Luke Waller

Luke Waller is an English illustrator, working mainly across Europe for both and large clients in the editorial advertising and publishing sectors. 

Over the past five years he has worked his way up to being a profesional illustrator working from his base in Winchester, Hampshire. Luke works regularly for clients such as The Financial Times and High Life Magazine (British Airways). As a side product Luke is currently working on illustrating his own book based on true stories from his father and uncle's time in the police force. 

When Luke came in as a guest speaker he explained to us that there are 3 areas in illustration. 

1. Editorial - This kind of work usually has a shorter deadline. This can be from 24 hours to 1 week. Editorial Illustration can be used for adding a younger audience to an article, drawing something that can be difficult to photograph, humour, to add concept to work ect. For this kind of work you can expect to be paid around £250-£400. 
2. Publishing- With Publishing you usually have a longer deadline of around a few months compared to a few weeks. This kind of work is used for book covers, posters ect. For this kind of work you can expect to be paid anywhere between £500-£1000. 
3. Advertising - With advertising the deadline can vary depending on the brief of the work. Advertising Illustration can be seen everywhere, on adverts, billboards ect. This is where the most money is made. When working full time in advertising you can be expecting to earn anything from £50,000+ a year. 

He explained to us that with illustrations you have to create a 'rough' of the final image you are planning to create to send to the employer. Unless you have a really short deadline your rough should take about two hours to create, and is usually in black and white. 

This is an example of a rough illustration from Luke's work.  This was a piece that he did for the Financial Times. 

He explained that when he creates his roughs he divides the picture into 4/5 sections and works on them smaller. He does this because he crates his work using monoprints and this can be messy. 

After the rough has been approved Luke can then go on to create the image, he also explained that sometimes you may be asked to make tweaks and edits to the work. 

Luke explained to us that he has 2 main drawing techniques.

• Pencil Drawing. (Cross hatch style). - He uses this style mainly for portraits.
• Mono Printing. 

These are some examples of Luke's portrait work.

From looking at these few images you can see that he has quite an unique style. 

Sometimes he draws these straight on to PhotoShop using the brush tool, and when not drawing portraits he regularly includes him self and friends in his work.  

William Eggleston

William Eggleston was born July 27th 1939 Memphis Tennessee. In 1957 at the age of 18 he acquired his first camera, a Cannon rangefinder. Since then he has taken 1000s of pictures in his hometown. Although he has lived there his whole life, he has never ran out of things to photograph. Eggleston's earlier work was inspired by Swiss photographer Robert Frank and also by a French photographer Henri Cartier- Bresson's book, The Decisive Moment. When he read this book he said that he saw 'art' he wanted to create something similar. All of Eggleston's earlier work was in back and white, but in 1965 he began to experiment with colour transparency film. by 1967 he is using colour negative film.
When he first started photographing in colour it took a long time for people to adjust and understand his work. This is because back in the 60s serious art photographers would only photograph in black and white. Eggleston explained his style of work as 'life today' and he had been photographing like this from the start. He only photographed what appeared to be non interesting or ugly, and had a self made rule that he would take one picture of each object. He would never photograph something more than once as this kept things simple. He enjoyed photographing nothingness so much that once he was asked to photograph someones wedding, and instead he went around taking pictures of ashtrays instead.
Here are some pictures of his most famous work...

The Red Ceiling is the title of a photograph by William Eggleston. It is also known as Greenwood, Mississippi, 1973 after the location and year it was taken.

A dye transfer print measuring 13 7⁄8 7⁄8 7⁄8 by 21 11⁄16 11⁄16 11⁄16 inches (35.2 by 55.1 cm), Eggleston considers it among his most challenging and powerful works. A copy of the photograph is held by the J. Paul Getty Museum, but is currently not on view at the Getty Centre. Another copy is held by the Museum of Modern Art.
It has been described as Eggleston's "most famous photograph,"

William Eggleston, Untitled, 1965-68 and 1972-74, from Los Alamos, 2003, Dye transfer print, 17-¾ x 12, Private collection, © Eggleston Artistic Trust.

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As a photographic response to what I have learnt about Eggleston and his work I have decided to copy his style to try and get similar results. This means I will go around the home town of where I live taking pictures, each of these pictures will be taken in black and white, and also that I will only photograph something once.
Here are my pictures...

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Image inspired by 'The Red Celling' although in black and white. 

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Annie Leibovitz

Leibovitz started out as a photo journalist and she mentions in her film that her subject is her life. Leibovitz goes on to saysWhat is a photographers life? and she follows u this question with her own answer and that being 'A life working though a lens' 

Leibovitz started photography at her house when she was young, all of her photographs she put up on walls so she could see all of them. They were broken up into sections. One section being her personal wall of photographs and then the other being what she had done for magazines later on in her life. 

Leibovitz mainly captures documentary photography, meaning daily life. In her first years of being a photographer she took photos of her family and close friends. She had quite a big family with brother and sister older and younger than her. She moved from place to place with her family in the car so when Leibovitz was growing up that was like a stable unit for her to grow in. Going a little further into the film she goes on to say the car was really a ready made picture frame. That's how she seen the world. Leibovitz felt like the camera was another member of the family so it didn't matter what photos she took, it just fit in with everything.

Her photography is mainly viewed in and around the world in magazines, book and also online. when she was touring with the Rolling Stones She was never told what to do so she had free will to do whatever she wanted to do within reason. This gave her some really good space to do what she wanted to do and also what she wanted to capture. 

One of the rolling Stone band members said that she was great adapting to situations, Leibovitz always blended in and was never in the way or out of place. The movement that she captured in gigs and also in the hotels and on the road were fantastic. she met Bea whiler, She knew most famous photographers in New York. This was a big step for Leibovitz. 

With Leibovitz working for the Rolling Stones she started taking drugs. But not long after she left she went and got professional help and soon after she was back on track again. 

Leibovitz went on to talk about magazine cover and she said 'The front cover is not a photograph. It's to sell it. my real photographs are in the actual magazine' When getting into magazine shooting she then started to venture out and she started working for Vogue, this was a big step for her as she was trying something different. All of the shoots she did with Vogue got a budget attached to it but Leibovitz didn't bother about that and she got whatever she wanted because the people at Vogue knew that she would get the results that they wanted so the budget was just a rough guide line that was never stuck too at all. 

All of Leibovitz work is just spot on! i really like how she uses contrast in her images to make a bold looking image. what Leibovitz had was what she worked with to start with and that is something that i am currently doing. Nothing fancy but just stuff that works and gets the result that you intend to get. 

Ewen Spencer

Ewen studied under the tutorage of British Photographers Paul Reas and Mark Power at the School of Art and Design at the University of Brighton. He graduated In 1997 and quickly became known for his ground breaking editorial during the late 90’s for The Face & Sleazenation magazine. He immediately spoke to an audienceInterested in subcultures, multiculturalism, music, graphic art, photography, fashion and primarily youth culture.

In 2001 Ewen embarked upon a project simply called Teenagers documenting British adolescents as they come to terms with socialising, dating and sex. His signature flash style became synonymous with a close aspect to his subjects. What separates him from other social-documentarians is the feeling you get from The pictures that he knows and likes his subjects, that they trust him enough To allow him entry and that he has an understanding of what’s going on without being embedded in the scenes him.

The Teenagers project was shown at the Exposure photo festival in Hereford, UK in 2001, as part of ‘Jam London –Tokyo’ showing at both the Barbican in London and The Tokyo Opera House Gallery and was also exhibited at the Rencontre d’Arles in 2004, curated by Martin Parr, where it was shortlisted for a project assistance award. Not surprisingly, in 2002 Martin Parr tipped Ewen as the most promising newcomer

Of that year. Commercial clients starting calling and he began working with bands Producing cover art and behind the scenes tour material for The Streets & The White Stripes. There’s many reasons why Ewen continues to be a sought after Photographer for clients. He’s quick, precise, spontaneous, and collaborative, with

a great eye for what’s current, on trend and in line with brand objectives. Over the last 2 years he’s produced work for Puma, Sony, Nike, Adidas, Box fresh, T mobile, Vodafone and Lastminute.com.

Most of Ewens work is about the sub cultures. You can see in his work he puts his all into it and pushes for the best all of the time. His images are very tight and close. What I mean here is that his work really focuses on the foreground and never really the background of an image. Also a thing to note he has a style that you can clearly see throughout his work in general. His style is reportage and capturing the moment just like Martin Parr did. Going back to his style you can see that he has quite a harsh look to them creating a bold look and feel. With most of his images he uses a of the camera flash creating bold and in your face shadows.

Ewen mentioned that besides the northern soul scene of which he knew a lot about and experienced the other sub culture groups he did not know much about so for example the grime scene that he photographed not only required photographing and documenting, first he had to be accepted and had to build up links within that scene and culture. This is one of the many reasons he has been able to get such stunning and unique photographs. Clothing companies how produce street style clothing such as boxfresh have used Ewens photographs and style in their advertising campaigns, In my view making them more desirable and more popular within what he shoots.

Well Made Studio

We are an adaptable and dependable design studio working for commercial lifestyle, arts and publishing brands. We deliver brand strategy with a focus on identity and content. We put user experience at the centre of beautiful digital design. We’ve spent 10 years helping our clients understand how good design impacts upon them and their industry.

We like to work with people who understand how valuable good design and collaboration can be to launch a business, sell a product or build an audience. We like to build loyal relationships with hands-on, engaged clients who are as passionate about their business as we are about ours.

what she came to talk to us about?

The whole subject was about internships and for us students to not do them. The speaker said that it would be better for us not to go on an internship just get to the experience, because companies are getting free work and that is not right. She advised us, if a company asks you to do anything then get a contract with them, because if a company asks you to do anything and you are working for them but not in a contract you can get caught out with doing work that you really should be getting paid for. 

The change in name of the company

The company used to be called Mercy, then changing the make to 'Well Made'. They changed it because they wanted the name to reflect the companies ideology and Mercy was not covering what they were doing or were they were going.

Another reason why the company decided to change its name was because it was a more clear definition and more intuative to find via a search engine

Delivery of her message.

Gemma when delivering what she had to say was quite forceful throughout the lecture, she wanted us to adopt a negative mindset towards internships, however, many people have said some internships are paid and are paid at a fair rate. When researching about internships there are a lot of unpaid positions but you have to think what you want to get out of it. Overall i enjoyed the lecture as it was informative and she backed up everything she had said. 

David Bailey

In his early days people asked why his name was just posted as Bailey, This is because on all of his images they just printed Bailey and never his fully name. He wanted to change his name to Bailey Bailey just to be unusual and to stand out. 

When he use to shoot someone he use to photograph them as they entered the door, if they were in a mad mood he used to encourage that to get the best form the image. He just wants to capture their personality and images of the moment. Bailey does have a style but in the documentary he mentions that he don’t want a style, he just wants to concentrate on being minimal and that’s it. which in away is a style in its self.  Bailey is dyslexic and people told him that he was dumb and wouldn’t get anywhere but most people that are dyslexic are mainly visual learners. Bailey preferred using a white background and this really worked for most of his images, it created a blank canvas in away so sole focus was on the model, it also simplified the image for the viewer and re enforced the minimalist aspect to the image, but he also like to shoot on location, providing versatility in his work.

Whilst Bailey worked for vogue it was mainly about capturing and emphasising sexuality which sells products and a style, which lead him to explore and develop a style that fitted in with the Vogue concept, however, sometimes Vogue said he couldn’t do something which he had to stick by. As you can see the image is very minimalistic shoot against a white background, which enhances the features of the model and gives a greater depth to the colour that the model is wearing, the minimal background also enhance shapes, volume and form. the text also complements the image making it look like the text is placed in the background, pushing the model in to the foreground. 

In contrast to the above image this was taken on location in 1961 east end of London. Unlike his standard fashion shots agains a white background this is a fashion/ documentary image. The sole focus is not on the model in this clinical environment which in my opinion is less alienating for the viewer or a potential customer because it puts the model in a everyday situation which makes the idea accessible to the majority.

My favourite image of the two is the black and white one because it has more of a visual narrative where the Vogue cover is quite stark and clinical and also feels like it is for a suited to specific groups of people, e.g. The wealthy. Both images demonstrate formal elements for example rule of thirds, colour and monochrome tonal range, texture, however one has studio lights creating a sharp, saturated and stark image where as the monochrome image uses natural day light allowing the image to create a wide tonal range

Gemma Marmalade is a contemporary British artist who specialises in video, photography and performance.  She has exhibited widely in the UK and overseas, including Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, The Photographers' Gallery, London, The Apulia Film Commission, Bari and State Museum of Gulag, Moscow. Her practice draws on themes of history, nature, and sexual politics. She is also an academic, teaching principally at the University of Bedfordshire, with an ongoing research practice and regularly participates in international symposium a and conferences on contemporary art debate.

One of Gemma's projects, she based her ideas on a fictional event created by herself.

Traditionally, women from the island of Linosa, Italy, have carried out a symbolic annual ritual. In order to establish a hierarchy amongst dominant family clans, the two presiding matriarchs meet on the Feast of Saint Marina (patron of the Sea, fertility and suffering), to flagellate each other with fish until a victor is decided. 'Fish Wives' --parlance for shrewish and abusive women--takes its name from the phrase attributed to this tradition. The winner collects the discarded, damaged fish and returns home to prepare a special dish with them. Later, it is presented to the adversary who must sit and eat it as an act of contrition. This ritual has been coined as 'andare a Cannosa' where the expression 'to eat humble pie' originates.

Fish Wives (Sweet Science) is a live reenactment of this duel. It explores the physicality of mutual female aggression incorporating the visceral elements of women in battle using fish as weapons. Culinary gestures are incorporated throughout creating additional sensory stimulations. The audience takes on the role of the sporting spectator, challenging the dynamics of  viewing traditionally masculine pastimes.

These are just a few images that were taken whilst she was acting out what she had clearly made up but some people totally thought it was true.

As you can see Gemma had quite a crowd when acting out what she had made up. What i fount interesting about the whole project was that the outcome the images that you see above was generated from a fictional story which intern lead to a street preference and documentation of the performance in the form of  film and photography. Many people believed her story to be factual or were sceptical but did not really challenge her. The fictional information that she generated about the symbolic annual ritual was added to the 'wiki' page regarding limosa. 

During the lecture she mention various projects that she had been working on over the year. I didn't really know what was going on when she put the video on in the lecture. This is what she wrote about the project on the website. 

Please find attached below the link to the related birds video.

http://www.gemmamarmalade.com/strange-birds-video/4576795298

The sequence portrayed in this video with the chosen collection of images are very artistic, however because it was so random and unrelated it was hard for me to to not view it as a very detached piece of work and stuggled to find a focal point. I was not convinced by the information, however, I feel Gemma was under the false impression that she had comfortably convinced people that the information was factual, although she did tell us later that the information was not factual and we all then started to wonder if Gemma was just a sensationalist and just out there to piss everyone off. However I did appreciate her passion for her work, it felt like Gemma wanted people to believe in her stories/work so much that she believed it her self.