Rut Blees Luxemburg - lecture

Rut Blees Luxemburg is a German photographer. Her technique is to take photographs at night, mostly exploring the urban landscape. Luxemburg studied photography at London College of Communication and gained her last formal education at the University of Westminster.

She employs long exposures to allows her to use the light emanating from the street only, for instance from office blocks or street lights in her photos.

In 2007 she created a series for the London Underground these are some of the images: 

i really like the darkness of these images, i especially love the first image the reflection is a lot stronger compared to the one below. 

Julian Germain - Lecture

Julian Germain is a London based photographer. He has published several books, including ‘In Soccer Wonderland’ (1994) and ‘The Face of the Century’ (1999). His first book, ‘Steel Works’ (1990), utilized a combination of his own photographs alongside historical images and pictures from various sources including family albums to examine the effects of the closure of Consett steelworks as well as broader issues of post industrialization. Julian’s continued belief in the value of amateur and ‘functional’ images is also reflected in his recent book, ‘For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness’, published by SteidlMack in 2005, and also in his project ‘The Running Line’, a sculptural installation in Saltwell Park, Gateshead in 2007, of more than 139,000 pictures made by amateur and professional photographers of the previous year’s ‘Great North Run’.

He published a book called ‘Classroom portraits’ it’s an ongoing series that began in schools in North England In 2004and was extended to schools the UK the following year. Since 2005 the archive has grown to include schools from North and South America, Europe and the Middle East. I love most of the images in this book, I like how is displays different cultures and their education system. I find that I can study a single images for a while, their just photo you can fully understand from glancing at, there busy and chaotic but not in an unprofessional way. Each pupil has a different expression to look at or a certain body language, then you can go from studying a single person to the whole class, what’s in the background, how there seated, etc. 

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I can't say the lecture was the best i've attended as it was a little dim,  but it allowed me to understand how he works and what the picture mean in a more detail analyst. 

Ed Swinden

Ed Swinden is based in Manchester, and covering the north of England, Ed Swinden is an award-wining former journalist, writer and multimedia artist. He went freelance in 2004 after working as an AP if Several years at the BBC, and prior to that as a writer for the Manchester Evening News and Metro News. As well as accepting short and long-term commissions, Ed exhibits widely and publishes in a range of books and journals. His work has been featured in publications in the British Journal Of Photography, Ag, Aesthetica and digital photographer. Ed is currently preparing his solo "shoot the Street" show, to be exhibited at the FORMAT International Photography Festival at Derby in March 2011.

Visiting Lecture-Daniel Stier

Daniel Stier's portraiture work

German born Daniel Stier creates documentary style photography with a subtle humor and lasting grace. His wry style and remarkable range of subjects as he is well known for his portraiture, fashion shots and landscapes. This means he is in frequent demand of publications such as wallpaper, vogue, GQ, arena, the telegraph magazine, the Observer magazine, the New York times magazine and the guardian.

After graduating with a diploma in photography at FH Dortmund, he moved to London in 1994 to work as a freelance photographer, and since then has spent time between London and New York.

Exhibitions of Stier’s work have included those at the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, GOOP Gallery in Frankfurt, and Notting Hill Arts Club, London. In 2001 he won the photography prize at the Festival des Arts de la Mode Hyeres and a few of his numerous celebrity portraits are in the National Portrait Gallery collection.

Advertising campaigns Stier has worked on have included those for VW, Sony, Nike, Orange, Skoda and Renault and this year sees the publication of his first book on his project ‘Man, Nature, Technology’. Current projects include ‘In My Country’, exploring immigrant communities in London.

Stier’s image for Wallpaper* Selects is of a prototype telephone photographed in a workshop at the Ivrea Institute, an experimental academy and think-tank outside Milan. 

From what I saw and learnt in Daniels lecture is that a lot of his photographs look washed out and bleak, however he went on to tell us that most of his photos are un-edited the look of post manipulations is purely from what he has created with the camera, with I think creates a nice originality as most images that we see now are manipulated if not only by a little. 

I only saw one black & white photograph in his set and it was a portrait shoot of an mid-aged man with a white textured hotel wall behind them. He didn’t seemed to thrilled with this photos and went onto say that he doesn’t like photographing in black & white or sepia as he feels it takes away from the photograph.

Before going into the lecture I wanted to know what camera Daniels uses, this was answered while he was discussing the photos he’d take on a commissioned project called ’Star City’. He did several portrait photos with a large format camera which he apparently enjoys using due to the extensive detail you get from the photos. He explained that he likes to use the large format cameras but due to practically he tends to use digital cameras. 

50 STEPS

50 steps was a short assignment set but my college tutors Steve Davis, Rebecca Robertson & Julian Hughes. I had a short amount of time to take photos, then upload them on to iMovie which is a proprietary video editing software application which allows Mac users to edit and put together your own movie. Below is my short movie and the list that I was given to take photos.

1. Find a spot/starting point of your choice and take a picture.

2. Walk straight for 10 steps and take a picture. 

3. Look for something blue and take a picture.

4. Turn left at the next opportunity.

5. Walk in the direction of someone wearing jeans and take a picture.

6. Continue for approximately 15 steps or past ten sign posts and take a picture.

7. Find the nearest bench or place to sit and take a picture.

8. Walk towards a tree, bush or flower and take a picture. 

Final 8x8 image

Location Photos

These are the five photos from the camera. For my final image I selected the 4th one down, Mainly because I think that it fits the assignment best. It would look good as a 8"x 8" image as the main focal point would be the watch face. This photo reminds me a little of Alice In Wonderland with a sort of fairytale feel to the image, as if it were taken from a part of the film. I also like the shadows created on the grass from the hand.