There is a new gallery that opened today in Leeds. This gallery at Flannels will be run by Leeds City College, where I am studying my foundation top-up degree.
It opened tonight started at 6pm and ending at 8pm!
The work exhibited was by the staff of the creative arts faculty at the college.
Me and my friend Jess put ourselves up to do photography for the event little did we know we were approach by a woman running it who worked for the shop Flannels in Manchester and came down to run this exhibition. She asked us to take a number of shots as we will be going back to the shop with the images on a disk so she can use them for advertisement. At first we was slightly confused that we was doing all this work and no pay however she said that they have no photographers in the Leeds area for events such as these that they are running and will be in contact with us to use us as the official photographers which then made it seem worth our while. Not only we was gaining experience, pictures for our portfolio we could also have got ourselves some regular work.Anyway on the way to Flannels for the exhibition we was wondering what type of work would be up. Jess said " from the flyer do you think its all of mouths" and I thought all the creative arts faculty wouldn't possibly just have an exhibition of pictures of mouths. When thinking about it a bit more on the walk down I worked out that the exhibition name was basically saying if we can teach it here is our work just as the saying 'put your money where your mouth is' made perfect sense.
After walking up billions flights of stairs to see we could of taken a lift the area of the exhibition was really nice. Since us students are not allowed to say really nice without an explanation my reasons for saying this is that, it looked very modern with bar and tables.
Candles and menus an area for a band and the walls which the work was on was very well lit.
The area was well presented and as soon as you got to the room people was there to take your coats and bags. Never had my coat taken off me before was nice felt posh!
To be honest I didn't really go round looking at the work I just started taking pictures of the people who was PRIVATELY invited ( how posh!) looking at the work and getting in small chit chat to one another.One of the issues was with my flash, I had put new batteries in before leaving to the exhibition and had to replace them half way through. My flash took a very long time to charge up and in the main room where people was sat chatting and buying drinks to set the mood their was no lighting and just candles. I was altering the direction of the flash to try get the best light but it mainly just lit up the front and made the back of the room extremely dark. I over come this by changing the position where I was shooting, I moved into the exhibition area as it had bright lighting and zoomed in slightly at the bar area which seemed to of lit the whole image a lot better.
The only work I had a good look at was my tutors it was like playing wheres wally but finding were my teachers work was instead.
As the night went ahead more and more people started to arrive, the mood was good champagne and wine flowing, canapes being nibbled and background music with a live band.
It was very busy, if I am honest I was really surprised by the whole event didn't expect the space to look like that and didn't expect that amount of people to turn up. Over all I would give this exhibition a 10/10!
