Wednesday, 26 February 2014

Tom Hunter - “think global, act local"

Reading up on Tom Hunter, the first thing that grabbed my attention is how earthed his is when it comes to photography. He likes to get back to basics and take his time when making his photographs.
 He says, it's not about the price of your equipment or how much it's worth. It's more about capturing light.

The pieces of work I particularly like by Tom are the ones around him in Hackney, where he's lived for the past 10 or so years.
Hackney seems to get quite bad press from the papers, which hit a nerve with Tom.
The quote “think global, act local". is a very strong message and can be seen throughout his images.



He felt as if him and his peers were being victimised and portrayed as the scum of the earth, whereas they were just normal people.
His Series 'The Ghetto' was to hit back at the bad press and to show that his community had much more to offer than crime and poverty.
These are peoples places of work, where they bring up their children, their own little world.



This reminds me of the constant propaganda in the news and how hard it is to see or hear the real story.
There's always more than one side to a story.

Location Scouting.



Areas of interest.

- Tree swallowing remains of workers Cottages in New Marske Woods.



- Grinkle Park Mine.




Thursday, 6 February 2014

Jamie Mac - Superstar



An interesting session today with one of our Tutors Jamie. He had put together a collection of images from his life, which started with his parents wedding (he was a bump under the Wedding dress).

The most interesting part for me was to see was, the other occupations he'd had prior to being a Photographer.
I have only seen him as a Photographer and haven't ever really had the chance to see what he did before.
Finding out small parts of his life makes us want to question these parts even more.

We forget that the people we know have other sides that they don't show.

Is this something we need to take on board and find out more about the people we surround ourselves with?

As Photographers, I believe this is an absolute must. Otherwise we'll never be able to see out of the box.