Philip Grocott’s Blog

Millennium Images

Below are a small selection of images I took for a university assignment for Millennium Images.

In a way this assignment began for me in the summer of 2009. I had already started taking pictures of the urban landscape in and around the town of Burton On Trent. Partly this was due to a conversation with another student, who felt that there wasn’t anything worth photographing in the town.

When the assignment was set I decided to put this work towards it. After speaking with my tutor, I went on to look at the work of the New Topographics, such as Stephen Shore and Lewis Baltz. I also looked at work by photographers such as Joel Meyerowitz’s "Legacy", Andreas Gursky, Sophy Rickett, Brian Griffin, Ansel Adams, Todd Hido, Nicholas Hughes, Simon Roberts, Bernd and Hilla Becher, amongst others.

Following further guidance, I settled on making my photos only at night, this would help give some continuity to my theme, the unused urban landscape and hopefully provide some interesting images. Primarily I stayed in one location, in and around Stapenhill Gardens and the nearby Washlands area.

I'm happy with most of the images, although I do feel a certain amount of uncertainty as to whether they would meet with Millennium Images arguably subjective requirements. However, I do feel that I've benefited greatly from this assignment and at the very least, even with the late nights and long exposures, I have enjoyed the whole process.

           

Website

My website went up earlier last week. This also was an assignment set as part of my university course. Although it would have been something I'd done anyway. A website seems to be an important part of being a photographer now, as a central place to show your work and provide additional information.

I did quite a bit of research into current photographer's websites and what professionals such as picture editors look for in a website. Simplicity seemed to be key in this area. The website should be easy to navigate, speedily show photos, have some information about the photographer and have clear contact details.

I already had in mind a very simple website. I wanted as few pages as possible in an organised manner. A great deal of photographer's websites appear to have white backgrounds, so I decided to go with black for mine, just to be different. Initially, I drew up and designed a four page website. However, I soon realised I could fit my content all on one page without it being too cluttered. Working on a budget, I registered my domain and used Apple's iWeb software to make the site myself and made a gallery using Lightroom 2 and put it all on the internet. 

As a first website I think it achieves what I wanted. I do intend to expand on it, with more galleries and to change the design a bit.

Go have a look and let me know what you think.

Assignment ~ Commercial Shoot (blog post)

     

An assignment titled "Commercial Photographic Shoot Model" was set a for us a while ago by the college. The brief was to do a dual location shoot, incorporating male and female clothing in one internal and one external location.

Initially, we had to present a proposal of what we intended to do. I'd planned shoots of models wearing various headwear in different locations. Having in mind something that might look like a fashionable catalogue shoot, I also wanted a story element to the images.

However, I soon became uninterested in my plan. It was a fine plan, and ticked all the boxes for the brief. But I felt I was doing it purely for ticking those boxes, rather than try to make something interesting. Admittedly, I focused my attention on other assignments, such as creating my website and the Millennium Images assignment. Another student suggested I change my initial proposal to creating landscape images with clothing in them. At first I dismissed this, as we weren't really meant to change the plan. But quickly I felt strongly, that I should do what I wanted to do, rather than battle through.

I went back to thinking about clothing in landscapes and from there onto lost and found clothing. I also thought about stereotypical images of clothes being left on stairs or bedroom floors and began to have idea about clothing representing a male and female couple. I wrote a new plan, which included having the clothing in water, and progressed with the shoot.

Parts of the shoot were difficult, getting clothes to look right underwater was tricky and reflections proved to be problem. But I liked some of the images, a selection can be seen above. I don't think the images are very "commercial" they do however suit me more, even if they do need a little more work and the plan needs reassessing.

Millennium Images

Millennium Images is a library of high quality contemporary photography. They sell reproduction rights to the images and arrange commissions. The university, in conjunction with Millennium Images, have set an assignment for us to produce in any format, fifteen to twenty images of our choice with an accompanying artists' statement.

"Basically one of the strong Millennium concepts, is not to give directions to photographers about what to submit; somehow it sounds normal when we are talking about contemporary photography, it makes sense. Photographers are free to express and develop their paths and Millennium Images might pick from the series."
Giacomo Furlanetto of Millennium Images

I'm extremely motivated by this assignment. It's the kind of photography that really appeals to me. If you go to the Millennium Images website you can search their library and see some of the fantastic photography. I initially envisaged including this assignment with an ongoing project which I intend to exhibit in the Summer of 2010. My idea was to document aspects of places and people of Burton On Trent. However, for this assignment I need to be more specific in my scope. 

I started out by looking through the Millennium Images library and ordered their beautifully produced catalogue. Following a conversation with my tutor, I decided to focus on urban landscapes and spaces. This led me onto looking at the work of The New Topographics photographers such as Lewis Baltz and Stephen Shore, amongst others. I particularly became engrossed with Shore's Uncommon Places. I went out and made some initial shots, roughly trying to do my own thing in this style, more as a process of working it through my system until I got what I really wanted out of my photographs. Incidentally, if anyone reading this knows of contemporary photographers in this style, let me know, it'd be greatly appreciated.

In the meantime, Giacomo Furlanetto of Millennium Images came to the university to give a lecture. A large portion of the lecture was spent showing the different types of photography in the Millennium Image library and the works by various photographers, which was fascinating in itself.

Giacomo also told us that Millennium Images was not an agency that represented photographers, they represented the photographs. Clients were varied, with commercial and editorial needs. Usually clients looked for images that had broad concepts, that different meanings could be attached to, or at least the meaning they were looking for. Sales are split 50/50 between the photographer and Millennium Images. Whereas photographers commissioned by Millennium Images would see 75% of the sales.

Submitted and selected photography is under a three year contract, in which time Millennium has exclusivity and the photographer cannot use the images commercially elsewhere. They are free to exhibit the images and use them for self promotion though. The photographer always retains the copyright.

Following the lecture, there was opportunity for some students to show their portfolios to Giacomo. A rare opportunity not to be missed, although I was at first reluctant due not being confident about my work. However, after chatting with my tutors I decided to go for it. I ended up printing off about forty images and narrowed this down to fifteen for viewing. Giacomo was perfectly understanding and as a first portfolio critique, I thought it went reasonably well. Giacomo gave some constructive feedback and liked some of my images. One in particular he felt would be usable in the Millennium library. 

Even though I am excited by the assignment, interested in the photography, fascinated by the lecture and had a good critique session my confidence in what I was doing wavered. The photos in the Millennium Images have a distinct style and quality. I really felt that my images thus far didn't have this, they needed to be of a higher standard. Thinking that I might have to rethink everything I was doing for the assignment, Harriet Merry, a picture editor assisting the degree course, encouraged me to stick at what I'd already decided upon. She advised me to do further research of photographers, giving me some names and to emulate their style. Funnily enough, she also suggested that I try doing some interesting night photography with my chosen theme. Something I had just been thinking about earlier that day.

So for now, I've done my research, got my camera and a tripod, planned some shoots over the coming weeks and looking forward to the challenge of obtaining that higher standard in my photography.

Logo

A small task as part of the Professional Contextual Studies module in my Photography degree was to create a logo. The logo was intended to be used with our possible photography business, on letterheads, invoices, websites and so on.

I had already registered a domain at www.philipgrocott.com (there's nothing to see there yet) in preparation of creating my own website. So, like many photographers I wanted to use my own name as part of the logo. Although I didn't want the word photography following my name, I needed something in the logo that related to photography.

After looking at different logos on the exellent Logo of the Day, I played about writing my name in different fonts. I then realised that I could make a camera symbol within the double T at the end of my name. I decided upon emphasising the initials of my name, by decreasing the size of the other letters. This way, the logo could be reduced to a smaller, squarer size and still be recognisable.

Below you can see what I came up with. I think it could still do with some refining, but I'm quite happy with it:


I also think it works inverted as white on black:

Constructive criticism, comments and thoughts are welcome!