Border Honey – Beekeeping Company

On the 8th May I was able to have the experience to go and take photos with a company, that specialises in beekeeping and making honey so I was able to get really close to the hives where the bees were and was able to take photos and a few film shots of the bees moving in and around the comb.

I felt it was a really good experience because of how close I was able to get to the bees without them stinging me, I also found out a very interesting fact about bees that the male bees don’t sting they are only there to impregnate the queen so she can reproduce and the worker bees which are the females are there to feed the queen.

Research into Beekeeping

I am doing some research before I go to an opportunity that I have been given to work with a company that makes honey, I felt as though i should do some research into it because I will then know what I want to film, take photos of etc, So I thought that if i did research i will be able to get the best photos or get some really good shots filming if i did some prior research.

Beekeeping (or apiculture) is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in man-made hives, by humans. A beekeeper (or apiarist) keeps bees in order to collect their honey and other products that the hive produces (including beeswax, propolis, flower pollen, bee pollen, and royal jelly), to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary or “bee yard.” (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beekeeping)

Thinking about what photos i’m going to get i’m going to ask how close i would be able to get to  the colony of bees on the honey as I think that it would make a really nice photo and I also want to film close to the honeycomb as well with the bees flying off as in editing i can slow it right down to make it look really effective.

So what I also want to get out of this opportunity is experience and more learning and it’s also a good way for me to practice with some editing and stuff like that because i’m still only getting to grips with programs such as premiere at the moment so it really shows and helps with a lot of things just practice more than anything else really.

Creative Futures: Brooke Shaden

Brooke Shaden produces a large amount of full body portrait photography with women,  she feels that women are powerful, and, throughout all of her photos she is obviously trying to get a message across that she believes that women are equal to men, and she is right, as they are, even though in the world we live in and the economy it makes that difficult to believe because of the pay differences and the job differences etc.

She also wants people to be able to master their craft and then realise the impact that they can have if they can get their name out there,  her quotes are short but very thought-provoking, the quotes focus the mind very quickly with maximum impact which is what I believe she was trying to deliver when creating the images.

 

Cinema Trip: Shape Of Water

We went to the cinema a few weeks ago as a group to watch the shape of water, a film by Guillermo Del Toro, who has directed films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Pacific Rim series and the Hobbit series, so he is a well known and respected director.

This film I wasn’t particularly keen on as it wasn’ my sort of film and I didn’t really understand what was going on throughout the film really, so I didn’t enjoy it because I didn’t understand the message he was trying to put across for the film.

It was a love story of a mute woman and an amphibian man, which didn’t really make a lot of sense, but the cinematography and the lighting throughout the film was amazing, I can’t fault the filming as the whole film looked amazing I just didn’t understand the whole meaning and story of the whole film.

I didn’t watch the trailer at first because I wasn’t very interested in the film when I heard it was first announced because it was a romance film and I rarely ever watch films in that genre.

Some Reviews of the film:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/feb/18/the-shape-of-water-review-guillermo-del-toro-sally-hawkins

This link is a whole review of the film where this person has voiced his opinion on the film, it will most probably be a lot different to mine as he probably enjoyed the film and understood what Guillermo Del Toro wanted to get across compared to me I didn’t understand the whole message of the film at all.

London Trip

A few of us went on a trip to London, where we went to take some photos of a few different places, such as Tower Bridge, London Bridge, The Shard, Leake Street Tunnel and we went to these different places just as we walked around and we knew some of the places, but we found out about Leake Street Tunnel online whilst looking for graffiti locations around London.

We also went to a gallery called the national photographer’s gallery whilst we were in London, I was only really interested in the top floor, where there was a silent film of a coloured woman mourning her husbands death as he was shot in cold blood by a police officer just because of the colour of his skin.

Studio Mess Around

These are some of the photos that I took in the studio when I was messing around with my friend Adam, I haven’t edited all of the photos but I edited a few of them. We used a few different techniques with some speed lights to see what we could come out with, as we took some advice after we had been to the photography show in Birmingham, as we watched a presentation at the Sony stand, so we took the advice and tried it ourselves and this is what we came out with.

Trip out to Liverpool to take photos

I went out to Liverpool a couple of days during the Easter holidays, as I felt it was a really good opportunity to take photos during the days, and I have a few different photos which I am really happy with.

Throughout just walking around Liverpool I found some really cool and good graffiti and I thought that it would make a really good photo and I was happy that we were able to find some Banksy pieces as well.

Creative Futures – Mike Corcoran

In this talk he starts talking about thinking before your actions and then what is the point of doing things and also making the right decisions in life and always trying to make one even though it might not be the right decision to make at that moment in time.

He uses a quote that states that ‘everyone is connected to everyone’ which is quite a true statement even though you don’t believe it at all. It’s also about making the right choices and acting on those choices that you want to make, it’s about making the right choices to be able to live a good life and be happy with the decisions you make.

Answering the questions that will help you make the right decisions, may help you make your life in this world a lot better as you feel you have made the right choices from the questions you have been asking yourself throughout your life.

In your field of expertise by asking yourself questions about your chosen field it will help you develop your expertise in your field to help make the world better in your eyes and it’ll keep you progressing into your field in places where you didn’t think that you would develop and be able to manipulate certain things and conform with other people’s views and opinions even if you don’t think they are completely right or helpful.

He also truly believes that money isn’t always the main priority for your decisions, he believes that it is happiness, as long as he is happy he believes the world should aspire for happiness rather than just money and assets what most people want but don’t always get, compared to happiness that doesn’t cost anything, and to make someone happy wouldn’t cost you anything just it makes you feel happy and good, if you have done good for someone else.

Creative Futures – Tony Andrews

This talk features Tony Andrews who is one of the main founders of funktion one, they make live sound systems and are renowned for the sound systems that they make, he was also involved in one of the first Glastonbury events, even though it was only a small one with about 8-900 people compared to the mass size of it now.

His career started back in 1970 where he was asked to build the sound system for this small festival and thats where his career into the music industry started with sound systems and it still to this day is about sound systems, he was interested in building since he was a kid as he messed around with wood and glue when he was younger so he used this skill to create the sound systems.

It’s also what he heard his first rock n’ roll song on was a homemade speaker and it made him get straight into it and he then wanted to work with making his own speakers and he knew that was what he wanted to get into as a profession. He’s always loved music ever since he was a kid so this is why he wanted to create new ways of listening to music because it’s what he loved.

The company is now very well known and the speakers are mostly still made the same way and he wanted to make a business out of it when he made the first one and now he is mass producing them and making booths with his speakers for dj’s, bands etc.

He also makes them very efficient so they bring out the best sound possible and especially when you group a lot of them together the sound is amazing because of the mass amount and the perfection of sound that there is there compared to just your average speakers that are mass produced and mass sold but to the everyday buyer compared to these are mostly for gigs, concerts and bands that want high quality sound.

 

Open Eye Gallery Liverpool

The second gallery we visited, there wasn’t a lot in there, but some of it was good and then there was some bits that I didn’t really understand what they were exactly about and some of it I didn’t think were interesting compared to other pieces in the gallery.