Friday 20th April Final Session

This was a short morning session with the students to collect feedback from them about the course and its content. I recorded what was said and gace feedback to the artist I was working with. This was the final session with the students. I have been asked to go back in for another 3 or 4 mornings or afternoons to help arrange the final portraits so there can be a small exhibition for the students to bring friends and family to see their work. The answers recorded are below

Portraits

This is the set up created for the portraits to be created

Below are some examples of the portraits the students want to go ahead and use in the final portrait/collage

This weeks homework session

Session 6 23.03.12

Before I write an account of this weeks work I shall put some images up from last week which I couldnt get off the computer at START in time.

Here are a couple more examples of students homework from last week in which they had to define themselves though images.

The students also created some collage work in preparation of their final portrait. Here are some examples below.

Here are some images from the 'light box' exercise the students completed where they had to feel unseen objects inside a box and their facial expression was taken

The students were also asked to take photos of full body shots, facial shots and shots of their hands.Here are some examples of these photos. This was to give them more of an idea of what htye would like to do for their final portrait.

Session 5 16.03.12

This weeks session the students were completing their final protrait that they can then work with in the next couple of weeks.
Whilst they were having their photographs done, I ran a collage workshop for them to find and/or create images and ideas that they want to bring forward in their finished portrait of themselves. I shall provide a more documented account of this next week when I have images to put onto this blog as I didnt have enough time to collect the materials I needed this week to fulfil this write up completly.

Session 4 09.03.12

Last week the seesion had to be cancelled due to illness.

This weeks session was mainly a review of the past work done so far, gearing up to aiming to produce a final self portrait.

Lesson Plan for this week:

The students were asked to go over their last home study piece in groups, discussing their ideas that will eventually lead forward to creating a final self portrait.
A short mindfulness exercise was done at the start of the lesson.
Students were asked to look at images they had took in the previous session and noted down their favourite image of themselves from the 3 different photography stations that were set up.

The students then had to complete a photography task, where by they had to take 3 seperate images: A full body image, an image taken of the head and shoulders, and an image of the hands, all done in the style of how the final portrait may be positioned in the coming sessions.
The homestudy was given at the end of the session, which I have completed too this week to try and get into the mindset myself for helping out to achieve the portraits in the coming weeks.

For next weeks session I have been asked to create some collage pieces for the group to look at to try and give them some ideas for what they may want to do with their portrait after it has been taken. Below are a couple of examples I have done for this,

(hand done)

(Digital)

(Digital)

3rd Session 24.02.12

This weeks session was held at High Elms, home of NHS Start.
The students begun the session by telling us about their homework task from the week before, bringing in portraits or poses they liked and saying why.
They were then split into 3 groups for 3 diffrent workshops that were rotated around.

One of the groups involving taking photographs using natural light, and working with reflectors, and also about positioning a subject to take a photo.
The other group were introducted to using 'hard light' for taking photos, how to take a light reading, changing the exposure on a camera in responce to the light reading, and positioning the subject in the light. They were also encouraged to take photos from different positions/angles, and also to take photos with larger or smaller exposure times on the camera to see how the photos differ if you didnt take a light reading. I took this session. I felt like the students really responded well to this exercise, and found comfortable taking about the different aspects of the lights and cameras with them.
The other group did an exercise with Howard, in which he brought in a 'feely box.' Basically a number of different objects were placed in a box and the students had to feel the objects without knowing what it was, and a photograph of their reaction was taken. A large number of students seemed to really enjoy this exercise, and there was alot of very positive feedback about the boxes.

We need to get permission from the students to post photos, but hopefully some images from this weeks session will be put on this blog.

Here are some images of facial emotion recognision:

This weeks homework task:

Second Session 17.02.12

This session also took place in the Whitworth art gallery. This week was about looking at the paintings with a particular focus on facial expression from the 'Dark Matters' collection.

(Session Outline)

We did an exercise with the students comprising of a questionairre about a particular given painting in the exhibition. I was paired with one of the students to do this exercise, I learnt alot from talking with him about the particular etching we were loking at! We looked at 'St Jerome in His Study' by Alberecht Durer (below)



The sheets below are the questions the students were given, and then my personal answers from looking at this etching.

As the main focus of this course is photography, the students were given a glossary of photographic words that will be used and looked at in future sessions. This is show below:



After this, it was then my turn to hold a short exercise with the group, I was really looking forward to doing this as I thought some may benefit from doing it. I made concertina books as a medium to use for this exercise.

The rules to the 'Closed Eye Drawings' are below:

Before the session, we agreed on words that could be drawn that depict certain personality strengths/traits. The students were then asked to draw these traits with their eyes closed. After the drawing, I asked some questions (see on the image above) about their drawings and listened to their responce. I felt like some of the group engaged with this more than others, but I got some really lovely feedback off some of the group which made me feel happy that I had done it with them. The closed eye drawings are something I use in my own work to free up the mind and become abit more expressive rather than having to take yourself too seriously or minding what you are actually creating.

I was really glad to see the varity of different drawings created within such a small group, and they are really interesting to look at how people interpret words and images differently.

Some examples of the drawings created are shown below :