I had a splendid trip to Arran again back in January, there’s photos on Facebook. And then after an exciting bout of family illness problems I had my work cut out for me with university this semester!

Still, my major project has come along fairly nicely:

SEE – Sneak Preview from John Kingsnorth on Vimeo.

Crikey, its strange to think I’ve handed in my last ever photography project…

And now we’re in the mad rush of Degree Show preparations! And they overlap! Which is exciting and hectic and daft.

So IF anyone wants to seeee the shows, which maybe we could do a nice gathering around, it is in Cambridge from the 3rd – 11th June. I am most free on the 5/6/7th for that one.

The show is also in LONDON and is called ‘Seeing the Ordinary’ (I designed the website for the show heeeere > http://www.seeingtheordinary.co.uk Woot woot.) We’re on there from the 11th – 14th June, and I’m invigilating at some point, so maybe we could meet up and the end of that and do a food, or something. Not sure on the exact date yet though.

OTHERWISE I think a meeting-up with punting is long overdue, so come to Cambridge! Provided I am unemployed, any time from the 17th June to the end of the month I will be doing very little =]

I have been doing a little bit of job-hunting, but its hampered by the craziness of exhibition preparation at the moment! There may be a slight chance of buggering off to Zambia for a while (madness?). We’ll see!

Hope everyone is well and fine and I look forward to hearing from you all again.

p.s. Robyn, your wedding photos look splendid, must be fairly chuffed with them =]

Edit: Oh yes, I went to Stockholm in February too. It was bloody cold. And we walked over the lakes. Because they had, like, ice on them, omg. It was cool, photos on facebook :]

I have now finished my first degree. There’s a funny thought. It certainly went out with a ‘phhwut’ instead of a ‘bang’. But with all the work handed in, all I can do now is wait for results and begin pondering my research project (we don’t actually do a disseration, :/ so who knows where the Hons in my BA Hons will come from?).

As I write this I can hear the girly screams of one housemate being beaten at Halo downstairs, and the undead moans of Nazi Zombies being shot at from next door. It seems video games have consumed the house entirely.

Anyway, I am not totally unoccupied now, we managed to get the university to give us a degree show! They offered us gallery space in the toilets, but when we threatened to take the matter higher we were offered the gallery instead. Although the juxtaposition in the toilets between the STI informational posters and platinum printed delicate flowers would have been quite emotive, I’m sure.

I got myself into designing the website for the exhibition, which was rather a mistake considering how much time it took away from doing my projects, but it’s nearly finished now: Exposure37 Exhibition Website.

Can’t really think of much else that’s going on here really. I’m hungry, lunch time, ttfn everyone.

This comes after a catastrophic computer death last night. My laptop, which I’ve had for a total of 5months, decided to corrupt its hard drive file tables. It still worked ok, but then good old chkdsk tried to correct the problem. After that it didn’t even switch on. But by finding hidden Acer recovery partitions and staying up half the night I’m back online in less than a day. It’s scary how much I (we?) rely on computers everyday. If I’d have had to send this beast off to Acer for repairs it would have been harder to keep in touch with people, and what about all the music, and the work too I suppose! As it is I have all my work backed up and a quick trip home this weekend to install software again is a good excuse to get some washing done.

I’ll be blogging again soon with a bit of a major rant so prepare yourselves for that, it might be bordering on controversial. Otherwise my course and things are going ok, about the same as last semester really. We had some photography theory lectures earlier in the term which were really interesting. I couldn’t understand why so many people in the class hated them. There seems to be a real prejudice against artistic photography (as in not for commercial money making purposes, for the purpose of ‘expressing oneself’ or something) on the course, and the BA students all hate us soulless FdA students. It’s quite interesting! Unfortunately our main lecturer has decided to leave so at the moment we don’t have a course leader for after Easter, this is quite a shame as our last one was really awesome.

Anyone got any plans for the Easter holidays? And has anyone who’s at uni found a house for next year yet? I’m thirsty for news!

Peace out.

Since I’ve spent so long doing this ridiculous stuff I wanted to share with you the outcomes of what I’m about to hand in. So to start with I’ll show you one of the three CD covers I designed and two of the book covers I did for my ‘Digital Imaging’ module. That is, ‘Photoshop for Newbs’. I got a bit carried away with my arrogance trying to prove that I wasn’t a newb. A mistake I won’t be repeating. Hopefully.

So, ‘Shooting For Story’ my other photographical module was based on religion. I messed this project up a bit and ended up with lots of poor quality writing and a set of passable final images. Hopefully that means ‘passable’ in the examination sense of the word. Here’s the three ‘scene setting’ shots from my final ten.

Got a few strange looks walking back to the university as well, bride walking along in a raincoat. But that more or less concludes what I have to say on the matter. I’m just a bit worried that that is the extent of what we’re getting taught about wedding photography. I only feel slightly more prepared if I was asked to photograph the real shindig. Practice makes perfect I suppose, shame there’s no room for practice at such events. To be honest it’s not an avenue of photography that’s been made particularly appealing to me from what lecturers have said and other sources. But the day was good overall, and I’ve got a couple more shots for my portfolio, when I finally get round to redesigning my website.

In my spare time I’ve been learning about Cosmology and Quantum Physics :] Interesting stuff.

Hope you’re all well and safe.

Moving on, I had my group crit for my CD cover yesterday which went really well. I was happy with the amount of work I had done and pleased with my covers in comparison to everyone else’s. Some people had done almost no work whatsoever, which is a bit worrying since we were given our next projects as well: Book Covers! Seems like they’ve snuck a Graphic Design degree into a Photography one and called it an FdA! I don’t mind though, especially since I’ve designed book covers for people before. Although hopefully this time I’ll get it looking even more professional. The theme is ‘the seven deadly sins’. Seems a bit A-Levelish again, but I suppose there are only so many concepts to toy with… We’re ‘professional photographers’ not ‘artists’ after all; allegedly.

On a more exciting note, I had a photo of mine published in the ‘Cambridge Evening News’ last week :happy: . Yup, right in the paper next to an article, quite large too However, I am fuming, as they have not added credits to it. My name is not mentioned anywhere at all! And yet the photograph on the opposite page has the photographer’s name and phone number written in bold underneath. What do I get? Nothing! I clearly put my name in the email, and they even phoned me to confirm some details! Not only that but the article they wrote to accompany the image (shot at a farewell do for the manager of the homeless shelter ‘Jimmy’s', run in the basement of the church next door) was quite controversial, saying how the shelter had had all these brushes with the police and might be closed down and things. Hardly the right emphasis. So, whilst I’ve been published, its anonymous and the article is a bit pants. Tabloid journalism for the ultimate lose. I’ve emailed the newspaper in an irritated manner, but not yet received a reply. Not that I expect them to do anything about it really, but an apology or at least acknowledgement of my existence might be nice!

So ‘Shooting For Story’ is going well, not just from that, but from today’s shoot also at the university’s graduation ceremony. The proceedings themselves were incredibly boring! People didn’t even collect certificates, just had their name read out, walked across the stage, shook hands with the Vice Chancellor, and sat down again. But, that aside, I did get to mingle with all the important people from the university. Also each year we seem to award an ‘honorary doctorate’ or degree of something. Stephen Fry got one a while back. But guess who I got to meet at the graduation ceremony who was given one William Quentin Blake! That fellow who did all the illustrations in Roald Dahl’s books among his own work and other things. So that was quite awesome, it pays to get oneself involved in events it would seem! The unexpected always crops up, which is exactly what Quentin talked about in his acceptance speech. He looked very fetching in his robes… so here’s a photo of him just to prove I’m not fibbing! Hope everyone is well, looking forward to hearing from you all.

Thus I moved on to my current idea (after a bit of an attempt to phone the RSPCA, who are only in on two weekdays, in case you should ever find a stray animal. You’d best pray that if you do its on a Tuesday, otherwise you’ll have to look after it yourself for a few days?) .. where was I? Oh yes, current idea. Religion! Mum’s comment was ‘Ooh yes, good idea. After all if a Minister can’t help you who can!’ I thought this was quite fair. So today I went to see the University Chaplain who has given me the numbers of the local preacher types, whom I will be phoning over the next few days. I’ve also got an appointment with the Chaplain himself to take photos as the Graduation Ceremony. Which should be interesting even if it doesn’t quite fit into the groove of the project. I met up with my local (from back home) Methodist contact who was very helpful in giving ideas and help and such things. Maybe I can convince her to let me take some photos in church back at home! Provided I don’t have any hidden agendas of trying to make Christianity appear evil or sinister I think all should be well. So no Photoshopping 666 into the communion bread / the vicar’s forehead! I don’t think that would go down very well anywhere. So that’s that for Shooting For Story, things slowly moving ahead, which is good because tomorrow I have a group crit on the work I’ve done so far, and as of 2 hours ago that was absolutely nothing! Here I am procrastinating once again. :bigo:

You may think you’ve escaped my ramblings there, if so you are very wrong, as you can see this blog extends further down the screen. :catfish:

Digital Imaging. That’s my Photoshoppery module. CD Covers is the project at hand. The deadline is in two weeks for them and I have only done about 1/3 of 1/2 my journal work for it! Although, even though I do say so myself, I’ve got a few good photos and ideas for it, see below! (Again just trying to add colour to these monochromatic proceedings).

Sorry to leave it on that rather rantariffic note. I feel much better for getting it out my system (again). No doubt things will improve and everything will be sorted out. I imagine there is a lot of this kind of hassle at the start on a new academic year. On another note, it’s half-term for all those slacking young types. It made me feel very old when I realised that half-terms are a thing of the past. Just as Mufti Days were a thing of the past a couple of years ago. Brr, Autumn’s chill through the window. Time to get back on with the work. Hope you hear from you all soon, especially from those of you who have yet to tell us about your courses and universities! I look forward to reading all about it. Hope you’re having fun with work and play, time is ticking ’till some kind of Christmas reunion, and it’s ticking fast.

Bai. :happy:

I can’t resist mentioning something course-related though. I had an hour wait at Stanstead airport for a coach connection, but whilst I was there I realised how much I quite like airports! There’s a real buzz and atmosphere there. Just by sitting in the Costa outside departures I was starting to get excited about going on some kind of holiday. It’s so infectious! There’s a busyness and a rush all around; yet also people sat waiting everywhere.

Airports: A place where people hurry up and wait.

_{– From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri (Terry Pratchett, Wings)}

Wise words indeed. Anyway, where was I going with this? Ah yes. For my Shooting For Story module I have opted to document (photographically, of course) a workplace. What better workplace than a bustling airport? Well I can think of a few places actually, but never mind. So wish me luck when I phone on Monday to try and get clearance to go and take photos. I doubt they’ll be jumping to help me and I’m not expecting a tour of the control tower or anything. But in these days of ridiculous legislation and terror threats around every corner (yes even the corner of your cupboard) I’ll be happy just for them to let me take photos. Hopefully actually inside the terminal rather than just the shops outside…

Just a quick note about the Whasblog, please entitle your posts something, even if it’s just “…”, as the database gets a bit complainy if there’s a blank field. I hope you’re all having fun in your various universities, jobs and other places of interest. Now I must go check my corners for terrorists taking photos of my room. Look forward to hearing from y’all about how things are going :happy: Night all.

As for myself, the course has begun! I’ve just finished my first full week of lectures, and as of yet it doesn’t seem terribly taxing. That being said, the two projects we’ve been given: Design 3 CD Covers and our Shooting for Story module of documenting someone’s profession, do seem rather daunting. Each project we complete needs to be acompanied by two work journals, which when put together would be much the same as one project folder I used to do last year. So the format of our work seems much the same as A Levels at the moment, there’s just more of it and they presumably expect the quality of work to be somewhat higher. For ‘Shooting For Story’ we’re expected to go out and write letters of introduction to various interesting companies asking them to let us in to take photos. Sounds like quite a challenge. I need to think of some sort of interesting job I can shadow for a week and document! We have an alternative to documenting someone at work though, and that is ‘Fashion’, which doesn’t really appeal to me unless it’s taken conceptually just to mean any set of clothing. ‘Uniform’ etc. There’s a third ‘Learning Skills’ module as well, but that’s just a bit boring. Anyway, I shall cease rambling about my course now. :bigo:

I’ve signed up for some sort of blogging initiative today. It sounds like my university will pay people £50 to keep a blog of their first month at university. Why not get paid for something you do anyway as a hobby I suppose. I wonder if they expect people to blog every day though? Only time will tell. Money-wise I’ve also signed up for medical research! They pay you £20 to scan your brain and you get to keep a photo of it afterwards :happy: Sounds quite cool. Hopefully it’s as harmless as they say it is.

Back on the blogging note though I will shortly be upgrading the Whasblog to version 2.3 of WordPress! There’ll be some new features coming along therefore which you can check out. The most notable of those being tagging support. So as well as choosing a category for your post, which seems to be working a bit clumsily at the moment, you can add tags. Tags can be any single word you like that you feel sums up something about your post. Just like categories really… Anyway, I’ll integrate tags into the theme once I have the time. Trying to sort out our continued lack of hot water at the moment though.

In the meantime, it’s my Fresher’s Party tonight, and for once I’m actually going out. So toodlepip everyone. I hope you’re all having fun in your various universities, new accommodation, old accommodation and new and old jobs. Rave on. :3

As for my timetable, well due to all the confusion with group size I don’t think anything is concrete yet but:

• Monday, Digital Imaging ~ 15:00 – 18:00
• Wednesday, Shooting for Story ~ 11:00 – 17:30
• Thursday, Learning Skills Development ~ 14:00 – 16:00

So I make that somewhere near 11 hours of lectures a week. We don’t have a timetable for seminars and things, I’m not sure how they’re organised at our university though. Have to wait and see I suppose. I’m led to believe one of my first projects will be to design a CD cover with Photoshop aid. Better get thinking I suppose.

There was me yesterday being highly joyous that we finally had hot water on the corridor! I was jubilant too soon it seems. Now we have none again :unhap: Yay. So I shall be off a bit later on to have a freezing cold shower. I hear it’s good for the skin! Other than that I’m having a good time here now, thoroughly gotten over the first two-day blues. Met plenty of people and I even know some of their names! I shall leave you all alone again now, have a good rest of week everyone. Hope the rest of you are doing well at uni / preparing!