play around

before the start of final semester
i had a great dinner with Tomoko and her flatmates
after the meal it was the time to play around

onions / carrots / parsnip / broccolis

cup / pot / glasses / utensils / peeler
banana / apple / pear / chrysanthemums



played with objects and medium format camera
just for fun


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group tutorial 1

I had my group tutorial on 23.Jan. I am in a new group with Frank, Rima and Keith this semester.

I felt so nervous before the tutorial not only because of the new group but also I was afraid that I couldn't make enough contribution to my peers. It started with my works. We didn't talk about my object project to much. We mainly talked about my owl project and they gave me several direction and comments which were useful. Beyond my imagination, they like the theme of owls' invasion more than the one of group and individual. I always had the idea that the group-and-individual one was more dramatic and interesting to look at but somehow the narrative was too obvious to let the audience generate imagination. Comparing with this, the owls' invasion was more open and mysterious at the same time. They also provided me with different thought and direction such as trying different scales, colours or shapes of owls.  Also, I also could try another composition to reveal more surroundings if I had already got many close-up photos and people would automatically recognise them although they might be very small in the photos. The most important thing was to create a flow and movement between each image. We also discussed the technical aspect such as using pinpoint flash to light up those owls and still got the darkness around and the feeling of night. Another difficulty for me was the title. I am always bad at naming.

Besides the feedback for me, it was even more interesting for me to see other's works. Rima talked about her idea for project space. Keith and Frank spent some time explaining their concepts and the process of their projects. Their works are very conceptual in a way but still involve with lots of photography skills like studio lighting and enlarging which I lack. It was very inspiring!

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feedback tutorial

I had the feedback tutorial with my tutor Susanne on 16 January.

Supposedly I had two projects on going this semester: the owl and object arrangement project. Comparing with the owl project, the object one is more developed. The feedback of object arrangement based on improvement of techniques for instance the image saturation and the density of shadows cast by thick objects. The most important thing is using large format camera and trying to print large scale images which I didn't achieve in the first semester.

The main discussion was about the owl project which I did in the first year. I didn't have any new work of  this project so I only submitted the series of my object arrangement. That was another failure in semester one. Through the discussion with Susanne, I decided to use digital camera to do with this project due to the issue of time and some difficulties I got when using the film. Another issue which need to be considered carefully is the format and size of prints. I would like to do a book format like some storytelling or fairytale book. I think the most important but tough thing is to find a coherent way to connect all the images. The idea could be simple just like 'invasion' of owl. I always think if the theme is only about owls within spaces would be boring. That's the reason why I did these scenes about individual with group. However I ran out of idea for this topic(I just viewed previous blog post and I talked about the same problem already months ago! How sad that I didn't figure out what to do through these 3 or 4 months).

Here are some initial photographs of owls. Maybe I can get something new from them, HOPEFULLY.

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