Mapping Manchester, Route 2

This morning I went out and took my second lot of photos along a pre planned route of manchester. I did the same as I had done the morning before and just took photos as I walked along the streets. I intend to do one more route on saturday morning and then play about with the photos I have taken both on photoshop and possibly even creating texture or collages with them. Getting up for 5 is not easy. 

Timing Crisis

I have realised that this sunday is the manchester bupa charity run, meaning that the streets are likely too be full of people preparing for the event. final shoot rethink is needed.

Thought of the Day

If the world did end tomorrow, there would still be a Cafe Nero on every street corner.

Photos

I took 35 of the images from todays shoot and edited them on photoshop. I intend to play around with them further as I complete more routes and I shall also edit the lay out and way I present them. From now on it shall all be a trial an error way of working trying to get my images presented in the best way possible. 

Mark Garbowski

This is the photographer that made the book of photos on New York without people in it. The city that never sleeps and yet he has managed to get photos where it looks like a ghost town.
http://toomuchglass.net/

Forever the Empty City

I found this book online which contains images of New York when the city is practically empty. I am going to look through these photos and then adjust the way in which I take my next set tomorrow morning possibly to this style. The Artist is called Mark Garbowski and I shall also look in more depth at his work so that I can get more inspiration. Sadly this book is not available in the Manchester Met library.
http://www.blurb.com/books/2164188

Station to Station

I have just came back from my first shoot of the city which took place at 5. I came across a couple of problems while I was out and about which came from my own stupidity. In one of my cameras I had forgotten to replace the memory card and the other ate up the batteries so quickly I only just finished my root of manchester. These are things that I will have to learn from tomorrow. I think I may also plan out a new route that will depend upon the research I complete throughout the rest of the day.

One thing I did notice while I was walking is that I find it quite interesting to look at the tops of buildings where people dont usually look, however focusing upward would detract from the emptiness of the streets so this is something I could look into another time. 

I am now going to take the photos from this morning and create my own By The Way booklet. I shall photograph this and blog about it later. 

Mapping Manchester

After I had looked at the By The Way project in the special collections section of the library I then went into town and into the tourist information centre where I picked up a map of the city centre. I have looked over the map and decided that the best route for me to try out this continuous mapping idea would be going from Piccadilly station too oxford road, taking a route through the town centre.

This will be my first way of looking at how to present my images of an empty urban space. I intend to go out every morning over the next couple of days at 5 and document what I see around the city in a different way. Hopefully this will give me a clearer idea of what I want to exhibit and I shall go out and do my final shoot on Sunday when the city should be at it quietest.

By The Way

This is a miniature book of photographs that is held within special collections at MMU library. The images document a car journey from Liverpool to Hull. The journey was recorded on video shot in real time. This meant that when ever the car came to a stop on the road the video would take a photograph. In total there are 111 photos within the sequence. The project was created by a group of people called TEA, consisting on Jon Biddulph, Peter Hatton, Val Murray and Lynn Pilling. 

Like the Brendan Dawes photography work that used many photographs in order to create a larger piece I am considering using this idea within my work. I intend to play about with this by creating a route along which I will take photos.  

Brendan Dawes

'Creating a visual fingerprint of an entire movie'


Cinema Redux creates a single visual distillation of an entire movie; each row represents one minute of film time, comprised of 60 frames, each taken at one second intervals.

Life After People

This was the documentary which I originally watched on youtube whilst doing research for my project, as I am going back to looking at empty cities I shall look over this video again and make some notes. I then intend to spend the rest of the day completing research and looking at different camera settings and ways I could present work so that I know exactly what im doing when I go take photos at 5 tomorrow.

yves marchand and romain meffre

http://www.marchandmeffre.com/index.html

Christopher Thomas

After becoming massively stressed after that tutorial I have gone away and started to look at photographers that look at ruins and at empty cities and started to get my ideas back on track. Panic over...for now. I also remember seeing a book of photos that I found interesting within the special collections at All Saints Library, I'm going to try and go have a look at this again today or tomorrow and take photos.
http://www.christopher-thomas.de/

Stress

After presenting my work in my tutorial today I have decided to go back to looking at empty urban spaces. It was thought that the work I had been doing on the bodies linked with more medical work and this is not what I want to get across in my project. I aim to go back to taking photos of Manchester without people. I have decided that I will test out several methods of photographing the city so that I can decided which will be the best way to showcase my photographs at the end.
Our exhibition needs to be up by May 25th and this change in direction so last minute is making me worry. However I know if I focus and work hard over the upcoming week it will all be completed in time. The only difficulty is that I cant take my photos until 5 in the morning and even then the time I have is very short. I may have to take the photos onto Photoshop in order to remove people from the photos, one person in my group said that they came across a book on Photoshop I think this may be very helpful to help me improve my photos.

Flim V Digital

Today I took my black and white film from the olympus camera into several photography stores around Manchester. It was really irritating to find out that after all the time I had taken to go out and take photos with an 'Old School' film camera that I would then have to wait up to 10 working days to get the photos back. I think from now on I shall be working with digital media. From the 'old school and new school' section of the brief I now feel that working with digital media (or new school media) is definitely the way forward.

Second Skin

I bought some liquid latex from a costume store and started to play around with creating a new layer of skin onto someones back, I tried to make it look quite scaly and give it lots of texture in order to show the way it might evolve. I also included some of the more purple colours that were within my photos.

As well as working onto the back I have also worked onto hands and onto paper and fabric. I intend to scan in the paper and fabric samples and work with them on photoshop. I want to try and get other people involved and try and work on adding the latex down the spin of the person. I really like the texture that this gives off and I want to experiment with it as much as possible along side my life drawing to see where my ideas take me next.   

Group Meeting

Today I met up with most of my group in the salutation hotel. Its quite a rare opportunity for us all to be able to gather at the same time and it was really nice to see how everyone was getting on. We discussed where we were going to exhibit our work. Some members of the group thought it might be nice to try and get a space outside of hotspur, however we found today that some peoples work was based around hotspur and therefore it would be best for them to exhibit there.
We also had a talk about what it is we are going to present as at our exhibition. I think i am now starting to think about my options and i would like to have a clear idea in my head by the end of the day.

Life Drawing

Life drawing was not a new process to me however it made me quite excited, I have done very small amounts of drawing for this project so far and so this was a nice way to get me back into it. I really enjoyed the classes and I aim to go to another next wednesday in order to look at other drawing methods. I feel it is quite a shame that I have started the life drawing so late on in the project as it is something i really could have taken on and developed in great length if I had started earlier. 

I have been too two life drawing classes now and this new focus on the figure is making me consider a change in direction within my project. One of the photographs that I took on the streets of Manchester contained a single black figure in the background, I think it would be interesting for me to explore who this person is. If there were only a few people left in the world how would their bodies being to evolve or even devolve. This also links quite well with what i saw from Lauren Bowker, she looked at humans that had evolved to breath in the pollution. I intend to continue looking at the human form and try and incorporate the colour scheme that I have picked from some of my initial photos. 

Lauren Bowker

Lauren Bowker is a former Textiles student that studied at Manchester Met and has now gone on to create a lot of inspiring designs and been involved in some really amazing projects. I thought it was really inspiring and quite scary to see how much she had accomplished in such a short time.

Michael John Grist

Ruins photographer. All of the images that I have found of his work are really inspirational, especially the use if colour within his work. things i need to consider when i complete my own photography. 

http://www.michaeljohngrist.com/