update

The past few months of college have been interesting.

I've been pretty busy mostly. Certainly, the demands on my time and the amount of work I have to do is far greater than anything I did during my honours degree. But this is a good thing.

I've been learning quite a lot too. I've learnt about the basics of file management and digital manipulation in Photoshop; I've learned about lighting techniques both inside and outside the studio. I've also been learning more about the inner workings of cameras, in particular how sensors work and what different sensors do. And now I'm starting my latest block of work, which includes corporate photography, still life, darkroom work, and some more technical work involving UV, infra-red and microscopy photography, as well as still working on digital images.

A lot of this has got me thinking more about where I want to go. I've been pretty much thinking/reading/learning about photography constantly. Whether it involves playing with film, or reading about medium format cameras (and if anyone is interested, a Mamiya, Hasselblad or Bronica wouldn't go amiss this Christmas!). Every time I learn a new trick, I get a sense of excitement. I also think there's so much more to learn as well, and I feel far away from the moment when I graduate from college.

Anyway, you can follow my work so far, by visiting my flickr page, here.

I think at some point in the future, before I graduate, I want to consider making a proper website for my work. I also want to look more into methods of promoting my photography.

I find I'm learning a lot more about what I like and dislike. I don't think, for example, that I'll ever really become a fashion photographer. While some photographers might be given free reign with their work for a fashion magazine, very few manage to achieve this, and have to work within the confines of an art director's ideas. Secondly, I don't actually look very often at fashion photography and feel any connection, or appreciation for it. I certainly appreciate that setting up a studio is hard work. However, when I look at photographs, I feel slightly detached from those from fashion shoots. Yes, I see beauty, and elegance, and whatever else you want to put in it. Yes, there is imagination and creativity, but I'm simply not into that sort of photography. I like to see those elements in fiction, films, or paintings.

Perhaps it's because of all those teen mags I bought in my early teens. The saying "today's news is tomorrow's chip paper" being rather apt. And so I don't really savour fashion photography in the same way I might with other types of photography. It's flicked past in seconds, and doesn't have time to leave an impression. Aside from which, the models always look too skinny and their poses are ridiculous. How can I connect or aspire to that? Also, I'm not really into trends. Fashion is about trends. About following movements in style, about surges in popularity. And that has never appealed to me. I've never felt popular, in particular, and as such, I've been striving to avoid following it. Fashion seems too much like a hierarchy of popularity, an elite, which I want to avoid altogether. To me, what I find exciting is exploring paths which lead to things that not many people see, rather than the popular parade.

I have however, been fascinated by documentary and reportage photography and anything else which brings everything crashing down to earth with a bump.

Anyway. Enough of that.

I'm going to try and update this blog more frequently about photography, as and when.