Andrew Brooks is a very skilled photographer who has been involved in photography for 7-8. Brooks gave a very interesting and informative lecture where he explained that he explores creative photography on order to develop his skills in his own time. I was very surprised as to how many projects he undertakes at any one time, as he showed us a variety of photographs taken in a range of locations around the world, and then explained that they were all taken in the space of 2 months. I felt a bit embarrassed about the amount of work I have achieved for this project so far.
Brooks went on to explain that leaving university can be quite lonely and hard to keep focused on what you're trying to achieve, and this is the reason he has started working in a shared building with individual studio space. He said that this gave him a better working atmosphere than working to home because not only are there other people to bounce ideas off of, but there's also the opportunity to collaborate ideas with people in other fields in order to get his work seen by a different audience. He went on to say that networking once leaving uni prevents isolation, and good collaborations are useful because it opens more options to when it comes to creating things you wouldn't e able to do on your own.
I was really surprised about the amount of time and effort it goes into taking one good photo. Brooks explained how one picture is actually made out of 30 to 100 photos, that are put together on photoshop. This method allows him to remix the original view that he was trying to capture, so he can alter the sky and alter the views perception of size and distance in the picture. This reminded me of graphic design because some of Brooks photos were of imaginary places that don't actually exist, such as his picture of Sea Land. I found this extremely fascinating that he could create these amazing almost collages of different images. The picture that really caught my eye was a poster he made for a northern band, where he has a small image of a knight riding a horse. He explained that the suite of armour that the character was wearing was actually a collection of photos he had taken in and around Manchester art gallery of silver wear objects, brass teapots etc. I thought this was really interesting that someone could be that creative, because I would never be able to look at cutlery and be able to imagine turning it into a shield by collaging photographs together.
