bencebelso-blog

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Portfolio printing | Final CV

I booked out the printer with the Eizo monitor for printing because I wanted to make sure all the colours and the contrast on photos were correct and as I wanted them. I asked for some feedback from the guys on what they put on as titles or if they included their name on the print. Most of the guys didn’t put the name on the print, so I decided to get rid of it as well and moved the title in the centre.

I printed the first photo out. Everything looked fine, except it wasn’t center.

I had an idea what the problem might have been. I don’t like to do the A4 Sheet Maximum setting because the ink usually catches on the edge of the paper which I can’t afford when printing a portfolio. Because of this I used A4 Sheet which doesn’t use all the sheet, which wasn’t a problem, because all I lost was just the white frame around the sides.

The problem this setting cause was even though I ticked center it centered the image but to the cropped down version of the paper, not the whole paper, which shifted everything. To fix it I set it to sheet maximum, centered it, copied the number it was shifted by from the left, set it back to sheet, unticked center, than copied in the number to position left. I printed it again and now it all worked.

From this point on the printing wasn’t too difficult, the settings stayed saved because I was printing from the same document. The most difficult in all of it was getting the prints into the sleeves. The shiny surface of the paper kept sticking to the inside of the sleeve. I used two extra sheets of paper to slide between the print and sleeve making it easier to slide it in.

I also finished the CV with only adding the two references in. Emi, the assistant manager at Prezzo, also my boss and also modeled for me once so I think she would be perfect for a non-photographic, personal reference. Beytan agreed to be my photographic or professional reference - he knows best my workflow and how I do things.

Canva is a good website and very easy to use but it’s very difficult to line up everything precisely, so after I was done with all the contents I put it into photoshop and fixed it up a bit.

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Case Study to the rescue: David Erdelyi

As I’m failing miserably at securing a case study I decided to go down a different route. I have been following a bunch of young Hungarian photographers on Instagram for a while now and I had it in my mind for a bit to contact them or future collaborations maybe. I am also interested in the way the community works there.

David Erdelyi is one those people. His Instagram feed is very clean and well harmonised, all the images fit in with each other nicely. I really appreciate the holding something in your hand and focusing the camera on that while the background is blurred plus the colour combinations which are always spot on. Not sure whether they would work on a bigger scale but it is delighting to look at when I’m scrolling through Instagram.

I decided to DM him to see if he would be my case study and I got a very quick response. He said yes and right away answered the example questions I asked him.

Funny enough he is currently applying for a film course at UAL. He was very nice and we had a nice chat.

Q&A session:

Q: How much time do you spend on updating your instagram per day?

A: Recently not that much. For my images the sunset vibes are necessary and there’s not many of that now. Otherwise I never used to do it next to school, only on weekends. A few hours of shooting on a Saturday and that’s it for the week.

Q:When did a brand first look for ask you to advertise their product?

A: At 5000 followers.

Q:When did your interest in photography come around? 

A: Somewhere around 2012-2013

Q: Why did you choose Instagram as your platform?

A: There isn’t really any other platform for what I do. And also people used this the most, it’s where I would’ve reached the most people.

Q: Did it take a long time to get followers?

A: Yeah, it took some time, but it started growing exponentially, until they changed the algorithm.

Q: Did the last algorithm change affect you heavily?

A: Yes. Everyone, as I heard and as I can see.

Q: Would you call yourself an influencer? 

A: Hm.. good question. Not to 100%, but to a certain extent yes. I’m more just an ‘artist’ and not an ‘online person’

Q: Did you get to know anyone through Instagram or through the community?

A: *lists down names* (6 instagram handles). I personally know them, but my sister knows quite a lot of people.

Q: When a brand (Paul Hewitt) wants to advertise through you, does that involve a lot of fuss, or how does the whole thing work?

A: Actually I contacted them. But generally they tell you what they want with what conditions. Like for me it was 3 images under 6 weeks.

It’s interesting how he hasn’t been into photography too long yet and he is still in middle school, yet his technical knowledge about everything is very high. He sells his own Lightroom presets for god’s sake. He was very friendly and said if I have any further questions feel free to ask him. Hopefully we can work together on something in the future.

Also, in other news, my £46 portfolio box has arrived. It is quite nice to be honest. It was definitely worth spending the extra money on it.

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Portfolio Selection

I spent a few hours trying to figure which 8 images to include in my portfolio. Which combination is the best? I have eliminated a few things already, like the MOL photos and most of the portraits and the super panorama - that would definitely not fit, it would be just an extremely narrow line on an A4 paper.

Four portraits four landscapes? Nah. The landscapes feel too random compared to a very united portrait series.

Definitely two portraits. Which ones though? Secondly the two projects - constructed and environmental are definitely going in and those exact photos as well. Last two images: two dark landscapes / two seascapes / two bodies of water with land / two colourful landscapes?

Final decision: two dark portrait of the two Rekas (the one with the sparkler is too busy, the hair one is too empty), the projects and then two dark landscapes, because the dark creates a nice frame for the whole thing and they’re also tidier, neater than the other two landscapes.

After I made decisions I started making a template for the printing. Created a high resolution A4 sized document, placed on the images in it and made gradually smaller until I thought ‘that’s the border size I want around it’. I then centered it, then selected the area around the image and created a frame on a separate layer, so that if something doesn’t fit perfectly it can go under the frame.

I put all the photo titles and my name already in their places, so that when I’m done with everything else I would need to just place the files in the frame and press print. Hopefully this makes it easier for when I print.

One thing has already started bugging me, even though I haven’t even got to that point yet. The environmental photos are cropped down to 5x4 ratio. It was my decision, I was a bit obsessed with the 5x4 ratio and they do look nice like that as well, but... they would be the only images which are not 2x3. I know that that would annoy me to hell and back.

Thankfully, because they were cropped from their original 2x3 ratio I can patch it up easily without loosing anything from the sides.

[bencebelso-blog]

Presentation

So the big day.

Was I ready? 

No.

Did I have a case study done?

No. 

Did I have work experience sorted? 

I mean sort of yeah but not really.

Wow.. I really fucked this one, didn’t I?

I still tried to make the most of what I had. I polished the slides as suggested in the mid-review, I haven’t changed too much (I feel like I didn’t have to either). I got rid of my second slide of work experience, because Metro at least replied, so I focused on them.

I used one of my favourite fonts for it as well - Bebas Neue. I deliberately tried opening the slides on my mum’s laptop after I was done with it, to see if everything got carried over as it should, and it did. But sure enough, the computer at uni didn’t like it and decided to mess it up completely. It wasn’t too bad, but it was enough to annoy me.

My notes for the speech (well.. the whole speech as it is)

Many things interest me in photography in my mind is set on any of them yet. I kept the doors open for any possibility in fields such as landscape or commercial photography, but my main focus was towards fashion photography and international connections.

My case study is Krisztian Eder, a Hungarian fashion photographer, currently based in New York. He has agreed to be my case study, but unfortunately not yet answered my questions, but here’s a few interesting facts about him. He used to be a famous singer/songwriter and performer in Hungary before he finished his university studies in Budapest, where he was studying photography. Not long after, through his fame as a musician he became a highly requested fashion photographer and moved to New York. Some of his latest commissions include magazines like Manifesto, Carine Roitfeld’s Fashion Book or Monrowe.

My Work Experience is not highly related to my case study, but is something I also had on my little list. I am lucky enough to get a few days at Metro Imaging to learn about their printing procedures. Even before I came to the UCA I loved getting photos printed. Holding a printed image just felt better, than looking at a screen and a digital image. Ever since I came here, I printed everything myself for the projects, tried to fix all the problems that came up myself, and love every minute of it (except when it was frustrating). At Metro, I am hoping to expand my knowledge about the techniques, how large scale printing works in the real world, how to deal with commissions and many other things.

My aims for this term were / are to make international connections mainly in Hungary and the UK, focusing mostly on fashion photography. Possible obstacles that might come up are traveling left and right, the time and many that takes and just pressing the send button on the emails.

After the first few sentences I went completely off script. I was still talking about the same things and i was collected mostly, but definitely not in the order that I’ve written for myself. It was nerve-wrecking to be up there and speak but I actually felt fine all the way through. I thought I finished in under like 2 minutes because I didn’t follow the notes and Natasha’s timer didn’t go off which got me a bit scared, but after about 5 seconds It went off so I knew I was at least somewhat fine.

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Lack of Response

I sure would love it if someone would reply to my emails. Krisztian has disappeared. He said ‘Nekifekszem, ahogy tudok’ which means I’ll push through it as soon as I can.

His response from a week ago.

I now emailed him again:

Szia Krisztián, Elnézést a sürgetésért, tudom, hogy elfoglalt vagy. Csupán szeretném megkérdezni, hogy szerinted kb mikorra tudnád megválaszolni a kérdéseket? Meg megbizonyosodnék is, hogy biztosan megkaptad-e őket. Ismét, nem sürgetni szeretnélek, csak becsekkoltam. Előre is köszönöm a választ,Bence

translating roughly to: Sorry about the urging, I know you’re very busy. I would just like to ask when you think you can answer the questions for? Also I just want to make sure you got the questions! Again, not trying to rush, just checking in.

Seeing as I’m kind of at a halt with my big plan to get into fashion / portraiture I decided to trace back a bit and select a different field. Last year and this year for Experimental Practices I looked at Erik Johansson’s work.

I think he does some amazing surrealistic landscape photography. His edits are always seamless, carefully crafted till the smallest details to make the most surrealistic scenes look realistic. One of my favourite photographs by him is ‘Full Moon Service’ where he plays with the idea, that what if the Moon wasn’t a rock floating in space, but rather a prop that was put up every night by workers.

If he answers, I would like to try and ask him if I could assist him on a shoot. If that happens, I will be the happiest person alive. Very high hopes, I know.

I crafted my email and sent it. I got an almost immediate response, which feels like an automated email. Or maybe not an automated, but definitely a template. Ah, no. If it was a template, it would have my name, it’s just an automated email saying ‘I don’t have time for this’ which is more than fair enough I think.

Me:

Dear Erik,

I have been a follower of your work for quite a while now. Your attention to detail, the amount of work you put into a photograph, and the seamless edits are really inspiring to me. I especially like your work 'Full Moon Service' and the idea of the alternate reality of the Moon not actually being the Moon in the sky, just a set piece changed every night.

I currently study at the University for the Creative Arts in Surrey, UK. As part of our second year Professional Practices unit, we have to gain experience from the professional world of photography and I was wondering if you would be my case study. I would love to hear how you got to your success, where your ideas are born and many other questions.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Bence Belso

Him:

Hi, As much as I'd like to help you I get a lot of questions and I'm afraid that I can't answer them all, please have a look at my website under FAQ and I hope that helps ! :) thanks for understanding!Erik Erik Johansson Photo+ 420 606 086 895hello@erikjohanssonphoto.com www.erikjohanssonphoto.com

Me again:

Of course, completely understandable. Thank you for the quick response. Best,Bence

He is now out of the question unfortunately.

I also emailed H20 Lifestyle again, this time on the personal as well as the company email, did the same to Big Sky. Just resent the same emails to them.

I also brought a new studio into the cycle - Spring Studios. Rebecca mentioned looking at them, because there is a lot of fashion shoots happening over there. I looked online to see what they do, it looked very promising. There are many email addresses listed for them, but there is one specifically for careers. I figured that’s the one I should send it to. Unfortunately I was an idiot, said I attached my CV and then proceeded not to attach my CV... so I had to send a second email.

Dear Spring Studios,

Rebecca McClelland suggested that I contact you for my inquiries. I am a student at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham and for our second year Professional Futures unit we have to gain experience from the professional world of photography through work experience. One of my main interests is fashion photography and portraiture. It would be an amazing opportunity if I could spend a few days at Spring Studios as an assistant, or anything for that matter. Would you mind letting me know if that is possible at all? Thank you in advance!

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,

Bence Belso

PS.: Please find my CV attached

Apart from the emails, I tried ringing Metro Imaging as well. They said yes to me being there for work experience, yet they haven’t replied with any dates for me when I sent them the email. I tried ringing 0207 865 0000 (main enquiries number) but I couldn’t reach them. I did give up very easily to be fair... The thought of speaking to them on the phone about it was a bit frightening.

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Final Tutorial

In our last tutorial Rebecca had a look at our CV as well. She pointed out a few small final things missing, but said otherwise my CV looks well put together. She mentioned that the profiles/summaries are meant to be in 3rd person all the time. I haven’t really heard that before, but maybe I just missed this detail. I didn’t know at first whether to change it or not, but then I decided to do it. Not actually into third person, like ‘he is a photographer’ or ‘he does this and that’ but into a passive voice.

I also made my skills a bit more specific and included the fact that I can drive. Rebecca mentioned that references – both official and personal should be included. Natasha and Matt get used all the time as references, obviously, so she said that it might be a bit too much after a while, too many references to keep track of. Who else is there for me to be a reference, other than the tutors? I never actually worked or assisted for anyone as a photographer. Beytan maybe? He knows my work well and is always catching up on what I do. A personal reference I can get easily, I can ask my boss, I know she would happily be a reference for me. That’s for a later date though.

Apart from this she also looked at our portfolio selections and helped figure out what to include, what not to include.

These were the images I had in mind to maybe include in the portfolio. Quite a lot, but at least I had a good selection. Rebecca right away said she found my constructed images very interesting and she really liked my low-key portraits. I told her how my interest is very wide-spread but mostly focuses on landscape and portraiture she tried coming up with a way to possibly merge the two together. To marry one portrait to a landscape maybe - 4 of each.

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Work Experience Emails

To finish off the week I emailed two of the studios I was looking at to do work experience for: H20 Lifestyle in Budapest and Big Sky in London

Dear Big Sky, You're studios have been recommended to me as one of the best studios in London by Natasha Caruana. I am a 2nd year photography student at University for the Creative Arts in Farnham. As part of our Professional Futures unit we need to carry out work experience in April. My main interest is in fashion and portrait photography and they are something I would like to expand my knowledge on. Would it be possible for me to spend a few days at your studios to learn about how everything works on a bigger scale or maybe even get involved as an assistant? Please find my CV attached. Looking forward to hearing from you. Sincerely,Bence Belso

This is the full email to Big Sky. I’ve gone in very strong with the confidence boost in the beginning - maybe too strong.

Below is the email to H20 - basically the same email, only difference is I talk about how because I have to travel to a different I could do this through summer instead of the allocated April dates.

Kedves Dora!

A H20 Lifestyle Studio nevet már hallottam nemegyszer magasztosan emlegetve; most már értem, miért. Nagyon vonzónak tartom a professzionizmusát és a sokoldalúságát.

Én jelenleg Surrey-ben, Angliában tanulok fotográfiát, a University for the Creative Arts egyetemen. Másodéves tanulmányaink során tapasztalatot kell szereznünk a fotózás professzionális világából részben szakmai gyakorlat által. Egyik szakterületem a divat és portréfotózás. Szeretném tovább fejleszteni a képességeimet a stúdióban és szeretnék visszatérni a hazámhoz kicsit, ezért gondoltam arra, hogy felkeresném önöket. Esetleg lenne hely önöknél pár napra, amikor szerezhetnék szakmai gyakorlatot? Asszisztálással, vagy igazából bármivel. Az egyetem Április 9-27. között adta ki a dátumot a szakmai gyakorlatra, de mivel nekem ehhez “külföldre” kéne repülnöm, engedélyeztek annyit, hogy ha bármikor a nyár folyamán csinálom, az bőven elég.

Várom mielőbbi válaszát.

Üdvözlettel,

Belső Bence

Ui.: Az önéletrajzomat csatoltam, bár angol nyelven van.

Now we just wait and hope.

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Website Finished

I have run out of the trial version of Squarespace, about 3 weeks ago, if not more. This was all part of the problem as well. I didn’t want to email people with a CV that had a website on it, that was not active anymore. Doesn’t look very nice. So I kept holding them and telling myself to finish the website. But then I didn’t have all the images on me that I would want to include on there when I was in uni, then by the time I got home every day I was too tired and didn’t want to collect them, said I’ll do it tomorrow, but then it turned into a vicious cycle. It gave me a very easy scapegoat not to email people. ‘Oh I don’t want to do it, what if they think I’m and idiot. Oh wait, now I don’t have to email them, the website isn’t done.’

But then finally I got the strength to do it. I stuck with Squarespace, paid off the £144 in one go for the whole year, instead of paying for it monthly and in the end spending about £200. I chose the Forte template, I think that looks the most stunning and I want my photos to have a big impact as soon as they’re seen. A way around the problem of the index view cropping down the environmental project stuff too much was to have more landscape stuff in that gallery. At first I had only one index page and in that two galleries – portraits and landscapes. The homepage would be the index and on that the first image that comes up would be the one of Naomi. That’s one of my favourite portraits to this day and I think it looks good as an opening image. It would then go onto the other gallery, landscapes, where the first image would this one from Croatia, which works much better than any of the environmental images.

I then figured that now there are not enough galleries. The index is just switching back and forth between two images, so I spread the images out a bit more.

I still kept the same portrait on the homepage. The only problem I noticed with it is that because most of the image is a lighter grey colour the template stays black, which results in the index titles to be lost in her hair colour.

I changed it to this instead.

I now included the environmental images in their own gallery and put them in the middle somewhere. This way it’s not as eye-catching that it’s cropped and it’s not the only thing cropped either.

I uploaded a few photos that I found worthy, but it’s definitely not the final selection yet. I’ll probably have time to do it properly after our deadlines.

In the contacts I put my number (I don’t know if it’s a good idea, haven’t decided yet really), my email and my photography Instagram account. In the about page I put that it’s my web page and is still under development. I also included the photo of the seascape in the background. Don’t know what to do with these really.

Now it’s time to start putting out some more emails for work experience (I tell to myself blissfully).

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Questions Towards Krisztian Eder

Here is my email with all the questions for Krisztian, which I sent to him one day after he said yes to being my case study.

Szia Krisztián!

Hihetetlen mértékben örülök ennek a hírnek. Akkor bele is kezdenék.

Némely kérdésre lehet, hogy már válaszoltál interjúkban, de direkt nem kerestem rá egyre sem, hogy azokat a kérdéseket tegyem fel, amikre én szeretném tudni a választ.

Először is nagyon fiatal voltál, amikor a zenei karriered berobbant a köztudatba. Nehéz volt megbirkózni a hírnévvel, ami ezzel járt?

A siker és hírnév, amire szert tettél az évek alatt, mint SP, segített kiépíteni a fotós karriered, miután lediplomáztál a MOME-en? Egyszerűbbé tette a kapcsolatok kialakítását vagy esetleg már eleve megvoltak miatta, mikor nekiindultál?

Miért választottad épp a fotózást?

Miért pont New Yorkba költöztél? Nehéz volt kijutni és a kinti elhelyezkedni és az ottani karriered elindítani?

Csak ott kint munkálkodsz manapság, vagy néha kapsz megbízatást Magyarországról is?

Mint valaki, aki szintén elköltözött, úgy érzem meg kell kérdeznem: hiányzik Magyarország? Visszaköltöznél valamikor a jövőben vagy New York és a lehetőségek, amiket nyújtani tud, jobban vonzanak?

Melyik munkádra vagy a legbüszkébb?

Havonta nagyjából hány megbízatásod van? Ez a szám növekvőben van, ahogy egyre híresebb leszel?

Az egyik dolog, amit csodálok, hogy mennyire sok mindenben vagy tehetséges, nem csak a fotózásban. Foglalkozol még a zenével vagy rendezéssel is vagy csak a fotózásra koncentrálsz?

Annak láttam nyomát, hogy szereted, netán preferálod a film fotózást a digitálissal ellentétben. Kifejezetten csak filmre fotózol vagy használsz digitális fényképezőket is? Melyik a saját választásod és melyiket használod, mert a munka megköveteli? (Az első kérdés válaszától függően ez a kérdés irreleváns lehet.)

Ezek mellett lenne még ezer kérdésem, de egyelőre itt hagynám, nem akarlak teljesen elhavazni, tudom, hogy elfoglalt vagy. Elnézést a késői válasz miatt, de össze kellett szednem, melyik kérdéseket akarom feltenni most neked.

Előre is köszönöm a válaszokat!

Üdv,

Bence

translation:

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More Emails

I continue the sending of emails, starting with Metro Imaging - they responded the other day! And they said yes, they’re happy to have me for a few days! Unfortunately, me being me, I haven’t responded for a good few days to the email... But I have now!

This is Kate’s reply

Hi Bence, Lovely to hear from you and apologies on my delayed response. We would of course be happy to host your work experience here at Metro Imaging. We can’t facilitate a full-time internship but can give a few days a week/ month where you’d come in for a few hours sit with each department, learn all the different processes and and aspect of our production house. Above I’ve cc’d in my colleague Jon who will arrange your internship so if you’d like to suggest specific dates that will work best for you he can book it in with our team. Kindest regards,Kate

And this is what I responded to it

Hi Kate, Jon, Sorry about my late response, I have been away these last few days. That is amazing to hear. Of course, I understand you can't facilitate a full internship, a few days is more than enough for me.I am very flexible on dates, anything from 22nd March onwards is good for me. Our guideline for work experience dates is  9-27th April, but it doesn't have to be in this time slot, if I can do it over summer, that's still perfect. I'm very excited to be working with you! Sincerely,Bence

Let’s hope they answer quickly!

Other than that I emailed (tried to email) Nanasi Pal. The email is approximately the same as all the other ones I sent for case studies, and I’m too lazy to translate this as well. I managed to switch his email address around. Instead of pal@nanasi.hu I tried sending the email to nanasi@pal.hu twice. Both times this happened.

Gmail didn’t find the address (what a surprise, seeing as I was typing in a non-existent one.. But afterwards I realised my mistake and sent it to the proper address.

Kedves Pál!

Egy ideje követem a munkásságát es roppant inspirálónak tartom, amit elért es a hírnevet, amit szerzett az évek alatt. Főleg inspirálónak találom a Szabó Győzőről készült sorozatát.

Én jelenleg Angliában tanulok fotográfiát a University for the Creative Arts egyetemen. Másodéves feladatunk, hogy belátást és tapasztalatot szerezzünk a professzionális világáról a fotózásnak. Amikor arra gondoltam, ki lenne a tökéletes esettanulmány, rögtön önre gondoltam, mint az egyik legnevesebb magyar fotográfus. Ha esetleg tudna válaszolni pár kérdésemre akár írásban, akár szóban, nagyon hálás lennek érte.

Várom mihamarabbi válaszát.

Üdvözlettel,

Belső Bence

I also emailed Krisztian once again, since he hasn’t responded to my previous one. I thought, yeah, why not, it’s worth a try. Maybe he just hasn’t seen it. And sure enough, a few hours later he responded! Positively!! He said yes, he’ll be my case study happily. Very exciting. Now I just have to figure out the questions and how to phrase them.

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A bunch of emails

So I’ve emailed, or at least tried to email a few people this week.

Natasha had a look at my draft email I drafted for Metro Imaging and sent it back to me not long after. She said there wasn’t too much to change, it was almost good as it was. This probably means I have nothing to worry about when emailing people, but I just can’t deal with it..

(EDIT: it’s unreadable, here it is as text:

original: Dear Steve, Following our visit to Metro Imaging on Monday, 16th January with Natasha Caruana from UCA Farnham I found your printing techniques and equipment highly intriguing and something I would like to possibly learn more about. Ever since I started my studies I have been trying to achieve the best print quality possible and always printed myself, rather than having my photographs printed. I have some knowledge about the craft but I would like to learn more and experience how it works in the real world, on a bigger scale. As part of our Photographic Communities unit we have to do a work experience placement in April and I was wondering if I could potentially spend a few days at Metro Imaging during this period. It would be a great opportunity. Looking forward to hearing from you! 

Natasha’s edit:  Dear Steve, Following our visit to Metro Imaging on Monday 16th January with Natasha Caruana from UCA Farnham I found touring your printing techniques and equipment very inspiring and would love to learn more. Ever since I started my studies I have been trying to achieve the best print quality possible and always handled the printing process myself. I have some knowledge about the craft but I would like to learn more and experience how it works in the real world, on a bigger scale. As part of our Professional Practice unit we have to carry out work experience during April and I was wondering if I could potentially spend a few days at Metro Imaging during this period? Looking forward to hearing from you.)

I then sent this email to Kate. Originally I was going to send it to Steve Macleod, but I thought it might be nicer if I send it to Kate O’Neill, who gave us the tour around the place when we were there.

I have also sent an email to Krisztian Eder:

„Kedves Krisztián!

Régóta követem a munkásságod és nagy rajongója vagyok a legújabb fotós tevékenységeidnek, főként a ’Beauty Twist’ sorozatnak, amelyet a models.com részére készítettél.

Én jelenleg Angliában tanulok fotográfiát a University for the Creative Arts egyetemen Surrey-ben. Másodéves tanulmányaink során tapasztalatot kell szereznünk a professzionális világából a fotózásnak es azon gondolkoztam, hogy esetleg lennél-e az esettanulmányom? Roppant mód érdekelne hogyan érted el a sikered, hogy kötődött össze a zene a fotózással és még sok más minden.

Ha megfordulna a fejedben, hogy válaszolnál pár kérdésemre – akár írásban, akár szóban – annak nagyon örülnék. Várom mihamarabbi válaszod.

Üdvözlettel,

Belső Bence”

 Translation:

 Dear Krisztian,

I have been following your work for quite a while now and I admire your latest photographic work, especially the series ’Beauty Twist’ which you shot for models.com.

I currently study photography in Surrey, England at the University for the Creative Arts. As part of our second year studies we have to gain experience from the professional world of photography and I was wondering if you would be my case study for it. I would be deeply interested in how you got to your success, how did the music career link to photography and many other things.

If you think you could answer a few of my questions, either in writing or verbally, I would be very grateful. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Bence Belso

 Afterwards I tried emailing Scott Kelby. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any email addresses to him, only an embedded contact setup on his website. I tried emailing him there multiple times, but there was an error every time. I have no idea what, but my message would not send at all, even after I took out all of the accents from the words (my name, mainly).

Dear Scott,

I have been a follower of your work for quite a while, my first ever photography book I got when I was little was your 'The Digital Photography Book' which helped and inspired me a lot.

I currently study at the University for the Creative Arts in Surrey, UK, and as part of our second year Professional Practices unit we have to gain experience of what professional photography is like out in the real world. I was wondering if you would be so kind as to be my case study; I would love to hear about how you achieved your success, how you manage your time to be able to do everything and many others.

If you could answer a few of my questions I would be more than grateful.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Bence Belső

  I had a bit more success with Chase though. He had the same setup – no direct email address, only an embedded one, so I emailed him through there. This one worked.

 Dear Chase,

I have been a follower of your work for quite a while, you were one of the first people to really inspire me to start photography when I was little. I find your shoot for Samsung Premium Monitor Series from 2013 especially inspiring.

I currently study at the University for the Creative Arts in Surrey, UK and as part of our second year Professional Practices unit we have to gain experience of what professional photography is like out in the real world. I was wondering if you would be my case study; I would love to hear about how you achieved your success, how you manage your time to be able to do everything and many others.

If you could answer a few of my questions I would be more than grateful.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Bence Belső

  Yes, I might have based all of these on the same template I made.

[bencebelso-blog]

Mid-Review & Presentation Draft

Right after we got back from Florence in our mid-review we all looked at each other’s blogs, case-study and the work we have done so far.

Things I have realised about myself so far, before the mid-review. I am the king of procrastination. I keep finding the smallest things to keep me from actually contacting people or doing work. I probably work too much apart from uni as well, which doesn’t help, but at the same time they rely on me, because I’m a good workforce which makes me feel important which makes me want to go. Yes, I also make money, which is good too, but it’s taking a lot of my time. Even if I’m not there, before I leave for work ‘Oh, I won’t start anything now, I have to leave in an hour anyway’ or when I get home ‘It’s too late for that now’ and so on. I’m trying to change it, I’m setting goals for myself every day and trying to achieve them, but it’s still happening.

I also find emailing people daunting for some reason. I have absolutely no problem with walking up to people and asking them the most random questions, but pressing the send button on an email is terrifying. Maybe it’s the fact that they can ignore it very easily or the lack of context as to why they ignore it – do they just not have the time or did I write something wrong? This is not the first time I noticed this, but it wasn’t so apparent before. A lot of times I take forever to reply to emails or texts, or don’t reply at all, if it’s not necessary – ‘It’ll sort itself out’.

In our review the guys said my progress so far is sound, which I think is fair enough, seeing as I don’t have any work experience or case study sorted. The biggest suggestion is to CONTACT PEOPLE. Also my blog wasn’t really up to date to say the least… I need to get on that as well. I was holding back on it and just doing drafts because I kept waiting for the point when I contact people. Which didn’t happen. Which then pushed the blog posts back. It all piled up.

My portfolio on the other hand I think is good. I have a pretty good idea of what I might want to include, since I uploaded about the same set of images to my website that I might want to use in the portfolio. It will have a mixture of images / styles between portraiture and landscape photography. The only thing missing is the box for it, because I couldn’t buy it when we went to the London Graphics Centre and I need to order it still.

After that we all made our presentations. I tried to listen to everything Natasha said in the morning lecture:

-          Simple design, not too much text, not too many slides

-          Outline the field I want to go into, summarise my case study (don’t have one), talk about work experience and what I want to get out of it

-          My aims for this unit and the challenges that might come up.

On my first slide I included the fields I want to go into potentially and the main reason I’m doing it – being international.

On my second slide I talk about my main focus for a case study, whether he agrees to it or not. I talked about his achievements, how he got to New York, that he did music before.

I broke the work experience into two slides – one, where I talk about Metro Imaging and why I want to go there and the other where I talk about H20 Lifestyle studio, the Hungarian studio I found.

I need to put one more slide in where I include my aims and challenges, which I basically put on the front now – not the actual slide but I talked about it.

Notes for development – put the aims and challenges on the last slide; design is good, just align everything on the slide with each other; say that Kate gave us a talk, rather than just ‘we went to Metro’.

[bencebelso-blog]

Tutorial #2

Unfortunately I had to miss out on this tutorial because my car broke down that day on the M3. This meant my transportation was not available and maybe I would have made it if I broke down somewhere else, because my stepdad was coming behind me, they were going to Farnborough, and he could’ve given me a lift, but I couldn’t just leave the car on the M3. Unfortunately I had to wait for it to be rescued than taken to a garage.

The place I got towed to, plus me sending a message to one of my friends saying ‘There’s nothing better than breaking down on the M3′.

Rebecca couldn’t make it that day anyway, so maybe I haven’t missed that much, because the tutorials were compacted, but still it would’ve been nice to get some feedback.

[bencebelso-blog]

CV #3

I got some feedback from Natasha, which was very helpful. She pointed out a few things I didn’t know how to express or that I haven’t even thought about, but it seems there wasn’t too much to change, which is a good thing. I’m definitely happy about it, I spent lots more time doing this one, then the previous.

I went ahead and made the picture much smaller. I also don’t like the b&w anymore, but I have no way of changing right now, because that photo is Nunu’s and I need to get the original colour version from her. (no, this one is not colour, it’s just the library printers printing red instead of black.)

I’ve rewritten a few things, mostly the descriptions under the main things and fixed some grammar mistakes as well. It feels a bit more well put together now. Because everything is more detailed now, I had to change the layout, which I think actually works for the better. It looks neater.

[bencebelso-blog]

London Trip

Natasha organised us a trip to go up to London and visit a few places. This wasn’t so much about looking at exhibitions, rather related to different types of places to go to work possibly.

First we went to Metro Imaging, one of the oldest and best established photographic printing company in the country. They print for the biggest companies, magazines, events, exhibitions. The equipment they have is amazing and being there made me realise this is something I would happily do. I have been printing my own stuff for the last one and a half years, always trying to find the best solution for everything, resolving the problems myself, rather than having it printed. The end result of printing an image successfully always gives me satisfaction. I guess I wasn’t thinking in this direction beforehand, but I would definitely like to try it to see how it works in the real world on a bigger scale, outside of the bubble of G32.

Afterwards we went to the Victoria Miro Gallery to take a look at Jorge Padro’s exhibition. Though the exhibition itself was quite interesting, we were there because Isabelle Young, the assistant curator of the gallery was giving us a talk. She talked about the logistics of it, how they represent someone etc. Previously on my list of things I would do I had assisting in galleries, but now I know, that I wouldn’t want to do this. It just involves a lot of paperwork, contacting people and all in all not that exciting.

After lunch we went on towards Huck Magazine, where we had a quick tour of the offices. There is a lot of people working on that magazine. Potentially that was the most interesting about the whole thing, the amount of people in there and all the different jobs they all had and how they work together.

Our final stop for the day was at the London Graphics Centre, where we went to buy portfolio boxes and sleeves. Unfortunately they ran out very quickly from the Talon boxes, the more expensive ones. Natasha said that a cheaper Seawhite one would be fine for now but next year we would need the Talon boxes for the show, because the idea is that everyone has the same exact box. For that reason I didn’t buy one of the slightly cheaper ones now, I’ll just have to order a Talon and collect it later on.

[bencebelso-blog]

Research: Hungarian Studios

If I want to do something in Hungary, I have to research stuff over there as well. So that’s what I did.

I started looking at portrait and fashion studios with more, but rather less success. I did find Balázs Tóth (which, by the way, is one of the most common Hungarian names). On his website he states that he is Peter Hurley’s associate and was selected top 100 from 14.000 photographers. His work is very neat and the lighting, poses are spot on. He says all he wants to do is prove that there is no such things as someone isn’t photogenic, which has a very big resemblance to what my goals were with the portraits back about 4 years ago. Even if not for assisting, he could be interesting for a case study.

I also found Bánhalmi Norbert. Same kind of stuff, mostly headshots and portraits, but a lot less impressive. I’ll keep him in mind in case Tóth doesn’t work out and I need a replacement or something like that.

An interesting studio that I would like to go to is H20 Lifestyle Studio. The studio itself is rather big, for Budapest’s standards that is and well equipped. Also has massive windows for daylight shoots inside. I looked through their portfolio and found myself getting more and more interested as I went along. It definitely got my attention and I want to try and get a few days of work experience there.

[bencebelso-blog]

Artist Research: Lisa Carletta

Natasha mentioned in the first tutorial, that seeing as my selected field would be an international artist, I should look up / contact Lisa Carletta, Belgian photographer based in Brussels and London.

I looked on her website which is absolutely stunning. Her work is amazing, the attention to colour is spectacular. There is a lot of stuff on her website, and as I looked through them, all the projects had the same resemblances – colour and contrast consistency, styling consistency. You could tell by every one of them that they were made by her. Exactly the opposite feeling of what I felt when I looked at Nanasi’s website. She has worked for a few brands, such as Volkswagen and a lot of editorial series for magazines such as Vogue, but she also does a lot of her own fine art stuff. She has a unique vision which I think I just fell in love with. I wish I had such a strong vision on how I want my images to look.

I definitely want to contact, but seeing as I don’t know much about her yet, I don’t know what I would like to ask her. Definitely mostly based around how she manages living in two countries at the same time.