Ian Macdonald
On Friday 31st of October we were lucky enough to have ian macdonald speaking as a guest lecturer. Ian macdonald is a successful and well known North East photographer. We were shown a presentation of his work from early on in his career to now. Unfortunatley not all of this work is on his website however i have since been on his website and picked out a few images which i find really interesting and inspiring to my own work.
In Ian Macdonalds lecture he told us about how he started off in art college actually doing drawing. He showed us some of his sketches and drawings which were mainly of buildings. His drawings blew me away he showed a great talent for art and i was surprised to see this as i had thought he had only ever done photography. Ian has been commissioned to create pieces of art and sold works of art such as paintings and collages.
Ian explained how his understanding of art and drawing played a big role in his photography, as he understood more about composition and depth of field. He also explained how he sees art as one big concept, you don't have to just be a photographer or just be a painter. This is something which inspired me and stuck with me throughout and after the lecture, as art is something I've done since being a child, something I've always had a passion for and something i started to create long before i found my interest in photography. I always seem to tell myself I'm a photographer, and don't allow myself to create any other forms of art, despite having such an interest in them. After Ians talk i realised that i should still carry on with my art as well as focusing on capturing images. His talk inspired me so much and really did make me think more deeply than just capturing photographs.
Group Tutorial; Ian Macdonald
After Ian Macdonalds lecture on friday i was lucky enough to join with a small group of ccad students from across different subjects such as photography, fine art and illustration, to have a tutorial with Ian in which we were able to show him our work and receive critique and feedback. What i found most interesting about the whole tutorial was actually being able to see the work of other students from other subject and listen to them explain how and why they had created these pieces, as its not very often we get chance to view the work of other students that are not in our subject.
This linked well with what Ian had been speaking about in his lecture, when he was explaining how he created pieces of art like collage and drawings as well as photography. As explained in my previous post, i have a great interest in art, such as drawing and painting, but never thought to carry it on since starting photography, however after Ian's lecture and this tutorial i became to realise that all art forms interlink. A lot of the illustration and fine art students either used photography in their work or copied from photographs to create their work. understanding painting, drawing and other art forms helps build knowledge when capturing an image.
For the tutorial with Ian i took in my first 3 rolls of coloured film i had ever shot. I had only picked them up from being developed that day so had barely had the chance to look through them and narrow them down myself. Ian layed my images out on the table for him and the other students to see, he then began to sort the images into landscape and portrait. From there he began to eliminate the less successful images, narrowing it down. Ian basically gave myself and the group and 5 minute tutorial in how to edit images into a selection. I was amazed at the way he did this.
I explained how the images i had captured had been taken in hartlepool and the nearby village of Blackhall Colliery. I had no real concept behind my images, they were just what i had gone out and shot, i literally just took images of anything that caught my eye. Ian began to create a narrative behind my images. He chose an image of an old lady shopping, then began to create a story around her by choosing images of shops and places you may image this lady to go. This was something i found so incredibly interesting as it was something i would never have thought to have done.
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