I met Matt through Open Forum advice sessions. I’ve now joined Matt Roberts Arts which “is a dynamic not-for-profit organisation founded in 2006 to create opportunities for artists in new locations and contexts. Matt Roberts Arts offers support to creative practitioners by providing a range of professional development programmes and national and international touring exhibitions.” Our meeting was encouraging and informative, with incisive analysis of the art scene, and bespoke prompts for career development.
The other element of the bursary activity is sessions at Untitled Print to enable me to document my work. At the first session Matthew Conduit focussed on image capture, lighting, colour calibration.
I’ve been buying the equipment ready to take better photos of my smaller work. I already have DSLR camera and 50mm and 85mm lenses, and have Photoshop.
I ordered a Kaiser copy stand from a photography shop in the Netherlands, an outlet of a German company. It arrived in a few days. I wonder if this sort of shopping will be so easy and well-priced in the future. I found some small spirit levels to use with this, one on the base board and another on the back of the camera.
Previously I had soft boxes (photo lights), but I found them too hard to ‘pop up’. Instead I’m now using two angle poise lights (Tertial from Ikea £9 each) with daylight bulbs (6400 Kelvin, 1900 lumens, E27 fitting).
Other kit: polarising filters are useful for reducing reflections work on shiny work, and grey and white calibration cards. I already put a charcoal thumbprint on the white calibration card – an occupational hazard!
