New project

I have been asked to take photographs of a local venue and today was the first shoot. I think it went pretty well.

I am not under any time pressure to get the pictures done. It is rather like the steam railway museum project, featured elsewhere on this blog, in the sense that I can keep visiting the venue to focus on different aspects, compiling photos as I go.

I took on board some of the advice given out by Mike Browne on his tuition videos, mentioned in the previous post. I used only natural light and a narrow aperture for a deep depth of field, which meant quite slow shutter speeds. This was fine, though, because I want to feature motion blur for pictures that do include people.

I also took advantage of the live view feature of my camera and found this extremely useful - particularly for addressing converging verticals. I could alter the angle of the camera with one of my tripod adjustment handles and see on the screen how it affected the distortion introduced by my wide angle lens.

Recommended tutorials

I am always on the lookout for good quality photography workshops, ranging from paid-for versions that require being taught face-to-face by an expert, to the free YouTube tutorial sort.

It has to be said the quality varies whichever kind you opt for. But if you are looking to spend money on workshops, I wholeheartedly recommend Calumet's courses, which are sensibly priced and well worth the money, while the online videos at Lynda.com are high quality and offer a great range of material for different ability levels.

But I was delighted to find free tutorials on YouTube by the British photographer Mike Browne that were some of the best I had seen in terms of the clarity and breadth of explanation. One thing I liked about Mike's videos was that when he encountered a problem, he didn't shy away from it or even delete it from the video, he found ways to tackle it. I like that honest approach.

Cristina de Middel's best shot

Jambo, from the series The Afronauts by Cristina de Middel (www.lademiddel.com/)

In my last post I mentioned Cristina de Middel's 'fictive' photography. Lo and behold, just a few days later she has featured in the Guardian series asking leading photographers for their best shot. And the picture above, from The Afronauts, is the image she picked.

The interview accompanying the photograph is well worth a read because it explains her thinking behind the series. Here she is, depicting the ill-fated Zambian space programme by shooting images in Spain, using a Brazilian model and sometimes incorporating old photos taken in the US and Italy.

But her motivation was to confront prejudice - Africans couldn't possibly consider going to the moon, could they? Well, yes they could. And she wanted to highlight the 'beautiful' attitude of the space programme's leader, Edward Makuka Nkoloso, who 'tried and believed it was possible'.

Spanish treat

I was delighted to discover in the past couple of days that the PhotoEspana international festival of photography will still be taking place when I am in Madrid later this month.

Described as one of the most important arts events in the world, it features scores of exhibitions, along with talks and workshops.

As ever, when my time is limited, I like to visit something old and something new. So I have earmarked a show called P2P: Contemporary Practice in Spanish Photography for my investigation of new work, while the first-ever retrospective of the late Spanish avant-garde photographer Antoni Arissa will offer me something from the past.

The P2P exhibition, at Teatro Fernan Gomez, Plaza de Colon, 4, includes work by Cristina de Middel, whom I encountered during my studies for a photography HND. She is a leading participant in the field of 'fictive' photography, which is a form of documentary photography that involves re-creating scenes for the camera. She hit the headlines with a photobook called The Afronauts, depicting the ill-fated Zambian space programme, for which she was shortlisted for the 2013 Deutsche Borse Photography Prize.

Show success

Well, the end-of-year show is over and despite my misgivings in the previous post, I think ended up a big success.

The work throughout the exhibition (which also included illustration, art, graphic design and interactive media) was of a very high quality and plenty of people came along to view it.

There is a real rollercoaster of emotions as an exhibitor. When someone chooses to look at my work there is almost a feeling of shock, followed by fear that they might loathe the photos. But the longer a person spends viewing the images, the more those feelings turn to pleasure.

And the show finished on a very satisfying high note. I don't like blowing my own trumpet, so please excuse a rare departure from the norm.

First of all, one woman spent a considerable amount of time looking through all 60 pages of a book of photographs I had prepared for the show... then went slowly through the entire book a second time. Which was pretty encouraging.

Then one of my tutors introduced me to a visitor who had sought him out to say how much he had enjoyed the exhibition.

Shaking me firmly by the hand, the visitor said: "I just want to say how wonderful your pictures are. It was worth coming to the exhibition just to see your photos."

It couldn't have ended any better.

You live and learn

The learning process goes on... even at the very end of my course.

A part of me wishes that the day will come when I have learned much of what I need to know about photography and exhibitions, but another part tells me that a lot of the fun comes with finding out new things. Well, let's just say say that I'm still having fun!

We are in the middle of our end-of-year show at the moment - an event for which I had prepared well and which I began with the hope that my photographs were (a) interesting for the viewing public, (b) good enough to pass the relevant course module and (c) were a decent representation of my work.

But over the past few days, having watched the reactions of visitors to the exhibition, I have come to realise that I still have a lot to learn.

I'm back

Well, I have broken the golden rule of blogging by failing to post an entry for weeks. I will send myself to the naughty step in due course.

In the meantime, here is what I've been up to. My HND course is coming to an end, and the final flourish is an exhibition in Swindon featuring all the courses from the college School of Art.

I have been preparing for this for much of this year - planning my project and taking the photos, of course, but also writing up the background notes, designing and printing business cards, designing a portfolio book and sending out invitations etc.

The past week has involved mounting the exhibition - work that has the potential to be disastrous (requiring, as it does, precise measurements and some DIY skills), but which actually went remarkably smoothly. Some of the results can be seen in the picture above. Please ignore the rubbish-strewn floor!