Foundation Degree in Professional Photography.

A Degree in Professional Photography

Website: Foundation Degree Website for Students and Course Info

Back at the beginning of 2013 when I started doing photography in a more productive way and began to show my work on Google+, I was surprised by the support of people that I didn't know, in telling me that they like what I did.

It got me thinking one day on the way home from taking some photos locally, where am I going to take this photography? I guess that's when I started to look at photography in a different light and wanted to try and make what I had already learnt myself better and with more professionalism that might lead to a day where I could promote my work in an exhibition or something along those lines.

Google+ has been amazing for me, as I've made some good friends that I've met and others that I communicate over the net via messages on work and the Google Hangouts with video conferences that helps put a voice to a face. But I felt that I wanted to learn more and explore photography more in depth and the only way to do that was some kind of course.

The City of Bristol College runs a foundation degree course in partnership with Plymouth University, so in part we are students of Plymouth but doing the course via the City of Bristol College.

When I was researching for a course that would suit me and came across this one, I thought great, this is just like what I'm looking for. When I applied I had to go for an interview and was told to bring a portfolio. Portfolio! just the word sent me into overdrive as I didn't have such a thing, all I had was the images that had been seen only on Google+. So with a quick email I asked if I could bring my iPad down and show some of my work off on that, luckily they were OK with that.

Being that this was a college, I knew that I would be one of the older students that they'd  have around and not sure that about having screaming girls all over the place, boys being boys trying to show who was the cool guy to hang around with, but I know that would not be bothering me and I was going to be there for a purpose.

I decided to apply for the part-time course as it gave some leeway, and when I had my interview, it was mentioned that you have a bit more time to take things in. The senior tutor Mr C is a great guy and so is Mrs B who is the other tutor on the course. I had my interview with Mr C and as he looked through some of my stuff, the comment that came back was 'you've got some good stuff here'. Mr C has been around in photography for sometime and was a warm welcome in his thoughts on initial work that I had done with no help what so ever, so I was offered a place and then it dawned on me I'm a student again! 

I think we are all students, students of life as we learn new things each day and help to pass those things that we've learnt onto others.

The course is a really good one with equipment being available to borrow and a reasonable studio to work from. I say reasonable because Plymouth has it all and makes ours look slightly more like a personal studio, I personally think that since the course is a Plymouth course and we and the tutors have to follow their guidelines, that some investment from them would go a long way to making life a little easier.

If your looking to do a photography course, you have to be aware that means that you need to use and learn how to use such software's as Lightroom and Photoshop as you can't get away from that side of thing when producing high quality images that you hope that will go into an exhibition or for sale. In 2013 Adobe announce that its new CC software was going to be on a monthly licence, this is OK if your going to use this software day in, day out, but for the hobbyist is a real expense. So students have to get the software which at the beginning was done at a reduce rate, how long that will last is to be seen. Students also need to have a laptop or if possible a MacBook so that they can work on the same line as the college.

The course does have a lack of Mac's to teach students in a classroom environment, even thought that there are Mac rooms around, the course seems to be left behind on this side of things as the courses like media get first bite at the cherry. At the moment our course is dependent on students bringing in their laptops or MacBooks to go throughout the lectures. This is not ideal as some have not got these things or have only a PC. As a student rep, I've made a point about this and ways that things could be done until the course can get what it needs to teach students that valuable information. I don't see why Plymouth University can't put some investment towards the course so that there were at least 10 MacBooks for use on the course. Cut back in education and other factors are all part of this, and when the tutors are out under pressure to meet targets etc, its hard work if you don't have the tools tone able to meet those targets, which is unfair in my view as these tutors put a lot of effort and work into teaching their students so that they can go on to be people that the course can say this is what this person has achieved by doing this particular course.

To Show how much the tutors believe in their students and the course, they started up their own website. The website is to show students works and to give information on the course itself and news on what things are going on. The official Gov. website gives very little in trying to sell the course with no images and just text, some other courses does have visual aids to help promote their course, it's a shame that all courses aren't given the same web space.
But the FDA website has a lot to offer and is kept up to date and has its own blog as shows some great work that's been done by pass and present students. I totally recommend that you have a look and if you're a photographer that might have some hands on work for a student, then to contact the website and they will pass on the info to the students.

Exhibition of Students Work
In May this year (2014) an exhibition of students work will be on show and a great chance to come along and meet the students and ask them questions about their work and answer questions about the course itself if its something that you're thinking about doing.

I'm having a ball in the course and have a good group of co-students that I get on with and even that they are all old enough to be my own children they don't see or treat them that way, and they've become very except able of myself and my situation so we can have a good laugh now and then. Mr C and Mrs B are great tutors and do a great job and put a lot of time into what they do and are very passionate about their work and the course. Having that makes the course more interesting and worthwhile.

So check out the web site, the link is above but you can click on it from here.

Foundation Degree Website for Students and Course Info

Watery Sunday :(

The UK has been hit by the worse rainfall for decades and its not good to go out with a camera unless your happy being in the wet, which I don't!

So I've spent most of the day in Lightroom making up some more galleries for the website. I have to say that I think Lightroom is a great piece of software, I know some prefer Adobe Bridge but I don't think it can do things with ease like Lightroom does in makeing it easy to make galleries.

I use the Collections Set a lot and you don't have to have multiple images of the same to do different things as it all ties in with each other. The presets for your images are quite good but again you can taylor that as well, if you've got images taken on the same day then you can set the contrast etc directly for all those images and then just tweak them, but its a lot easier than going through individual ones.

I guess that I'm lucky on that I know CSS code and how to read it as the pages that it makes does need some twerking if you want your website to run smoothing between pages made by Lightroom and your web pages that you've designed.

I know that for most people when they visit a website that they don't like adverts coming up, slow loading and having to go round all the houses to get to one thing. So with that said I'm hoping that viewers will find my site easy to navigate and if anyone has some ideas, I'm always open to suggestions.

I've loaded up five galleries and some of the images people will have seen before or different versions of them, but in between are ones that I've not shown before. Nearly all of them are taken in and around Bristol, the city has so much to offer and to capture. One of the galleries is of the St Nicholas Market, which is a great place to go round, and if you spend some time there you can capture the essence of the market and what it represents.

There are two parts to the market with the indoor one that use to be Corn Exchange and then the what use to be the courtyard that has little sort of shacks that are no bigger than a medium garden shed (the image above gives you an idea). There are businesses that have been there for decades while others have moved in and help transform part of it into a kind of open food hall, with food from nearly all four continents to choose from. You can imagine that the smell of different dishes of food being cooked near to each other fills the air which helps build an appetite for your lunch.

Last year saw the closing of city centre roads on a Sunday and open to the public to basically do anything from sitting around on sofas or getting involved in street games. It was an idea that was put forward by Bristol's new mayor who does at first come across as a bit of an oddball with his thing for wearing red trousers every day, I guess we would all like to have  a signature of somekind that makes us stand out, mine is my white and orange wheelchair with its spiral like spoke guards. But what he did brought people into Bristol's city centre and just have fun, I'm guessing that it will be done again this year and maybe with some cool extras as the word has got around on how well it was last year.

Well a new week is about to begin and time for me to get stuck in to the second semester, one part is about digital imaging which involves the idea of altered reality / surreality / hyperreality, talk about pushing the boundaries of imagination! The second one is all about legislation, ethics on intrusion and business practices, see its not all about taking photos but getting an understanding of everything to do with photography in the professional view and workplace.

Thanks for reading, AndyD 

Welcome to my blog

Welcome to my blog
I've had other blogs but I figured that since I'm coming to the stage where I need to have a website and to be able to tell people what I'm doing and events that I might be involved in, this would be the best way to get information out but link to my main website.

Getting Myself Out There
I've been on Facebook and Google+ and a few others, but what I like about Google+ is that I can tie everything in at one place. Having a Behance account, I didn't realise was part of Adobe till I starting to link things up. I use Lightroom to catalogue my images and do some of the work on them before publishing them onto the web, being able to automatically upload to Behance is very useful and saves a lot of time.

I've just about finished building my website for people to view my work in a more professional way, this is so that they or you can see what my work is like and if theres something that takes your interest, then we can talk about that.
Anyone that sees my work will know that I don't have a set area that I work in, I guess it's about keeping my options open and having the freedom to look at everything in photography.

As I've mentioned in my bio, I'm currently doing a foundation degree in professional photography that I started back in September last year, and I'm so glad that I decided to make that move as it's giving me the chance to learn new and old skills. In the first semester I did feel a bit of a fish out of water with being the oldest person in my group and most of them being the age that they could be my own children, but there a great bunch and I get on well with them all. I have two tutors and they are great in that they want everyone to not just learn but enjoy and to explore photography in a wider way by learning about photographers that have made a name for them selves and to get us as photographers to push ourselves to try different things and to be open minded to all that photography has to offer.
I'm just about to start my second semester, but the first one was really interesting as I got to work in 35 mm black and white film. Its open my eyes to the world of film and I was surprised that film is still very much used in different industries of photography today. I learnt the processing of the film and then the work of printing images that is a skill to learn how different grading and exposure to light will give an image. A lot of the time is spent doing test strips and calculating the amount of time that's needed to get the brightness and contrast for the final print.
Once the assignments were completed, it did feel a bit nerve racking in wondering if you had got everything that was on the checklist and how the work would be seen by the assessors. Since the other students had be taught in a very different style to how I was taught at school, and their presentation of their assignments where done with a more art feel to them, where mine seemed a bit clinical as I presented it all in a A4 binder and pocket sleeves. I'm glad to say that I passed both assignments and was extremely pleased with the final scores that I accomplished, and that the rest of my group also passed.

So we are in a new year and as I think back to this time last year, I had just made the transition into photography by investing in a good camera (well I think it's a good camera) and number of lenses, I buried my head into my iPad to watch YouTube videos on how to use the camera in a non scene mode and just got out there and snapped away at anything and everything. Today I have the confidence in knowing my camera and have done a fare bit of work in the studio, now I'm just looking forward to the year ahead and the ever growing assignments.
I do know that in May sometime that I will have work that will be part of an exhibition and I hope that friends and fellow photographers may want to come along and see what I've been up to, but I will give more details on that when it gets closer.

Photography by Andy Dubreuil - this is my new website and I must stress that its still in the making stage as I only have one gallery loaded and of course this is the first post, but it's a beginning and we all have to start somewhere, so I hope that you might follow me and visit every now and then to see what I'm up to.

Thanks for reading, AndyD