Philip Grocott’s Blog

New Year, New Projects

The Christmas decorations have come down, the country has become "Frozen Britain" and we're a week into 2010.

A little belatedly, I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope that it's a peaceful and prosperous one for all.

For me, there is much to look forward too. University has restarted and this will be my last year on the Foundation degree (although I am applying to do a third year to gain a BA Hons). This term will entail a final self initiated project, along with other assignments and the college will be at FreeRange this year as well. I also have my own small exhibition in the Summer.

Coming up soon, I intend to enter the AOP Student Awards and the Fujifilm Student Awards, amongst others. I'll be redesigning my website and giving further consideration to how my photography and studies will pan out into a hopefully successful career. In fact, I have so many ideas and things to do, I'm not sure when I'll fit it all in. But I'm looking forward to it.

Additionally, I've also started taking one photo each day for a year, inspired by the Project 365 group on Flickr. I'll only be using my iPhone to take these pictures and using iPhone apps to edit them. This is purely a personal project, which I had only being posting to my Flickr. However, I've decided to include them in my blog as well, having backdated previous Project 365 entries. To solely see them on my blog, just click on the Project 365 tag, or you can go to the Flickr set. I'll be using the tags on my blog a bit more so you can filter out what you want to see. I'll also post some more of those photos that I've taken that don't really have a home and I will be writing more about photography too.

All in all, it will be a busy year, but I intend for it to be a successful one too.

Merry Christmas to Each & Every One of You

I just wanted to wish everyone Seasons Greetings.

I hope everybody from family and friends to my blog readers, Twitter followers, Flickr contacts, Facebook friends and fans and everyone else has a fantastic festive season.

Sincerely, have a very Merry Christmas!

Phil

Choices

University has restarted and I've been back two weeks now. The first day back was the initial enrolment and discussion of what we had to look forward to over the coming year. The college appears to have tightened up a lot on its services and rules. And they've quite obviously spent quite a bit of money on a new Mac suite.

Several high profile speakers have been arranged for the coming year, including; Patrick Llewellyn, Giacomo Furlanetto, Steve Schofield, Peter Durant, Simon Roberts, Rachel Vere, Laura Pannack, Matthew Beaman, Edmund Clark, Frede Spencer, Jill Cole and Martin Parr.

Three assignments have already been set, plus an optional fourth one. The first priority is my progression proposal, I'll discuss the other assignments in later posts. The progression proposal is essentially an outline of my intentions for after the two year foundation degree has finished. Some students will want to go into business, others will want to continue with an academic route. It is the latter I am aiming towards, to achieve a Photography (BA Hons).

Due to my current employment situation and where I live I will need to study somewhere fairly local. The foundation degree I'm currently on at Burton College had previously hinted that it may be able to offer a third year. This would have been ideal for me, sadly Staffordshire University, with which the college is linked, has put a stop to this. Staffordshire University offer a third year although I'm not keen on this option due mostly to where it is situated. At the moment it looks like the University of Derby is my best choice. But there are other universities to consider, such as the University of Wolverhampton, Nottingham Trent University and possibly Birmingham City University.

The coming weeks will see me busy with arranging to meet University tutors, going to open days and planning my next step.

So What Else Has Happened?...

I'm aware I haven't blogged much recently, I guess I'm in that Summer break mood. That's not to say that there hasn't been anything going on recently.

I received results for the first year of my photography degree. I wasn't sure when the results were going to be available, but after one of my fellow students announced on Facebook that they had received their results in the mail, I waited nervously for my postman to deliver. Eventually, the letter arrived and I was very pleased to see that I had passed.

I have also been asked to host my first solo exhibition at the local library. It seems that staff at the library had gotten wind of my Merit in the Fujifilm Student Awards and were interested in having me show some work. Burton Library has an Art Space, which regularly shows work from a variety of artists. I'm going to take photos relating to Burton, but for now I'm not going to be anymore specific than that. The exhibition won't be until August 2010, so I have plenty of preparation time. Although a little daunting, I'm extremely happy to be doing this and glad to have another challenge to aim for.

Keeping local again, I've had one of my photos used in the Burton Mail. This was to illustrate an article about local artist, Alistair Kennedy and his involvement in the Art Below exhibition. Although the local paper managed to spell my name incorrectly it was good to see the photo in print and kind of Alistair to request that they used it. I also took photos of Alistair and his Histologies exhibition at the Royal Derby Hospital.

And on a smaller note I also received some A4 photo printer paper enclosed with a note from The British Journal of Photography, simply saying "Thanks." I'm not sure why I got this, but you can't knock freebies.

Other than that, I've been working full time at my job and taken a well earned holiday. The second year of university starts at the end of September and I'm looking forward to getting back into it.

Blurry Photos
(Blur at Hyde Park, London. 3rd July 2009)

Last Friday Blur played their reunion gig at Hyde Park in London. I went along, meeting with friends and family to see the former BritPop band make their comeback. Obviously I took along my camera to have some mementos of the concert.

As I was in London for a couple of days, not just for the gig, I chose to take my dSLR, a Canon 450D with a 50mm for taking pictures of my friends and a 55 to 250mm for band shots. The photos would genuinely be for my own use. I'd checked out the terms and conditions beforehand. Nothing was stated about cameras on the tickets and on the expanded terms it was the usual "you may not use equipment for recording or transmitting any audio, visual or audio-visual material."

I decided I should be safe with my consumer level dSLR. Everybody has them nowadays don't they? However, upon entering I was told it was a professional camera and wasn't allowed it. The security actually only saw the camera with the 50mm. But anything with a detachable lens was a no go from their viewpoint. Although nobody was able to provide anything in writing to that effect. Even after speaking with the person in charge of security, I was given two options; not to come in or to pay £6 and put my camera in a locker.

I opted for the latter and after a bit of grumbling about a lack of clarity in the terms and wishing I'd brought along my Canon G10, went and enjoyed a blinding set by Blur. Throughout the gig though, I noticed at least ten other people with dSLR's and one person with a high definition camcorder! I could only think that I (and a few others) had got the one person on the gate who was doing their job to the letter and beyond. I also thought the whole "put it in a locker for £6" was a con.

(The guy in the left-hand photo had a Canon 5D. The person in the right-hand photo had a consumer level dSLR)

I can understand that the band and the organisers want an element of exclusivity. But in this day and age of camera phones and good quality point and shoots isn't that a bit of a mute point? And isn't it all good promotion anyway? Realistically, nobody with any type of camera is going to get great photos from the crowd. They probably wouldn't be as good as those from photographers in the press area.

I used my cameraphone for the most part, but towards the end of the gig, I went back to the locker and retrieved my camera unchallenged. I managed to get a couple of shots during the band's last song. Which kind of made the whole camera confiscation a pointless exercise.

School's Out for Summer

The academic year is officially over with now, it seems a long time ago since the course started and I think I've come a long way. It's not been easy, having been out of formal education for so long, the expectations and requirements of the academic world are something I'd underestimated.

I've struggled with a few of the assignments, most notably the PhotoCinema and Advertorial tasks. Research has been a pleasure. Infact, I've become wholly addicted to reading about and looking at photography in books, magazines, websites, podcasts, television programmes and exhibitions. There's so much good stuff out there and I can never get enough of it. However, translating this into written research for my studies has proven to be a struggle

A few things have irked me. At times the course is disorganised and information isn't clear. There was confusion over the final hand in date for the year, leading to me rushing my work.
The college uses Moodle, an online Learning Management System, to provide course documentation and sharing information. But it's hardly used for our course. It would be good to have this utilised more often, that way everybody can stay up to date and have it in writing.
Technical problems that bugged the computer network have lessened, but still exist. For the most part the computers are just slow, but it's often easier to work from home. Considering that I'm paying for this course and the facilities, it shouldn't be that way though.
Discussions with my tutors have improved, but I would like there to be more regular formal tutorials. Mostly though we need to have photo critique sessions. Something that currently just doesn't happen.

But the good things have been fantastic and helped me endlessly. Trips to Shugborough Hall, Birmingham, London and Barcelona have been great for broadening my horizons. Seeing photographers such as David Hurn, Martin Parr, Donovan Wylie, Steve Harries and Mel Bles have been informative and entertaining experiences. I've also had work displayed at the local library and as part of the end of year exhibition. I've gotten paid photography work doing press release photos. And my proudest achievement was being awarded a Merit in the Fujifilm Student Awards.

So now it's the summer holidays. Whilst I'm waiting for my results to come through, I'll be working full time for a while. There are a few photography related projects I'll be involved with too and I'll post about these on here as they happen. Apart from that, I think I'll also take a break at some point.