My week of work experience

I have spent the last week at Culture24 which has been a very interesting because I have had no experience with journalism at all and it’s allowed me to see what working in journalism is like. Culture24 are a charity that collects, organizes and distributes information from and about museums, galleries and other organizations.

The first day I was spent helping them test the beta version of their mobile website which was exciting because that kind of thing has interested me for a while. After I had finished that I helped them out by going onto venue’s websites to see what events they have on.

Tuesday I created a post for their Museums at Night blog. Museums at Night is a yearly event where museums, galleries, libraries and many more places stay open late and hold special evening events. Insert example

After every year they get sent a load of pictures from the events but because the images are from the public most of them are the generic back of the head shot or the very harshly lit flash shot. My job was to create a blog post about how best to take photographs during Museums at Night - accompanied by images taken at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. The purpose of the post is to point out the common problems and illustrate them with my pictures and then give solutions to help create better images also adding more images to illustrate that.

Wednesday I was shown how to add an event to the database and just helped out with that which was a fascinating insight into how everything worked.

Thursday was my trip up to the British Library to see the Illuminated Manuscripts exhibition which was a very interesting trip and has made me want to spend a day there getting a proper look at the library. Once back I started on writing up a blog post about the trip and getting my thoughts down.

And today was spent finishing off the blog post and learning more about what the editorial team does.

Overall this work placement has given me a insight into how companies like this work and has given me a real thirst for pursuing my own career in photojournalism.  

I would just like to say a big thank you to everyone in the Culture24 team for making me feel so welcome and just being a nice bunch of people! :)

The British Library.

For part of my course at college I need to work placements and my first has been with Culture24. Yesterday I was able to go up to London for a press viewing of the new exhibition that is being opened to the public tomorrow with is the Royal Illuminated Manuscript at the British Library

The British Library has always been somewehre I had wanted to visit due to the fact that they have the original handwritten manuscript of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Unfortunately by the time we got there and found out that the library would be closing at 2 because the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, would be officially opening the exhibition we didn't have any extra time to look around. :(

First impressions of the exhibiton: It had an amazing atmosphere. The way that they had done the walls by transitioning from a dark blue at the end to red at the start of the exhibition helped create a very relaxed atmosphere. Another thing that struck me was how many books there were and hold old they were, it was amazing to see 154 books, which are dated between the 9th and16th century.

Personally history isn't something im very interested in so I didn't really focus on the history of the books, I looked more at the illustrations and how beautiful they were after all this time. Taking a quick glance rounf you automaically notice how bright and vibrant the colours are and especially the use of gold leaf within them.

I think my favourite in the whole exhibition is the wedding present for Margaret of Anjou and Henry VI because of how intricate and beautifully done it is, the amount of work that must have had to have gone into that is amazing.

The book is made up of fifteen bits of text in French but I loved it more for its two brilliant illustrations. My favourite was the one that illustrates the claim that Henry VI is the rightful king of France.When I first saw it I fell in love straight away and couldn't stop looking at it. It just amazed me how much work went into presents for the royals and how much people used to adore them compared to modern days.

Overall it was an intesting trip and I will definitely be going back up there to see Alice as well as a late night event they are doing next year. :)

Breaking Boundaries

On the16th June at the Sallis Benny Theatre inside University of Brighton as part of my creative and media course we had to hold a dance event. This project took 6 months to complete and was very challenging because we had to create an entire website for the show, promote it through social network sites, create visuals to accompany  the second year dance performance, and run the night. In our team of 15 we were given different tasks to help the evening run smoothly and my job for the night was to take the photographs. It was a very successful evening and I'd really like t do something like that again :)

I Leave My Mark

On the 21st May I was asked to do a favour  to photographer Jon Silver who is the official photographer of the charity but wasn't able to make it to photograph an afternoons of work. Jon is the photographer who helped my passion for photography grow and the person who taught me how to use my first camera so when he asked me I was quite honoured that he asked a 17 year old amateur to do the job for him :)

The aim of this charity is to work with other charities and raise money to put towards the help of children who have suffered childhood traumas, which include accidents, abuse, loss of parents or a brother or sister, drugs or alcohol in the home or family, serious illnesses and bullying. All you have to do is give £1 and then if you want leave your fingerprint. Their aim is t create the largest collection of fingerprints and have decided to create a child's face using them.

It a fun afternoon seeing how they were all so committed to the work that they were doing and that children's TV presenter Dave Benson Phillips came down to help and leave his mark.

Here are some of my pictures from the afternoon :)

They even had somewhere for doggies to leave their mark :)

As you can see Dave made the afternoon really enjoyable and brought a smile to everyone's face

If you want to read more about the afternoon here is a link to a post Debbie Brown put on their website.: http://www.ileavemymark.co.uk/?p=1402

Busy Busy Busy

Just to start off so sorry for the massive gap between updates :( Firstly the exhibition went really well and a lot of people that attended said that mine was the best because it actually fit wit the theme of tribe. The only annoying thing about the exhibition was that we had no input into how the images were displayed and it ended up that they were just put on wire which distorted the images slightly but overall it was a good evening!

I have been so busy lately and have covered 4 different events which where an afternoon documenting the efforts of the charity I Leave My Mark, photographing a contemporary dance show called Breaking Boundaries which our college had set up and done all the marketing and website for, following a St Johns group up to London on St Johns Day and finally doing my first wedding ever!! I will be doing separate posts for each thing so hope your looking forward to hearing about them :) 

Here are some pictures from my exhibition.

Finals

After about two lessons of looking through and editing my images I have finally chosen my finals which are to be displayed in a cafe which is dedicated to photography. Although we only have one image that is going to be printed and mounted which is annoying it will be nice to have something of mine displayed.

Here is my print image

Here are my images which are going to be projected onto the wall in the cafe

Two more visits

Over the last few weeks I went into the tattoo shop two more times and managed to have to good shoots and able to get a couple of really good photos from them.

As I have taken more photographs I have realised that my project has ended up focusing on one particular tattoo artist in the shop and one person she is working on.