Take Full Control of Your Camera – Photography Class with Ian Southerin
A camera is a tool that we use to take pictures. To create great photographs, we need to know how to use our camera properly. In a similar way a cabinet maker uses a chisel to create great furniture, the chisel doesn’t make the furniture it’s the skill of the cabinet maker. He controls the chisel.
If you don’t know how to control your camera, you will find producing great photographs very difficult. We can teach you how to take control of your camera.
Modern cameras have lots of different modes for exposure and focus, unfortunately this makes the modern camera difficult to understand. Do you understand all of the buttons and dials on your camera?
We will teach you how to use focus. We will teach you how to get the correct exposure every time. We will teach you how to take photographs in difficult conditions. We guarantee that you will learn some very useful skills including how to create ‘blurry’ backgrounds, freezing motion and getting things sharp from front to back.
This course runs from The Chester Art Centre. We will be using Chester as our backdrop. The day will start with a 90 minute classroom session then it is out into town putting into practice what we have learnt. We will then return to the classroom for a debrief and to revue our photographs.
This course is beneficial to beginners and the more advanced photographer. We teach in our unique way that inspires and keeps the interest of everyone.
Just turn up with any camera that has a ‘manual’ setting.
Our teacher Ian is a professional full-time photographer, who has won many awards and truly loves his profession. You can view some of his work on his website:
http://locationphotography.co.uk/stories/
Cost £70 – Maximum Number of People 8
Creativity Awakening Seminar with Anastasia – Overcoming FEARS (of rejection, failure, reproach).
NEXT Creativity Awakening Seminar to take place at Chester Art Centre on 21 February between 6:30 PM and 8 PM (onwards). For those who couldn’t attend the previous ones there is still an opportunity to get creative ! 🙂
Theme of the night: Overcoming FEARS (of rejection, failure, reproach).
This time we will focus on fears, insecurities and uncertainties.
‘Why do you want to paint? Why are you spending all this money on crafting materials? Have you got nothing else to do?’
The answer is very simple: because it makes us happy! There is nothing wrong with wanting to make stuff, being creative and trying different things. Unfortunately, so many of us are too scared of not being good enough, not finding appreciation or feeling we would have to ‘justify’ our desires to others around us.
Stop feeling guilty and sacred. Embrace your creativity – whether you are secretly writing poems (and then hiding them), or would like to take on acting/painting/photography/knitting/wood carving (or ANYTHING creative!).
Join us for an informal seminar based on a chapter from my course, meet like-minded people with the same difficulties and find the ways to change the things you want to change.
We DO have SOLUTIONS! 🙂
Looking forward to seeing you there!
21 February 6:30 PM – 8 PM
Book NOW to avoid disappointment!
hello@chesterartcentre.co.uk
01244313700
OR
Send us a PayPal payment to book instantly:
https://www.paypal.me/artexclusive/5
Neil Kendall Burlesque Photography Exhibition
Neil Kendall has been established on the worldwide Vintage Photography scene since 1990. He currently lives in Chester.
He is known internationally as an award-winning photographer shooting campaigns for such celebrities as Dita Von Teese who called him ‘’a genuine talent ‘’. And underground heroes such as Violet Chachki, a recent winner of RuPauls Drag race in America .
In 2018 He was voted National Vintage Photographer of the Year and Number One Burlesque Figure in the World in the international Burlesque top fifty poll.
His Portraits are inspired by his love of Hollywood and each set is a miniature production. Often working with local Chester Artist Russell Kirk and Painter Mark Bell.
My portraits are as much about placing my sitter in an fantasy, a magical world. I want my sitters to have the old Master treatment as I often find them so Royal and aristocratic to shoot. I want my subject s,who are often other worldly to recline and pose in miniature worlds which match their own inimitable aesthetics and ultimately create vintage inspired but uniquely charming portraits.
The Exhibition will spring to life on August 11th at St Mary’s Centre with a live Cabaret featuring Burlesque and Boylesque from around the World at St Mary’s Centreto coincide with Chester Pride.
A focus of this exhibition is on artists who are part of the international Lesbian, Gay and Trans communities and Neil Kendall is proud to be associated in partnership with Chester Pride on August 11th.
The exhibition will run from 2 August until 15 August.
We look forward to seeing you at the private view on 2 August between 6.30 PM and 9 PM for a couple of glasses of wine and some amazing images!
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Unwrapped Exhibition
The Unwrapped Exhibition will feature Gary Sheridan’s two most recent bodies of work from 2017 and 2018 entitled “Cluedo” and the aptly named “Unwrapped” series.
Cluedo
The Cluedo series of images explores the fragility and value of life. Not only how society values life but how we can value our own lives.
Inspired by William Blake’s poem The Fly, this piece flips the characters role in the board game Cluedo on its head, the living (the suspects in the murder of Mr Black in Cluedo) are the dead in this series, “My thoughtless hand has brushed away” William Blake.
The series juxtaposes the beauty of life and the seduction of aesthetics with death scenes, flipping the mind between one and the other in a blink of an eye, just as life can become death.
Little Fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death;
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.
Unwrapped
In the Unwrapped series of images Gary uses similar technique and style to that in the Cluedo series, but even more vibrant, beautiful and provocative images with a vein of humour (awkward) to portray how in the perfect world, life should feel. He draws on fashion styled and cinematic scenarios/stills to ask the spectator to imagine what led to these imaginary moments in time. They tell a story of breakdowns and depression, which is often an awkward subject to discuss, but whilst it has been a subject rarely discussed there has been a steady increase in suicides worldwide over the past 45 years. Till we have got to the point where there are 50% more suicides than there were 45 years ago (reported by the World Health Organisation). We need to discuss what is happening to a world where 50% more people don’t want to live in it.
It was whilst studying photography at the University of Wolverhampton in the UK that Gary found his passion for conceptual photography. His work draws on personal experience and a natural inquisitiveness in human behaviour.
He constructs (often building sets in his studio) a series of work from a concept, such as in his recent work – Cluedo, or he will see images in everyday life that speaks volumes to him, such as the piece Arbitrate. Whichever method of construction he uses, he intends the images to be multi-layered and engage the viewer thoughtfully not just aesthetically. His work is vibrant, beautiful and seductive with a vein of humour that runs through its body, just as life should be, yet life is often not a bed of roses and Gary’s work reveals a troubled society.
We look forward to seeing you for the private view on 12 July between 7 PM and 9 PM.
The exhibition will run until 24 July.
Chester Art Centre Photographic Association monthly meeting
Chester Art Centre Photographic Association monthly meeting
Chester Art Centre Photographic Association monthly meeting
Chester Art Centre Photographic Association monthly meeting
Chester Art Centre Photographic Association monthly meeting
A Trick Of The Light – Photography exhibition by Sid Turner
A Trick Of The Light is an exhibition of Chester Photography exhibition by Sid Turner, who specialises in black and white photography and captures those magical moments of life turning them into unforgettable memories.
‘As Lennon sang, “There are places I’ll remember…”
I have been visiting Chester and taking photographs for a long time, consider for a moment the act of taking a photograph, to capture the fleeting moment .
Freezing images from reality is not reality , it is an abstraction that echoes the reality we experience. We see in colour, it is a dominant dimension which can over-ride what lies beneath, no colour is one more level of abstraction allowing us to see with new eyes
B&W photography lends itself to abstract realism—the emphasis on pure form, pure shape, line and contour, then contrast, tone and texture, images can be strong, high contrast and powerful – or they can be so soft, gentle and subtle, it lends a certain timeless quality to the images. Black and white images are paradoxically more evocative than colour, they stimulate a faster onrush of memories because less has been given, more has been left out…you have to fill in the blanks yourself
Where better to practice this art than Chester, the black & white city?’
(Sid)
The exhibition will run between 22 March and 9 April.
Join us for some amazing Chester Photography, a glass of wine and meet the artist on 23 March between 6.30 and 8.30 PM!
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