Film photography is my favourite form of photography. Over the past couple of years I have fallen in love with my film cameras to the point of hardly using my mirrorless camera. I love the concept of film and how it allows you to take a step back from the moment and really think about what you are capturing. It has allowed me to be more intentional and film has help me gain a better understanding of photography. You start seeing the world differently because you can’t afford to just fix it in your editing phase. 

   One thing that hasn’t changed since my last blog post is my undying love for black and white photography. I love seeing the world in B&W and I think it allows an interesting perspective on the way we look at things. It’s simplistic and tells a story. My favourite film to shoot with is Ilford Delta 400 Professional, it’s a perfect with just the right amount of contrast and fine grain.

   I’m hoping to soon introduce film into my business as I would love to capture people on film and give them a unique style to their photoshoot.

Song of the week

‘So weit, so gut’ By Harald Grosskopf

   I have been living in Toronto for the past week for a work experience project. I’ve been working along side a brilliant commercial photographer by the name of Julie Riemersma. We’ve been working on 2 photoshoots at the moment, one is with jewelry company and another for a candle company. Part of my job of assisting is setting up lights and other equipment, along side with handling products and shooting images behind the scene. It’s been really cool to see how photographers work on location and what’s required to make a session go smoothly.

   When I’m not working with Julie I’m wondering the city. Toronto is very very cool. I’ve always been a city girl, so to get out of small city St Albert and venture out has been amazing. I’ve currently been living in a tiny basement suite just outside of downtown, so it’s nice to go out and explore the busy downtown them go home to the quiet neighborhood after. Next to walking literally everywhere, the public transport has been amazing. Seriously, Edmonton should take some notes. While I don’t know where I’m going, I found that if I put my headphones in and listen to google maps, I look like everyone else casually walking.

   I kind of love it here. There is so much museums and art everywhere you go. There is so much culture to see. Something about the hustle of downtown that makes me feel at home….who knows, maybe I’ll move here in the future. I can see how people fall in love with Toronto.

Song of the week

‘Right Direction’ By Niterunner

  One of our recent projects has been a printed portfolio piece. The portfolio piece is  a minimum of 2 categories and 12 images. The categories I chose was portraits, landscapes and figure studies. Style is so important to me so I was daring and went full black and white. Sounds a little odd to not in corporate colour into a portfolio however I wanted to illustrate who I was as a person and that’s B&W. I do like colour, don’t get me wrong, but I was determined to stay true to my passion. 

  My first category was portrait. I wanted to do my classic high clarity, contrast portraits. I chose 6 individuals that I knew would illustrate unique emotions and their own personality. My portraits are influence by Damon Baker.

My second category was landscapes. Landscapes are a photographic style that I struggle with, they don’t particular grab my attention the same way portraiture do. I do however enjoy doing landscapes because my dad does. I thought it would be a great opportunity to go to Jasper to capture the beautiful mountains.

  My last category was figure studies. I wanted to push myself with this last category and show another side of black and white. I chose to do soft B&W to illustrate the softness and elegance of the human body. I’ve never really done a figure study but I did know I wanted to show the diversity within bodies and how beautiful they are. Your body is what makes you beautiful and the models that I photographed were incredibly proud and their confidence is the reason these photos came out as well as they did. I would love to continue the figure studies after school.

   This was definitely one of my favourite assignments and I would love to continue this project and make it much bigger.

Song of the week

‘…Born Slippy (Nuxx)’  By Underworld 

  Cool, so I guess it’s time to do a little ‘about me’ blog. My name is Katie and I am 21 years old. The first real memory I had of holding a camera was back in 2015 when my family and I went home to England. My dad taught me how to use his camera and something just clicked.

  After that trip I took photography classes throughout high school alongside with what I learned from my dad.  I figured out pretty quickly that I loved taking portraits and I only evolved from there. The images below are my progression from 2015-2018.

  When I’m not taking photos you can find me either at work or going out with friends! My life revolves around these 3 things. I’m a huge fan of music, in particular electronic, alternative and classic dad rock. While I haven’t gone to many concerts, my goal when it is covid safe is to experience as many as I can afford. And to anyone who has met me at least once, we all know I have a massive love for hats! Honestly there isn’t much to me, I’m a simple person who loves to take photos of people and jam to music

Song of the week is

‘Never Fight A Man With A Perm’ by IDLES

   Part of growing into a photographer is finding out what your style is. Style helps define you as a photographer and how people can recognize you. Things like colour, composition, lighting and genres show who you are. I like to think of my style as black & white, high contrast and clarity. Studio portraits are also a big focus of my style as well. While there is nothing wrong with environmental or colour, I’m a big fan of just minimalism. 

   One of my inspiration is Damon Baker. He is a UK based photographer and he’s known for this similar kind of style. Of course on a much larger and more impressive scale with celebrities but I definitely push myself when I think of his work and what I could be doing.

   Style comes with time and growth. While I have plenty of time to grow as a photographer, I definitely think I have found my style and hope to only improve on this.

Song of the week

‘Black Mambo’ by Glass Animals

   Over the weekend myself and 3 other students put together a stylized wedding shoot in Jasper for class. In an upcoming assignment we are to organize and capture a stylized wedding shoot. For those who are unsure of a stylized shoot, I like to think of it as a mock day. It is a step by step of what a wedding would look like without the people. We were to organize decorations, the wedding dress and suit, cake, location and floral. Thanks to our amazing classmate, Taylor, who is already a wedding photographer, we had great direction of what we should do.

     Everything went pretty smoothly the entire trip. We started the shoot with some tunes and our model getting her hair and make up sorted. Then we were off to Pyramid Lake where Taylor and our bridal assistant, Hailey, had our fancy doors, table and decorations set up. The other thing we were worried about was the weather…the blinding sun. We waited it out for a little bit and thankfully it hid behind the clouds and got going.

   I cannot wait to edit the rest of the images to be edited. Overall, the entire trip was so much fun and a great way to learn about the importance of networking with other companies.

Hair & Makeup: Sheena

Bridal Assistant: Maid For You YEG

Doors: Sage and Synchronicity

Table: Always Occasions

Rentals: Special Event Rentals

Desserts: Cookies & Cream Bakery YEG

Foral: Bud + Bloom

Song of the Week

‘Outro’ by M83 

   I’m always huge on trying to create a story within my imagery. One of my favourite assignments from last year was another critique called ’Colour to Tell a Story’.  Colour plays such an important role in photography, art, videography and other mediums, so I was excited see what I could come up with. I eventually came up with the title ’Tainted Love’ in which I wanted to illustrate how jealousy can destroy pure love.

   I wanted to keep my image simple so I had the idea of having someone hold a single white rose and have the rose and hand stained with blood. A white rose symbolizes purity, innocence and loyalty. The red blood symbolizes  jealousy and passion. While there is positive symbolism in the colour red I wanted to go the other way and have a darker meaning. My setup was really simple and I had a white backdrop and I poured red food colouring on the rose and on my hand and used a self timer to capture the image. In post I made the intentional choice to desaturate the tone of the skin so give a dull feeling. 

   While it wasn’t the most complex image I have done, I do really like it and I think it has great story telling behind it.

This weeks song is

‘Intro’ By The xx

  I’ve always had a love for weird and wonderful images. There’s something about them that just grabs my attention and inspires me.  An assignment that I’ll never forget about is back in 1st year when we had the Critique called ‘negative space’ and I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

  Usually when it comes to my images, I really make the attempt to create a story that my viewers can connect to. For this assignment I wanted to portray the emotion of being trapped. I illustrated this by having this see through cloth wrapped about my friends face. The goal was my friend to show someone who is scared and trapped, both physically and mentally. Make the viewer sit on the edge of their seat. The negative space comes into play with the black ground and the framing, which I like to believe furthered the concept of someone being imprisoned.

    Through the course of my blog I hope you start to see this theme in my images of dark, mysterious, and edge that I like to have within my images.

Song of the day

‘Alien Blues’ by Vundabar

Welcome to my blog! For the final term of school we are to
create weekly blogs, so this is it.

   I wanted to talk about the struggles of being
a photography student, more specifically how we have to learn to adapt. In the
nearly 2 years of this course pretty much every assignment I have done I’ve had
to adapt because of covid restrictions, location, equipment and people. The most recent was during
my fine art assignment in which we were to create a conceptual/narrative. I
wanted to go bold and have this grand illustration. My concept was
metamorphosis and the internal transformation we go through as humans.

   I spent hours looking for visual inspiration
and I came across a  German photographer
called Carsten Witte who created a series called ‘Psyche’. While his concept
was about female beauty, I saw transformation and that’s when I realized I
wanted to work with butterflies.

Psyche #2  by Carsten Witte

   I had this wicked idea and I was excited to
shoot however, the day arrived and even though I took my time to look into the
technical side, things still went south. My equipment was acting up and it just
wasn’t going to happen. So I went home that night and realized I had to adapt
to something more simple but still illustrates my idea and pleases my
perfectionist mind. I spent the next day at work brainstorming with my co
worker and creating a new plan and I was ready to go.

    So the next day I created my makeshift
studio in my home using two chairs to stretch out a black mattress cover and my
mum as my lighting stand. While it wasn’t quite was I hoped for in my initial
vision, I’m thoroughly pleased with my ability to bounce back and adapt my
concept to something more simplified.

The Final Product

   If you are interested in more of Carsten Witte’s work, I highly suggest taking a look at the link down below!

Carsten Witte (myportfolio.com)

   And if you are interested in a new song, this is my song of the week

‘Shadow’  by Chromatics