Postcard Stand

My Postcard Stand!!!!

I LOVE IT!!

So far I have put on my own postcards and the collection of ones I have sent and received, plus others which I have collected. I have just purchased 500 off eBay and will be able to put these on once I get them in the post.

Printing My Own Postcards

As I have now purchased my own postcard stand off eBay, I have begun to print my own imagery onto postcards.

I have so far printed 25 images, with 10 copies of each. As there is 30 slots on each side, I am aiming to have 30 images. I will see how long it takes, and how much it costs and see if it is appropriate to do 60 images, however I feel that having 60 will dilute the quality of the imagery.




These are purchased postcards which I have addressed and stamped to encourage people to write on during the exhibition. I really want the postcard stand to be a place for people to interact and begin leaving their own memories of seaside holidays.

Enlarging number 2

I think it's really important for me to experiment with as many ways of printing and displaying as possible before the crit on the 17th May. Today I printed off one of the images using Illustrator to make a tiled image, 6 a4 pages by 6 a4 pages. I wanted to look at scale and ways of putting it up on the wall.

PSL Gallery Leeds

I went to the PSL gallery in Leeds as I have been told it had a good variety of ways to exhibit photography. Above are some images in frames. I have used frames previously, and I feel that it is the most obvious way of finishing off the quality of an image, however I am not entirely convinced that it is the best way of displaying the images I will be exhibiting.

Below are some images which have been put up using pins.

This was a really large image which was in two panels.

Close up of the pins. They looked like drawing pins painted white.

Some more posters pinned up. I really like the simplicity and the way it doesn't interfere with the images. I think having a white border is really important so it's still framed, but not in a literal sense with wood and glass.

Also in the gallery was this space, above, which gave visitors the opportunity to write down their memories of the world wars. This made me think about the postcards I have been sending off. I enjoyed reading the responses on this wall, so I wonder what it would be like to give this opportunity to people at our exhibition. I was thinking of buying a postcard stand, just like the ones at the seaside at the front of shops, and putting all the postcards I have recieved in it, along with blank ones, and some I will make from my own photography collection. This then invites people to write about a British Seaside holiday memory. I think it would act as a good reaction and reply to the images on the wall, and would be nice for others to read about other peoples lives.

Foamboard

I managed to do a deal with the BA Photography tutor. Exchange a couple of tutorials for a sound recording of Martin Parr from the q&a session in January.

The other day I had my second tutorial with him. In this I showed him my final 3 images, discussed why I felt that these would work better than others, and he agreed.

We then talked about how I would display the images in the exhibition and 3 main ways were discussed, so now I am going to experiement with all 3. These are framing, putting on foamboard/foamex (something I will need to get done by an external printer), and simply pinning to the wall (I will need to consider which type of pins etc.)

Before the crit on the 17th May I am going to try as much as these as possible, bearing in mind that I am unable to officially print my work until the 18th May. I am also going to attend galleries to research their ways of presenting images. PSL is my first stop this afternoon.

Self Enlarging

Due to the fact that I can't get into the printing dungeon for two weeks time, and there is the final crit within that time, I tried to enlarge this image myself.

I asked in the libary if it was possible on the photocopiers, and the assistant said it wasn't, so I tried it on photoshop. This worked; to an extent. The images dont exactly match up, but the scale of it has worked, albeit it's a tad too small for the frame. I wish to have the image completely matched up to the frame so there's no white space at all.

Final 3 Images Photoshoped

I took my final 3 images and placed them into photoshop to ensure anything that didn't look right was changed. I have then printed these images out onto a4 to see if everything's ok. I can improve these further.

Selecting and Editing Process

After going through all my imagery, I picked around 10-15 images from each shoot. I then narrowed this down further by choosing 1 out of 2 images.

I then took these images into photoshop individually and worked on them.

Then I printed these out and put them up on a wall. I arranged them into groups which I thought would work. I moved these around, and often changed images into different groups.

I was originally aiming for 4 or 6 images, however I found that this was not possible. I found 3 images were working best together. They are all strong individually, yet look really good together and all involved some written text to imply a message, however can be read differently by different members of the audience:



For me there were two obvious routes: 1- the fairground vibe, 2- the old dingy imagery, and I decided that for this project, the dingy, dismal side would work better as it communicated my feelings better about British society, and allowed it to be up for more readings and scrutiny.

Catalogue portrait photo shoot

Framing

Following the crit I decided to consider framing within my work.

This is something which came up in several discussions throughout the day.

Here I have used the same images in different frames and looked to see if using a border would improve the image or not. I think no border makes this image looks better as it doesn't distract the viewer.