Stephanie Edwards

Placement Report

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Contents 4-5 Introduction: My Placement 6-7 Career Tools: C.V 8-11 Online Portfolio 12-27 Documentation of Workshops 28-29 Final Rehearsal 30-45 The Final Show: ‘Street Life’ 46-53 Use of Social Media

My Placement: Context is half the work.

For my placement I worked with the NICOLA (new international company of live arts). The organisation was set up in 2008 with it’s slogan ‘One mentality, One aim, Fighting against knife and gun crime in the UK’. This year the NICOLA project was rewarded with a grant from the National Lottery which they decided would be spent on teaching young people various skills such as drama, dance, and circus skills. These newly learnt skills would then be brought together culminating in a free-to-attend variety show celebrating the talented young people of London.My role within this project would be to photographically document the workshop and rehearsal process in the weeks leading up to the final show and then also the show itself, with my images then being available for NICOLA to use in it’s promotions.

My placement followed the APG concept that ‘context is half the work’. I worked not as an employee for NICOLA, but as an artistic per-son working inside a professional environment. I had artistic freedom and the only photographic advice given from my placement was to “be creative” and simply try to take interesting, documentary images.

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CV

I was not required to write a covering letter to NICOLA as I instead was given a contact telephone number by Paula. I spoke with a Michela Ferrara, NICOLA’s artistic director.

On my first meeting with Michela I was simply required to take my C.V with me for her to have a look at. Before the meeting I altered my C.V slightly to include mentions of photographic work I had done.

We met one afternoon in Earls Court for a coffee and a chat about the type of images she would like me to take and she also gave me the times and addresses of where and when each skills workshop was held. I left the meeting feeling excited about my placement and with hopes that I could get NICOLA the type of images they need to successfully promote their workshops, thus gaining more interest and attendees next year.

Stephanie Amanda Edwards Currently living in London, SE15.

Education

September 2007-onwards - London South Bank University, BA Digital Photography.

September 2006-July 2007 - London Metropolitan University, Islington, London.

(Film Studies)

1998-July 2005 - The Wye Valley School, Bourne End, Buckinghamshire.

Employment

June ‘08 – present – HMV Oxford Circus. Part-time sales assistant at HMV’s flagship store.

Sept ‘06 onwards - Temp work.

Jan.-Sept ‘06 - Starbucks, Beaconsfield, Bucks. (Full time employment during gap year)

Nov.-Dec’05 - ‘White Shark Projects’, Gansbaai, South Africa.

Volunteering for a shark conservation project during my gap year. Tasks included assisting videographers and underwater photographers, logging individual shark sightings, tagging

sharks and providing information to the general public about sharks and marine wildlife.

IT Skills Adobe Photoshop CS3, Bridge, Word, PowerPoint, basic Adobe Flash.

I am a friendly, sociable and caring person. In the workplace I am conscientious, enthusiastic

and strive to achieve the highest quality of work.

I am experienced in shooting live music, dance and drama and have worked on weddings, but my real interest is capturing images of dancers that they can use for their portfolio, audition

purposes or simply to keep. I specialize in full-body or action shots but can also shoot headshots.

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http://stephanie.clickgarden.net/

http://stephanie.clickgarden.net/

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On our first meeting Michela explained to me that it would be ide-al for me to attend every workshop theNICOLA project ran atleast once, in order to capture images of the young people learning the various skills that would come togeth-er in the final show.Most workshops would be held in Earls Court. We agreed that I would specifically try to attend as many of the African Dance and Aerial Silk Acrobatics workshops as I felt I could produce good im-ages from these subjects for NICOLA to use in their promotions.There were also workshops for the kids to create their own music in the studio, as well as an accompanying anti-gun crime video which would be shown dur-ing the final show, and a drama class where they would create a piece to act out. Initially I was going to shoot these workshops, but it turned out that there were many other students also doing their work experience with NICOLA and they had already covered these workshops. At one stage Michela had problems with her mobile phone and couldn’t receive messages (we did not know this), creating some communication difficulties with myself and the other students and leaving us not knowing when we were needed. Luckily this problem eventually got sorted out, but it did take a couple of weeks for everyone to understand what exactly was going on and did mean that myself and the other students didn’t end up attending as many workshops as we would have perhaps liked to.

The following images are from the various workshops I attended and also the final in-studio rehearsal on Saturday 25th April.

Over a number of sessions the teacher (above) taught the three girls a routine they could use in the show.

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The workshops were held in the evenings, with most starting around 4/5pm and finishing by 8pm at latest. Despite being held at the end of the day I found the workshops to be lively and great fun to shoot. Everyone was friendly and although no one had problems with me taking photos of them I made sure not to disturb anyone while they were concen-trating on rehearsing their final piece. The atmo-sphere in the Earls Court studio was energetic and upbeat - my ideal working environment.

Depending on the time of the workshop light could be a real problem when shooting in the practice studio. When no natural light was coming through the windows the studio lights weren’t quite bright enough and some weeks I would struggle to get decent images without too much grain.Throughout the whole process of working with NICOLA I found myself frequently using my 50mm 1.8 lens. I like the depth of field it creates, meaning I could focus specifically on a performer in a group if I wanted to, and could get close-ups without having to be too close to the action.

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The final rehearsal was on the day of the show, on the theatre stage, with the lighting and sound crews also going through their own rehearsal. I arrived at the theatre early, knowing this would be a good chance for me to decide which camera settings would be right for each section of the show. The lighting changed often so I knew I would need to be prepared. It also gave me a chance to see where would be best to position myself during the show, as I wanted to avoid moving around and irritating the audience.

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The final show took place on Sunday 26th April. Michela asked me to attend the final show, ‘Street Life’ and shoot throughout. It was to be held at the Cochrane Theatre in Holborn. When I arrived I spoke to the a member of the theatre’s staff and they confirmed that it would be fine for me to stay tucked in a corner infront of the stage throughout the show. (I had to comply with fire regulations and not be blocking any of the theatre’s exits or walkways.

The show was a challenge to shoot, with some parts having very dim lighting (I didn’t want to use flash out of respect for the audience, plus I love the look of stage lighting in my photos) and very fast movement. I enjoyed this challenge and took hundreds of images, some of which I am very happy with and have forwarded on to Michela for her to use in NICOLA’s promotion.The following pages contain some images from this final show, including drama, live music and dance. I particularily enjoyed shooting the African dance section of the show as taking images of dancers is something I often do in my spare time.

The flyer on the right was created by fellow student Chantelle Irish for NICOLA to promote the final show.

Flyers (front and back) for the final show created by Chantelle Irish for NICOLA.

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Myself and the other students working for NICOLA set up a Facebook group to use for sharing our images. Some students are in the process of creating a book and leaflets for NICOLA’s promotions and I needed to use social media to pass my photos on to them so that they could begin to work them into their graphic designs. In turn they would post rough drafts of the pages they had created using my images. They did a great job and I found it very rewarding to see my images being used as promotion for NICOLA.

The following pages show examples of my use of social media. As a group we mostly used our Facebook group to notify each other of new images. I myself also used the group to post links to my Flickr account, where they could then download my photos full size.I used Twitter occasionally but did not update as some students. I didn’t find Twitter particularily helpful or interesting and chose to use more photographically based social media (eg. Flickr).

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Emma shared her mock-up page for Aerial Silk Dancing using our Facebook group.

Our Facebook group’s gallery, where we could view each other’s work (including flyers, business cards and photgraphs) and give constructive feedback.

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section I

I used Flickr to not only share my images full size with other students working with NICOLA but to also gain feedback and opinions from other users.Here (below) Samy from my class has commented on one of my images from the final show.

I used Flickr to not only share my images full size with other students working with NICOLA but to also gain feedback and opinions from other users.Here (below) Samy from my class has commented on one of my images from the final show.

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