Professional Development

Professional Development

Mentoring Scheme 2019

What we expect from you

1.    Identify a career or photographic route you wish to explore

2.    Make a shortlist of practitioners who you would like to approach to mentor you

3.    Edit this list and make contact with potential mentors

4.    Agree and attend meetings with your mentor(s)

5.    Keep detailed records of meetings, discussions, advice, comments as well as your thoughts in a Reflective Journal*.

6.    Review the final meeting and create an Action Plan to plot your further progress.

7.    Behave professionally at all times – be punctual, courteous, appreciative etc.

8.    Your mentor will not see your Reflective Journal so be honest.

What we expect from the mentor

1.    The role of the mentor will be to give you professional insight, support + guidance in the development of your practice.

2.    Mentor would agree to meet you one or two times – an initial meeting where you would show / discuss your work; a follow up or development session where you have acted on the mentor’s suggestions / guidance. If the mentor is agreeable pleas pursue this further – maybe arranging work experience, further visits, ongoing email / social media contact etc 

These are screen shots of the emails that have been sent to my mentor Andy ford.

   I first got in contact via email with a professional photographer Chris Johnson, he got straight back to me which was very good of him. 

I looked at his website and I thought it was great to see how he covers so many areas of photography in such a good way.   

     After explaining about the fact that I was focusing on taking shots at musical events during the night as it was happening Chris Johnson very kindly mentioned in his email "If you want a link to someone who might be more in the music photography world.....? I know Andy Ford http://andyfordphotography.co.uk as I was part of the team shooting his wedding last year. If you want and think that he would be more use than I would, as he's pretty much killing the much killing the Music Photography game right now, I can ask ahead and see if it's something he could help with."


I looked at his website and Chris was right after looking through the option of LIVE MUSIC the images showed shots that were taken on stage and amongst people watching bands.

These are examples of images on Andy Fords website, this image below shows how he has taken such a good position away from the stage whilst looking directly at it and catching the light display during the event. 

the next two images below are a really good example of how he would get right down in amongst the crowd as they were watching bands

These are one of his shots that were taken in black and white.

After getting in contact with Andy, he did mention that Chris had informed him that  I would be getting in contact. 

Chris did actuallly say that he was based in London so I thought that I would have to travel down to meet him, although emailing Andy he said that he had relocated to Bristol quite recently and was now based in St Werburghs, which was great as it made it a lot easier for me to meet him.

We arraged a time to meet and I actually went to his house in St Werburghs. He was a raelly nice person and I found it quite easy talking to him about my focus in this area of photography.

He first told me that he used to follow that Punk and Hardcore scene and there would be certain venues that he would visit quite often, in fact the image above was somewhere he told me where he had his spot where he would always get up in the corner and be right by a pillar in the ceiling to get the cloe up shots of the crowd during the gig. you are definitely able to see the energy in this shot!

When I first went to meet Andy I took the equipment i would normally use at an event The Canon 6D 24-105mm lens and the Speelite 430EX II and also example of my own work on my laptop.

I am really glad I took everything with me as I was able to get really good feedback and here what he thought of my work.

He did actually tell me that he would shoot fro the well know magazine NME and also the Kerrang a magazine following heavy metal, and punk rock bands.

We started to talk about what equipment I used and I was very keen to find out exactly what he uses to get the close up shots of people dancing when they were watch groups playing. He told me that he would use quite often use a prime lens but he also told me about a 17-40mm lens which would enable him to capture upclose pictures of people during a gig 

I did end up meeting with Andy three times and he was quite happy to meet up with me more than once. After telling him about the fact that I would be going to the Love Saves the Day Festival with a Press Pass I arranged to meet him a few days before I went, just to kind of get an insight of what it would be like.

He told me that after getting into the festival I would be able to have access to what was called a press tent, where I could store equipment safely and also nework and talk with other photographers. He told me about the press pit which is an area between the stages and the crowd.

He also told me about what other photographers and peolpe filming would be doing as well during the event, he said that they would be constantly taking shots and then come back and dump there SD cards, which meant they came back gave there cards to sombody who would post them almost staight of to whatever magazine they where shooting for and the photographer would goT straight back out taking shots. Obviously I didn't have to do this thankfully as it was my frist experience of a festival and I am studying a Professional FdA Photography cousre. 

I was so glad that Chris had given me the option of getting in contact with Andy as I really did appreciate his help and I'm actually planning to meet him again to show him the shots that I took at the festival.

Bristol 24/7 tking shot at an independant store in Bristol

This brief was to vivist an independently run shop in the Bristol area speak to the person or people that run the store and see if it would be possible to take shots in the shop and to also take a shot of the owner for an article that would be published in Bristol 24/7.

I decided towalk arounfd the area of Christmas Steps and Colston Street in the centre of Bristol. After walking up colston street there were actually quite a lot of independently run shops, They did look really interesting but after going into 3 or 4 some of the owners were not interseted at all even though I had explained that I was studying and that my pictures could be published in Bristol 24/7.

Eventually I went into the shop called Lowalnds which was half way up Colston steet and after talking with the owner Erica Dubuisson she was absolutely fine with me taking shots within her store.

Here is the information about the store that I sent over to Martin Booth from 24/7

Lowlands is an independently run store situated on Colston Street, Bristol

The owner Erica Dubuisson has in stock an interesting collection of old and new lighting, furniture and small household items.

Erica Dubuisson 

Tel: 077 900 713 16

Instagram: lowlandsbristol

72 Colston Street 

Bristol

erica@lowlandsbristol.com

These are some of the shots that I took at the Lowlands store, some the were shot outside and some that were taken inside. I did actually manage to take a shot of Erica even though she did say she didn't like having her photo taken she was absolutely fine about it.

The images below were taken inside, even thought it was quite small it did make quite an interesting shot as there was really good different tones of light. 

These were the images that I did send over to Martin Booth in the end.

This was a portrait shot of Erica inside the shop.

I was really pleased with how this turned out and I'm really glad to have found such a great shop.