Lewis Stewart Photography

Going back to my original idea, I got back in the studio and used the same mirror that I had used previously in the portraits that I thought were successful as I wanted to try and develop this idea as I had become more comfortable with what I was shooting. I had previously used people I knew and were friends with in my images because I wanted to become confident with the images I was creating, but then decided I needed to change this up a bit to create some images that were more interesting to me. I made a post on a Facebook page asking if anyone would be interested in modelling for me and showed some pictures that I had taken previously to give an example of what I would be doing. I wanted to use people that I didn't know because this allowed for there to be another obstruction within my project; I would have to overcome the awkwardness of taking portraits of someone I do not know. My images: When I first met Sarah, I found it slightly uncomfortable to take...

Today we had a talk from Owen Harvey about the work he does and how he approaches his image taking. He has worked for some very well known companies such as the BBC, Fred Perry and Sony Music. He also told us about how he did some internships whilst studying at university to help him with his practice. Initially whilst at university, he did a lot of documentary work and he then figured that fashion was another of his interests within photography and therefore combines the two frequently to create work. MOD UK: For his final year project at university he created some work which he titled 'MOD UK', which he said he is still shooting to this day 5 years later. He grew up listening to music such as Led Zeppelin which influenced this body of work, and it became quite a personal project. He stated that the images in this project are not from one area, he shoots all over the place to get as many images as possible so that he has a lot to work with. Inspired by the work of Diane Ar...

After the talk from Danny, we were able to show our work that we had done for our Final Major Project in small groups. I told him what I had been doing and showed him an arrangement of images that I had taken to show him my experiments so that he could see a variety of my work from this project. He gave me a lot of great feedback and other people within the group also gave some input, and I wrote these down as notes: Lee Friedlander. The mixture of colours within the images work. Spaces feel different. Want to see yourself. More going on in mirror images - more life in them. Distortion is in the way - double barrier. Satisfaction with mirror images. Portrait is a study - fragmented portrait. Use different shape mirror? Long mirror, broken mirror, the model's own mirror. Mirrors are metaphors. Open to change. Context of person - why using them? Composition works - still life, e-commerce, catalogue, classic. Like a pizza - certain ingredients needed. Combine all thing...

Today we had the pleasure of having a guest lecture from photographer Danny Treacy, who spoke to us about the way in which he works and showed us examples of his work. The first work he spoke about was one in which he travelled to Ireland and found an empty house in a field. He said that he felt that this building felt like a forensic crime scene, and it felt like the images he was taking was more about dereliction which is something that doesn't particularly interest him - he is more interested in accessibility. He then moved into a different area of working: he put on clothes himself that he had found and set up his camera on a tripod with a timer. He was unsure initially what the work was about and why it interested him - was it about Ireland? The time of day? For these images he used a sewing machine or hand sewed each piece together to create costumes. This work then lead him on to go into the studio, because he thought there was too much within the i...

My course had the amazing opportunity to visit the city of Berlin from the 15th to the 17th of January, which was amazing. It was a well deserved break from doing our dissertation for a few days, of which we went to view some galleries and bookshops. I found this trip to be really interesting and it made me feel inspired and ready to head back into university. Joel Meyerowitz exhibition at C/O Berlin: This exhibition was amazing, and it made me feel really inspired to get back to university and shoot some new imagery. The first set of images that were displayed both in colour and in black and white were really striking to me because of how interesting I thought it was that the images looked really different when shown in different colour tones. One of my favourite images of the whole show was the one that is shot through a netting material with what looks to be the sunset in the background. I think the colours look so beautiful with the black net in ...