collection of my ‘Play’ photoshoot featuring Charlie. From the set go, I decided that ‘Play’ includes athletics and sports, since I come from a sports photography background I thought I’d use that to my advantage. I wanted to involve a skater yet I didn’t want to use original conventions of skateboarding photography such as extreme wide angle shots & fish eyes, I wanted to create cinematic shots with a depth of field. To do this I mainly shot with either the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM or the mighty EF 300mm f/2.8 L USM, the only exception for this was on the ‘boneless’ trick into the canal banking which is seen at the 2nd to bottom image. The reason for this was simply due to the angle of the banking didn’t allow me to feel like the photo and I ‘clicked well’. 

I involved the baby powder to create a substitute for a smoke machine and shot early around six in the morning to produce an ‘ice’ feel, the atmosphere was very crisp at this time with dew still being on the trees and benches. For the smoke bombs I went for a complete opposite approach, I shot late in the day when the sun was setting which worked extremely well in producing an sort of ‘fire’ atmosphere alongside the rusty red brick work at the canal with the deep peach smoke grenades. 

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Behind the scenes

A couple of snaps of the behind the scenes from a fellow viscom L5 student.

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Let's talk about colours for a moment

I find colors in my local environment. I might see them in the flora or perhaps see them in my dad's faded jacket that has been worn for the last 25 years. I park those colors in my brain (or sometimes in my phone) for when I am back at home with my pantone book. Colours and colour combinations come and go with the seasons.

Since it’s autumn, on lovely days soft colours appear, shades of orange, peach & yellows. For my second shoot I wanted to include smoke bombs; with a little digging on the interweb I discovered hundreds of possible colours which the smoke bombs get sold in. I decided to go for a deep peach which will also coordinate with the rusty red brickwork along the canal.