Photo A Day April: Day 11-12

I would have kept up with this properly if I hadn't been so unwell yesterday.

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Day 11 — Where you ate breakfast

I didn't eat anything yesterday, I managed some spaghetti hoops at around 9pm, but that certainly wasn't breakfast time. So I'm using this photo because it's where I spent most of yesterday, feeling sorry for myself. I'm so happy that all I have today is a sore back.
Day 12 — Stairs

This was a funny one, I thought about maybe making it a bit creepy but I'm settling for a tired cat instead.
I wonder if I'll miss stairs living in a ground-floor flat.

Bed.

© Ruth Johnston 2011.

Cheep, cheep.

Phew! Here are a couple of photos of recent stuff I haven't had a chance to put up yet. I hope you will appreciate the two of Moon and I in our brand new University of Portsmouth hoodies and bear in mind that we have been here for three years and Moon is graduating his degree in a month. It's not like we never wanted one, I guess we really are that lazy that we didn't get round to buying them until now. Shameful really. My face is a tiger because it looked stupid.

© All images, Ruth Johnston 2010, except the rice, my sister took that one.

I packed up my bed this afternoon and sent it home with my mum, I have the rest of my room to pack up before I leave Portsmouth for the summer on Saturday. This is probably the quickest that a year has gone by so far.
I have Glastonbury in a couple of weeks, I feel like I should feel privileged to be going because of how golddust the tickets are, I am excited but also a bit nervous, having never been to something on that scale before. With a large supply of wet wipes and toilet roll, I should be cool though.
I feel like this photo should get a mention on here, considering how much I am always blabbering. I am pretty proud of this one, I think I like the framing technique too, I'm probably right in thinking that it only works in this kind of photographic situation though, otherwise it gets a bit dull and unnecessary.

One my favourite photography bloggers, James Mcloughlin says he's giving up trying to be or thinking about being a photographer because he'd rather do things on his own terms, I totally see what he means but he's packing in having a digital SLR and selling his film camera too. You just don't get the same effect with a point-and-shoot as you do with professional equipment, that's why people use them. I hope I still enjoy his work and looking at his blog as much if what he said is true. He probably wouldn't want to be, but he is pretty Nan Goldin, and although I hold a bit of contempt for her having done something so easy but pulling it off so well, I definitely have a place for her.

© James Mcloughlin

'I am trying to sleep!'

I think I'm obsessed with beds..

© Ruth Johnston 2009

Kind of like that these are bit blurry, and red. I could have changed them but I didn't want to, we'll see what Judy has to say about it before I go deleting the RAWs though, haha.
Moon was quite cross with me when he woke up this morning, even though I took these after 8am, typical.. even though they were before 9am...

Cuddle. Relax. Sleep.

This series is called, 'Cuddle. Relax. Sleep', this relates to things we do in bed as well as the functions that this bed can no longer carry out.

I came across this bed while walking back to my house. I liked how it was just there and had been abandoned - I almost felt sorry for it.
This bed is no longer a bed, it's just a piece of rubbish. Beds are designed for intimacy and relaxation, the side of the road fulfills neither of these roles and neither does this bed.

There are seven images in this series to replicate a week. I have titled the images as spaced out in time to make the period seem longer over the images. The bed has been in the same place for 12 days so far.

Day 1, 5:00pm.

Day 3, 2:00pm.

Day 4, 12:00pm.

Day 6, 4:36pm.

Day 7, 6:00pm.

Day 7/8, 1:12am.

Day 9, 8:00am.

Main Influences:
Martin Parr: looking at the ordinary and it's significance over time.
Salva Lopez: the loneliness of empty spaces.
Richard Wentworth: the throwaway society and the burden of living in an over-crowded world of mass-produced objects. As well as our failure to look at the ordinary and see it as extraordinary.
Charlotte Cotton - The Photograph as Contemporary Art: Chapter 4 'Something and nothing': how photographing everyday items alters their concept and our perception and how still-life photography makes the audience question the subject of the image rather than the practitioner's technique.

I feel quite sickeningly 'modern art'.
Day 7/8 is going in my exhibition.
All images, Ruth Johnston 2009©

Busy day of research.

Might just calm myself down with some photo editing tonight, carry on with RDBing and actual work tomorrow.

The bed is still where it was, so happy, but then when it goes, I guess that could be pretty useful too.
Come back from my tutorial with a pretty positive attitude, at least I know that my idea isn't completely dumb.
Have to look at Chapter Four of Charlotte Cotton's book, seems like it's the only real theory I can base my images on, but it is only a 4 week project and only worth 40% of the overall Documentary Practices unit.

Might look into why beds have names like 'The Duchess' and find out if this bed has a name. Judy thought the title 'What about me?' was too playful so that's something to work out. Going to photograph the bed at different times of day so I get different light and different atmosphere. Perhaps from the same angle as certain angles work better to get my idea - of commercialism and lonliess - across better than than others.
Can't wait, the end is actually in sight, proper bonus being that I don't need to mount them - something I actually hate more than anything.
I'll let you know how it turns out.

Currently waiting in the library for Moon to finish uni so we can get off to the gym, although the lugging of books I've done today must constitute as some kind of work out...

Got rejected by Bowling For Soup's media guy for taking photographs at The Roundhouse. I don't even want to take photographs of the band, just to get my SLR inside the venue - I'm taking it anyway and I'll cloakroom it if they tell me I can't actually bring it in, it's not like they'll smash it or anything is it?
Makes me sad that I'm not an 'accredited photographer' but gig photography isn't what I'm into. Just wish they didn't label it that way.
Can't wait to see BFS anyway though, they're hilarious.

So yes, update later on. Biffy, Brighton etc.

'Turn in' series - Martina Mullaney.
Martina Mullaney
Keith Arnatt
Cannot find Elliot Wurm, would be useful if someone could tell me who he is!

"What about me?"

Bed.
Beds are used as places of comfort and sanctuary, as a place to relax and rest. Everybody loves to sleep, relax, have sex, be lazy, cuddle up, be warm and all other things that come with the bed as a space. So what about whoever owned this bed? Where do they have now? And what will the bed do now without anyone to love it? It probably doesn't matter, it's just something else that needed an upgrade anyway.

Day Three:


Day Four:

© All images, Ruth Johnston 2009

This bed has been sitting outside for days and days. It looks so sad and rubbish. I'm looking at it for the spaces part of my Documentary Practices brief. I've sort of abandoned the panoramic idea, after looking at the catalogues for previous exhibitions and seeing it would be a major inconvenience to everyone. But I'm still kind of looking at the abandoned space. But more turned it into 'the abandoned thing'. I've changed the idea to be more about human presence within objects and how it effects the way we read them, rather than human presence in vast spaces - I mean the only way the previous ideas would really be experienced would be in an exhibition context, which is fine but when it has to fit all manner of other mediums, it begins to become a bit tricky. This is better though, and I can accompany it with text, which I wanted to do but was finding harder with the panoramas.
Does seem like I've thrown it together but the progression is kind of visible, hopefully. Well, I have a tutorial tomorrow so I guess I'll get some advice then.
One week to go and then I can focus documentary practices on anything. Going to write letters to some big department stores and photograph the shoppers (if I get permission), I want to do Ikea (Martin Parr inspired), either that or binge drinking - there are plenty of articles for research and Portsmouth is a great place to focus on - and it can carry on from my abysmal effort for Text & The Photographic Image, last semester.
Definitely not going to go the Nan Goldin route whatever I decide, can't match it and no one else can either. I'll update on how many people choose her style once we get Brief 2.

..and I'll be satisfied.

Move is sorted for Sunday. Alan's bed has been move out so I have plenty of room to move my bed in.
I am getting my hair cut in a minute, at least when I decide to leave, and I am going to a boy thing tonight, weird.

I like it here, it sounds like a little bird.

This one's for free.