B&W

I've been in a black and white mood recently, but the weather is getting nicer so I'm sure colour will come soon!

I'm back.

I basically forgot about my blog and my flickr, I got sucked into the 'retail sales assistant' life and lost any drive and motivation towards everything, including photography. Three weeks ago today I got laid off due to the shop doing absolutely rubbish, this was pretty much the best thing that could have happened. Working in a quiet shop after 5 years of studying and using my brain was slowly killing any creative juices I had. But they are back.

Anyway enough about that, moving on to photos.

Last year I went to Spain twice, Barcelona in May and Madrid in November. Loved both cities and both holidays. Barcelona, wow what a city!

 Barcelona

 Barcelona

Barcelona Airport

 

 Madrid

Madrid

 

Of course I've been a lot of other places, done a lot of other things and taken photos. Not as many as I should have, but that's changing. My Fuji X10 is back in my bag and I'm seeing photos worth taking everywhere!

 

 Dunoon

 Middlesbrough

 Perth

 Douglas Street, Glasgow

Bath Street, Glasgow

 

 

So there we have it, I graduated Uni (with none less than a first class degree) got a job, didn't take many photos, got laid off, came back to my love. Photography. 

 

 

More images can be seen on my Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdallas/





Tweaking.

This year at uni has been all about taking an idea, developing it, moulding it about a bit, trying something different, tweaking that, going back two stages, shooting more things and then going back round in a circle. It's fair to say that when it's come to my practical classes I've been a bit all over the place.

The good thing that's come out of this is that I'm trying new things. Like for example I've been trying out shooting hand held digital images at night, mostly using my boyfriends Fuji x100 which I totally totally love (the camera that is... my boyfriend too I guess).

The images I shot don't fulfill the brief that I wrote for the class, so they will never see the small cupboard on the 13th floor whilst they sit for months waiting to get marked. But they will see the internet, and they may well see a print or two.

Dogs

Anyone would think I'm dog crazy, but I'm not. I started shooting them and it's hard to stop.

I've not done anything with a lot of them for a long time, I've now put them up on my flickr.

Film Stills

Isn't this the most beautiful film still you have ever seen?

It's from The Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola.

One of my university projects is strongly influenced by film stills, especially from horror films. I know The Virgin Suicides isn't a horror but it's tragic and eerie and filled with voyeuristic undertones.

Other movies I'm looking at include such classics as Halloween:

 And Black Christmas:

I would like to thank the most creepy, spooky, gorgeous and (let's face it) could be psycho sisters in the world, my best friends Heather and Fiona. The McKay sisters know horror like no other.

Motivation

I've found it really hard to get 'in to' this year at uni. I've found it hard to get the motivation and insperation. I've spent a lot of time reading Berger and Sontag and stressing over writing, so today I decided to actually look at why I'm doing this course - that is photography.

I've look at my old workbooks from HND and last year, and I've looked at my photography books and images on the internet. This year it's been far too easy to forget about taking photographs and concentrate on writing about the methods and theories behind them.

(I've not even done anything with my 'Dog' series for ages!)

I don't really have any images of my own to show you from this year yet, what I have taken is sitting waiting to be edited, even looked at and developed in some cases.

What I will put up on here is images that are influencing my Photoworks project. I changed my proposal for this after handin, so I may loose 10% on my new proposal because technically it was a late handin (the one I did hand in on time was an awful idea. Me in the studio shooting self-portraits? I don't think so). I'm shooting the patterns nature creates.

Even typing that makes me smile. What I've realised more and more over my degree is that a huge amount of my work is influenced by nature and what I really love is going out to the countryside and shooting the most beautiful and natural things in the world. I don't think I look like a countryside lover, but I am.

Anyway.

Horishi Sugimoto.

Thomas Joshua Cooper

Bernhard Edmaier



Just beautiful.

Forgotten film.

I got a film scanned a while back and forgot about it. So here's some images from it...