Barrhead Boxing Night - Barrhead, Glasgow - April 2011

My uncle runs a boxing club in Barrhead, Glasgow for young boys to get them off the streets and discipline themselves. He is very dedicated to the Boxing Club and it has been running for a fair number of years now, he even takes the lads for eight mile runs at the weekends, not how I'd like to be spending my weekend, but it's good for them and good that they are learning discipline and not getting involved with the street crime that seems to be spreading vastly over the past few years. One night in April, he was running a boxing night, where boxers would meet from all over Scotland and fight, and some of these fighters were from his Barrhead boxing club. He asked me if I could take some photographs for the paper, which I later used for my final documentary photographs for my end of year assessment. These are the photographs I used;

Recession - Student Protest, Birmingham, December 2010

You probably thought from the title you were going to see some really shocking photographs from a really violent protest? Not here. These were the protests from the end of the year about the tuition fees rocketing to £9000 a year, which I chose to incorporate into my first project of the semester based around the recession. I   photographed many aspects of the recession - supermarkets - which businesses are failing and which are surviving (I have a particular series of photographs recording the amount of people who entered Poundland in the space of half an hour) but the most interesting photographs I ended up with was the photographs from the Student protest that took place in the centre of Birmingham last December. They were mild riots that the Police were monitoring, but it was still a really good atmosphere to be photographing in, as everyone was so passionate about what they were doing, and I enjoyed taking the route of showing how the recession was also affecting young people. 

I am not in support of the Riots that took place this summer in London and wherever else they spread too. It isn't right to smash up other peoples possessions, homes and lives in vain of your own boredom and arrogance. The protests I photographed were peaceful protests, and I would take no involvement or play any part in any violence cause by any protest or riot. 

First Uni Projects - Graphic Design

In Graphics for our first project, we had to create a poster for an event happening in Birmingham. I chose to advertise Amy MacDonald, a fellow Scot and one of my favourite artists. As you have seen by my older posts, I am very influenced by highlighting colour next to black and white and so I wanted to apply this style to my poster because I've found that previously it has produced my best work. This is my first 'draft' of the poster. This is a photography based piece, and because it had to be my own image I had to think of things that could relate to Amy MacDonald as an artist so that people could recognize her. Well, she's Scottish and she plays guitar - it's as simple as that. I bought a pair of converse style shoes and drew on a St. Andrews cross with a marker pen, and asked one of my flat mates if she would model them for me, I was lucky enough that day that she was blue tights so that was an added bonus. I borrowed my other flat mates guitar, and I placed it next to her feet and took the photograph from floor level. Once I was happy with my photograph, I used photoshop to enhance the image. First of all I desaturated the parts of the image I wanted desaturated, and then using the hue/saturation tool, I enhanced the blue colour. I drew out the 'Amy MacDonald' logo and scanned it in and placed the text very carefully, then added the rest of the information, but something still wasn't right. 

This is my final of the poster, which I created after the hand in date one day, just looking through my work. 

I didn't amend too much, but I knew the typography wasn't right on my first draft, and sometimes I find when working with typography, it's best just too keep it simple for the best results. I also added an image of Amy's latest album for further advertisement, to maybe earn her a few more fans and also to promote two things at once, letting people identify with her music more. I think my end result is a good piece of work. I know my strength is in Graphic Design that is photography based, which is why I decided when the time came to pick Photography as my specialist subject. I wanted to keep something sacred, and explore something new. 

First Uni Projects - Photography

In our first few weeks of university, we were set different projects for each specialist subject; Photography, Graphic Design and Illustration. In photography, we had to photograph our first impression of Birmingham. Since I didn't really know how I felt about Birmingham at first, my first impression of it was the size and how busy it was. So my instinct told me the best place to capture this was New Street Station. I thought that by photographing New Street, I'd be able to show lots of different people doing lots of different things, going lots of different places. I think the fact that one of the figures in my photograph is transcending into a blur shows how quickly life in a big city goes. I also desaturated the image because to me Birmingham is a bit of a blur, very fast moving and very black and white. Even now it's not my favourite place to be, but if it helps me get to where I want to be, I can stick it out.

Troon, Scotland

From a visit to Scotland to see my family, clouds are one of my favourite things to photograph.

Some more photographs from even more of my travels - Florida

I love the storms in Florida. These are two of my favourite photographs from Florida while we were driving through a storm. 

Hard Rock Cafe is my favourite place in the world. I have been to a few, and have a fair collection of t-shirts, drum sticks and other merchandise from Cafe's all over the world. Sometimes when my dad is away on long haul business trips, he'll ask the reps if there is a Hard Rock Cafe where they are and he'll help me add to my collection. I am a huge fan of rock music, both modern and classic and when I'm here ( I know it sounds corny) I really do feel like I belong. I often wish sometimes I could give everything up and move to Florida and work at HRC for the rest of my life.