Back to Blogging!

It's been an awfully long time since I posted anything on this blog. 

Since university I have moved away from photography, I allowed myself stupidly to become distant from it and take a full time job elsewhere as at the time I believed this was the best thing to do for a better life. How wrong I was.

I have missed the art of Photography more and more each day I stay away from it, but snapping the odd candid photo of a building on my mobile phone isn't really what my heart needs. It yearns for my hands to reunite with a camera, for the images I capture only in my memory to be made permanent and to embellish paper with them.

I'm back to it now; selecting a lens for the Nikon f90x body I purchased a long time ago and never really got around to using. It's been sitting on display on a shelf gathering dust, disused and abandoned like a childhood toy longing to be picked up by a person full of passion and drive. The person I once was. 

Keep an eye on this page for more updates as I embark on my new journey. 

London Exhibition!

Recently my college held an event in the gallery of Mandela; Newcastle College to showcase the final work of the Fd Photography Students. This event opened and three pieces of my Victorian Horror work were on display. The most exciting part is that my work was able to be sent to London and one image was displayed A1 in The Print Space in Shoreditch.

This is an amazing opportunity for my work to be shown to both the public and professional photographers down in London; which is eventually where I want to be based. The work was on display for two weeks with an opening event on Thursday the 19th of June. The opening event allowed students, tutors and family to come down and see the pieces on display. This event was an amazing experience and to see my work on the wall in a London gallery was the best feeling I have felt yet.

Below are some quick snaps of the image I displayed in London with some of my classmates work too. The other two images that created the triptych on display in Newcastle can be found at: http://dannyrowlandphotography.4ormat.com/portraiture

London - March 2014 - Day Two

My second day in London began with 'breakfast' (if you can call it that) in my hotel before setting out to visit Ashley Cameron in his studio in Kenbury Street. He started by showing us a quick preview of his website and the work he had been doing both personally and commissioned. We had a chance to look in depth into some of his best work, we were able to see the Photoshop documents of the final images to see exactly what had been edited and how he had done it, showing us the exact stages he took to create the final piece. One of the most interesting to look at was a shoot he did on the rock Kjeragbolten in Norway. He talked in depth about the whole process of the shoot, from where they stayed, how long it took to reach the top of the mountain and how the model was able to crawl around the rock before finally posing nude upon it. The Photoshop document had hardly any editing done to it; it was an amazing piece of work. More on his work can be found here: http://www.ashleycameron.com/

The next stop was David Gill's studio; we had the chance to talk a little bit about being a still life photographer and what the job entailed. We were lucky enough to see a shoot he had just done and explore the camera equipment he used to shoot his images. His studio was one of the smaller ones I have seen, but being a still life photographer he was comfortable working in it, creating set ups that best used the space and produced some fantastic end results. I am not a huge fan of still life as I like to shoot people, but it was a fantastic experience to hear the story of his progression into Photography and take an in depth look into an area of photography I don't know a lot about. Gill's work can be found here: http://www.davidgill.com/

My final stop, and the most exciting of the day, was a journey to Seamus Ryan's studio. The studio is in a fantastic arty location and stepping into his studio was like the scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where they open the door to the chocolate room. I was instantly greeted to a fantastic space filled with portraits and the best part, a photo booth in the corner which we were allowed to play around with. I love photo booths and the photos we managed to get were brilliant. Once we had finished being children we went into his office and he explained how he had created the photo booth originally and how that progressed into Booth Nation being created. His office also had an old children's ride which was a perfect addition to the studio and a Game & Watch box on top of a cupboard which was amazing to see. He talked about both working with celebrities and his Sunday shoots where he allows the public to come in and he shoots their photographs every Sunday. Seamus is a fantastic person and photographer and I believe you should defiantly check out his work here: http://www.seamusryan.net/ we also had the chance to look at his portfolio and get to know how his career developed stage by stage. 

David Gill's Studio

David Gill showing us his camera

Entrance to Seamus Ryan's Studio

Inside Seamus Ryan's Studio

Inside Seamus Ryan's Studio

London - March 2014 - Day One

I have just returned from what I can only explain as the best experience in my whole life. I was lucky enough to be able to travel down to London with some of my Uni class and have the opportunity to meet some of the top photographers working down there and visit some amazingly inspiring galleries. There are some quick snaps taken on my mobile phone on the go to illustrate this experience and give you a look into London and the studios.

My first visit once we had been checked into our hotel in Russell Square was the Photographers Gallery just off Oxford Street. We headed to the nearest tube station and boarded a train. This was my first ever experience of the London Underground system and it was an amazing surprise, the underground stations were an amazing place to explore, they differ so much from each other that some of them are like stepping into another world. Once we arrived at the gallery we took a good look around working our way from the top to the bottom of the gallery. Not all of the work was very inspiring, a lot of the 'art' that was on the walls didn't appeal to me. However there was one exhibition that was right up my street; David Lynch’s "The Factory Photographers". A little preview of this can be seen here: http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/the-factory-photographs 

After this gallery, we went off to Westminster to have a look at the London Eye and Big Ben. I thought Big Ben would have been a little bigger than it was, but it was still nice to have the opportunity to see it. We took a walk across the bridge to the South Bank and found the Undercroft which had a petition to sign in order for the park to not be re-located or re-designed turning it into a retail space. I immediately signed this, the space is amazing! It's so nice to see a place for people to skate and generally hang out. There are enough spaces in London to add more retail space too.  More on this can be found here: http://www.llsb.com/about/ and it would be amazing for more people to take action on this matter.

The Photographers Gallery

View from the top floor of The Photographers Gallery

Big Ben and Underground Sign

South Bank Undercroft

South Bank Undercroft

All photographs Copyright Danny Rowland Photography

Uni Final Show at Print Space, London

It's almost time to get prepared for the final show of my foundation course! It's being held at Print Space in London and will include the work of my fellow university students. I'm very excited to have the opportunity to show some of my work down in London as I believe it is a great place to be noticed, for professionals to see what I am up too and hopefully to get some work from it. I plan on moving to London in a couple of years to continue my career down there as I believe it is a stepping stone to my final point of happiness in photography.

I was lucky enough to visit the space on a trip to London with my uni friends and see exactly what my print was going to look like and where it was being displayed.

Watch this space for more on my London experience!

First Steps Into Film Photography

Recently I purchased a Nikon F90x SLR camera after some research into price and quality, the F90x is one of the best choices I could have made. I immediately went out and bought some film and grabbed a lens.

I ran out to Richardson Dees Park in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear with Tom Angus as my model and started snapping away, feeling quite nostalgic with the noises the camera was making, taking me back to being a little lad when I was first exploring photography as a hobby; it was the film cameras that initially got me into it as not only was it magical to me how images were captured; they were so interesting and I always wanted to know how they worked.

Below is one of my favourite images I captured, the colours aren't perfect but I think that's due to the lens I was using keeping the aperture open for too long and letting in too much light.

The shoot went quite well, but the place I got the photographs processed at didn't really do the best job. I didn't want to attempt to process colour film myself without having someone who knew exactly how to do it to aid me with it as the shoot was an important part of my portfolio. This has made me eager to shoot more on film as I believe the quality and overall feel of the images is amazing compared to digital images.

©Danny Rowland Photography

Something Old, Something New - Discovery Museum

Recently, three class mates and I were asked to do a photo shoot of wedding costumes that were on display in the Discovery Museum to become part of their archive. I was really excited to have this opportunity to not only take photographs, but also to see and feel the different costumes from various periods of time.

It took a while to get the equipment carried to the museum and set up, we had to move a large number of mannequins out of the way just to have the space in the store to set up!

I learned a lot about wedding costumes and the cultures that they came from; we shot three wedding dresses and a grooms costume. The experience was amazing, I was able to visit the store where all the clothing is kept from the modern age to items that have been frozen and stored for many many years. They are frozen not only to preserve the various clothing items, but also to ensure there are no insects or living bacteria that could damage them. There was even a quarantined outfit wardrobe that looked rather scary! We had to wear white cotton gloves to ensure we didn't damage the clothing or put our DNA on to it. It was brilliant to be able to go behind the scenes and see what goes on in the museum that the public are not able to see.

Below is a bridesmaids dress we had the privilege of using in the photo shoot; along with a '70's brides dress, modern Indian brides dress and a modern Pakistani grooms costume.

Find out a little more about the exhibition and where to find it here: http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/discovery/whats-on/exhibitions/something-old-something-new.html