My approach to learning is roughly based on the experimental approach to learning, pioneered by David Kolb. He suggests that learning is process driven by constant observation, experimentation, conceptualisation and experience. (Skills you need, 2015) The process of engaging in an activity and practising is a concept first brought to us by Pavlov’s dogs, the famous 1927 experiment on the idea of classical conditioning. The experimental approach is much more learner centred, unlike the conformity of standardised education and the compliance which is forced upon the younger generation by schools. (Robinson, K 2013.)

The concept of placing emphasis on the learners ability to develop his/hers own learning and dictate how effective it will be, relates strongly to the idea of the 5 C’s of learning: curiosity, cooperation, creativity, criticality and commitment. By personalising this process and having a mature strategy on how to approach learning, it becomes a lot easier to execute and maintain.  Criticality, for me, is a major aspect of learning. It provides a springboard for improvement as once weaknesses have been identified, they can be improved upon; and knowing one’s strengths will make using them to my advantage a lot simpler. However I do believe that the 5 C’s shouldn't be placed in any order, as with the loss of one of them would render the learning process ineffective altogether. 

The Rough Cut brief provides the opportunity to experiment and try and develop new skills, and demonstrates how the 5 C’s can be applied to improve how we create new work. Emphasis is placed behind the need for experimentation, and to draw inspiration from new places to enhance our creativity. I draw inspiration by the omnipresence of many social media platforms constantly influencing and documenting not only photographs, but collages, drawings etc, most of the time without even realising that I do. By being more aware of where I draw inspiration from I hope to begin to sculpt the work I produce to be more reflective of myself than anyone else. 



Bibliography Lindström, L. (2006) Creativity: What is it? Can you Assess it? International Journal of Art & Design Education, 25: 53–66.Robinson, K. (2013) Ted Talks- ‘How to escape education's death valley’ (youtube) available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX78iKhInsc (Accessed January 7 2017) SkillsYouNeed (2015) learning approaches (online) available at http://www.skillsyouneed.com/learn/learning-approaches.html (Accessed January 8 2017)

Task Two

‘Subject and Experimental Approaches’.

I have chosen my subject matter to be people, as this is relevant to my current work and my biggest aim for this brief is for my work to still look like my work, for it to be recognisable. Even though the task is to experiment and be bold, creative, and different, I still want to maintain a certain aesthetic which is personal to me, and be relevant.

The five approaches I plan to experiment with are; stitching into prints, both with a sewing machine and by hand, using a digital drawing tablet to graphically draw on top of my images in a almost pop art fashion, in the style of graphic designer Hattie Stewart (1), collaging, slicing and sticking my images together creating new images and compositions, taking inspiration from the work and artists featured in ‘Collage: contemporary artists.’ Painting onto images with ink/paint and then experimenting with more destructive methods such as bleach and acetone nail varnish remover to destroy the top layer of the print. For all my approaches, I plan to experiment with both the digital, and where possible, the physical side of creating the same desired effect. This will give me more scope for creating and push myself to try new things and new software; using the digital drawing tablet will be a completely new experience for me, and one that will take some getting used to, and using Adobe Illustrator alongside it also. (Krysa, D. and Zinonos, A. (2014))I chose these approaches with the idea of taking my fashion images and making them more exciting and a little different to the work i usually make, I want my approaches to push myself more than just experimenting with making the image itself, but doing something outside of the camera and to demonstrate my creative flare, as hands on creating and mixed media I find really enjoyable and want to find ways to fit this into my existing work.


BibliographyKrysa, D. and Zinonos, A. (.) (2014) Collage : contemporary artists hunt and gather, cut and paste, mash up and transform. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, LLC.


Visual references  (1)

Today I booked a 1 to 1 with Ellen so I could show her how my works progressed from before I had even developed my work. She agreed that my most recent landscapes didn't work, and brought me back around to my original ones and how they could actually work alongside. Getting another perspective really helped to freshen my own view and look at my work in a different light. After seeing Ellen I experimented with the images below and how they could work together. I feel a lot more confident in the work I already have and need to go back over it. I think I was producing new work so quickly that I got lost in it and forgot about where my project originated.

Mitrottas work was exhibited in the photo vogue festival I went to last week. I found her still life images for handbag brand Coccinelle online and instantly saw a likeness to my own images, and how I want to progress. The use of lines in different colours and the contrasting colours of the bags works really well, and the unexpected addition of the food.

When thinking about how I plan to shoot my still life; how to make it more interesting, including different props to enhance the subject and  I am interesting in visual merchandising and how they use shapes and colour in a window to draw consumers in. These displays feel like my images if they were made into a shop window. Even when shooting my portraits to make them more fun I want to look into including props and experimenting with different, more exciting poses.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to go to Photo Vogue festival, a five day fashion photography festival hosted by Vogue Italia, and their ongoing photography campaign PhotoVogue, a platform where photographers across the globe can upload and share their fashion images with the chance of them being featured on the site. What first attracted me to the festival was its exhibition on the female gaze. This has relevance to me as my position as a female photographer and the idea has interested me for a while.

The female gaze is centered around how female fashion photographers are revolutionising the way the female body is represented through fashion.

we are starting to see women who aren't stick thin, who might have a spot on their face or cellulite on their thighs. its about empowerment of women, of photographing their friends in a natural way, and being proud of it. Alot of my theory work has been based on the male gaze, theorists Laura Mulvey, and John Berger's 'Ways of Seeing'. So it was really interesting to see an exhibition which has turned everything they believe in around and made it into something positive.

Below are some of my favourites from the exhibition.

After researching The Grand Budapest Hotel's trademark  and set design I found this interview with Annie Atkins, one of the graphic designers on the film set. 

It made me realise how much effort goes into films, half of which may only be seen for a few seconds, the idea of making an authentic set for actors and directors is something I'd never considered.
Things like the fact Wes Anderson wrote every single newspaper story for three entirely different newspapers to feature in the film despite many of them being directly in the shot or not, and stamps on letters which were not illegible from the distance they were filmed at, but were there to maintain a level of authenticity.

With such responsibility for the props from great importance to seemingly very little, one mistake Atkins made was putting 2 t's in patisserie on the Mendls box. The error appearing on all 3000 boxes made, and it had to be edited out in post production. 



http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/annie-atkins-grand-budapest-hotel

Appendices 

I came across photographer Gray Malin as he was featured on Insider Art, and I instantly fell in love with his landscapes. They reminded me of Richard Misrach's On the Beach series, as shown to us by Katie during our lecture on landscapes a couple of weeks ago.

I love the colour and the creativity shooting from a different perspective to what we normally expect. I want my own images to be really colourful; these images almost look as though they've been styled as they're so colourful and random, it looks too accidental.

Today we had a lecture from our second and third year tutor, Ellen Rodgers. Primarily a fashion photographer, she only works in film and has been published in the likes of Vice, Dazed and Confused, Vogue Italia, i-D, British Journal of photography, and more.

She draws inspirations from external sources, normally away from photography, such as film, computer games and music. Her MA work was inspired by a folk horror aesthetic which was part of films she loved during the time.

Ellen studied her MA and it was during her degree show that she was approached my several stylists wanting to work with her. She begun working with a stylist straight away and demonstrated how key it is to work with people and how she was lucky enough to do so. The stylist had a vision for the direction of her work that was completely different to her own; at first she didn't even like the images she was producing; but they were successful; she was part of an emerging aesthetic called witch folk, and her work was unknowingly being spread and was even used on the covers of music albums she didn't even know existed.

She went back to another stylist whose aesthetic she preferred and wanted to take her work in a different direction, working for Vice magazine frequently lead to lots of commercial work, and thinking of creative ways to work many different brands into the shots.

Ellen highlighted how much work she was doing and the stress she was putting herself under and how exhausting it made her, working only on film meant that her turnaround was about a week as she hand painted the colours, scanned the images in separately because they were so big and edited them together, and colour graded the digitals to match the prints.

Throughout her career she constantly wrote about her thoughts, struggles and life in a blog. She feels this oversharing helped her career and lead to her becoming a writing contributor to www.lomography.com She left her commercial practice for a period of time after a close family death, and returned to Norfolk as she wanted to learn how to make mistakes and be around students as she liked the mentality of them. She has since returned to her practice and is working on a series titled Gnosis.

My creative process 

When presented with a brief which left me with no direction in the case of subject matter, I was drawn to photograph what I love; fashion. I was incredibly pleased with the final outcome of my work from the investigation and exploration brief from last year, and wanted to pursue a similar aesthetic.
Colour was already a big part of my initial idea, so I felt that colour would be the biggest key to being consistent throughout my subject matters. Following the purely aesthetic approach for my images, I will be combining my colour palette with other visual aspects such as keeping my lighting flat, and camera position in relation to composition also. My images are more often than not incredibly simple, and minimal. I like my subject matter to be centred, and similar to the cinematic work of Wes Anderson, I plan to experiment and include symmetry wherever possible within my images. (Anderson,W.(2014))My subject and approach work and flow well together visually; working with a fashion subject meant that my scope for creativity was wide and I was able to experiment with different subjects and colour co-ordinations, and allowed for progression. This visual fluidity, however, is more evident within my portraits and still life compared to my landscapes. As a starting point I begun shooting landscapes as I knew this would be the hardest area to link visually to my still life and portraits. In terms of colour consistency I don't think i’ll be able to achieve the level of coherence I am after without the addition of digital manipulation within my work. this isn't necessarily a weakness, however It was my aim to be able to achieve a certain level of colour matching in camera. 

Bibliography Anderson, W. (2014) Grand Budapest Hotel, Fox Searchlight Pictures.  

I found Andy's work after he was mentioned in a group crit to a peer. His work isn't relevant to my own however I can spot a clear coherency between his landscapes, portraits, and still life. They are all very flat and muted, pastel tones. His landscape and still life work has an eery mood about them, as though they are foreboding for something sinister.

Today we had a workshop in the digital darkroom with Katie talking us through the basics of Premier Pro. We had a similar workshop last year ahead of our moving image requirement of the D&AD brief, however I really struggled and didn't end up using the software.

I was very happy with how the session went and feel as though I am now pretty comfortable with the basics and would be happy trying to edit my 30 second video as part of my current brief.

Below are the notes I made throughout the workshop, which I have already referred back to when practising what I've learnt and I find them incredibly useful.