exhibitions visited

On a recent visit to London i decided to visit the National Portrait Gallery(www.npg.org.uk )as I knew the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2012 was on view and I was hoping for some inspiration. I was therefore quite disappointed to find that a lot of the images although obviously technically very good left me feeling cold and uninspired.  One of the ones that did touch me was called 'becoming the story' a self portrait by GILES DUDLEY, he was severely injured in Afghanistan whilst on assignment and he wanted to take a self portrait showing the harsh realities of his injury's without portraying himself as a victim. Looking at the photograph made me realise that if you want something badly enough (and he wants to carry on with photography) you will achieve it.

I also look at the photographs on display by Mario Testino, there was a small selection of his work including several of the royal family I particularly like the black and white photograph of the three princes taken in the outdoors and used as their official Christmas card in 2004.

Overall I was disappointed with the whole visit I like the work of David Bailey and Cecil Beaton and whilst there was a few Cecil Beaton photographs there including the last sitting he did with the queen in 1968 the only photograph of Bailey was taken by someone else whose name I did not note unfortunately.

I had visited an exhibition by Brian Aris in Whitstable not far from where I live and I found his work to be more inspiring, I came out of that exhibition awe struck by some of his work more information on this visit is in my other blog phillipaday.blogspot.com.

I am a member of my local photographic society www.sittingbourneps.co.uk and over the course of the season we have many guest speakers some of whom are excellent some not so, but we have been fortunate to have a talk by Pat Jones (MPAGA, APAGB, EFIAP, FRPS) who I have to say was awe inspiring. Pat's talk this time was on Scotland and the Isle of Harris she does a lot of early morning and early evening photography often getting up when it is still dark and carefully finding her way to places ready for the light to appear, at times it almost seems like she can order the light especially for herself. following on from this I went to and exhibition by Kent Photographic Society of which my club is a member, again there was some truely beautiful work on display however I also found some photographs that I found my self questioning why they had been included, although they were technically very good there was so much processing on some of them that they no longer looked like photographs, which I personally am not that keen on. Overall it was an excellent exhibition and one I have not seen before but having seen it I will know for next year what the standard of work needs to be, I enjoyed this free show more than the National #portrait Gallery.

As a member of my local photographic society it is always good to check out the work of other local clubs, I had an opportunity to do that recently when Faversham Camera Club held their open week.
Leaving aside the friendly rivalry between the clubs it was good to have a further look at some of their work, having seen some a few weeks before in an inter club competition.

Overall there was a mixture of styles and abilities, which I would expect to see within a club and it was good to see some less experienced work on display. When I entered the room I was handed a slip of paper and asked to write the name of the photograph and the photographers name on it of my favourite piece.  This was actually harder than I expected it to be some of the photographs were very good you could see that there was a lot of technical ability there but they didn't inspire me to want to try and recreate anything like it. Others were quite simple pieces but had been seen and captured well by the photographer.  Finally after reducing my list of favourites from four to one I was able to make my decision, and I chose some lion cubs, it was a fairly simple photograph in that there was just a couple of lion cubs and a bit of ground but the expressions on their faces won me over.

I duly handed in my slip of paper and admitted to them that I was a member of Sittingbourne Club, but I was quite impressed with their work.