Open the door. Inside. Who s who at OCA. OCA student: Victoria Rahm. OCA student: Rob Brisco. OCA tutor: Joe Fox. Back page 4 & 5 6 & 7 2 & 3

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1 Open College of the Arts SHOWCASE2011 No. 1 Open the door By James Payne One year on from validation of the OCA s open learning photography degree programme, students are making good progress. We catch up with some of them and one of their tutors. Inside OCA student: Rob Brisco OCA tutor: Joe Fox OCA student: Victoria Rahm Who s who at OCA 2 & 3 4 & 5 6 & 7 Back page

2 Student: Rob Brisco I m developing About four years ago, I decided to buy a digital SLR. I d had a couple of film SLRs when I was younger: an old Canon when I was at school replaced by an Olympus when I was at college, however, I found that life sort of got in the way for the next 20 years and the camera became a point and shoot and photographs were only of family holidays and Christmas. After buying a real camera again, I re-caught the bug, and three years ago I enrolled on my first OCA course (The Art of Photography). Now it s pretty much just down to the final stretch with Photography 3: Your Own Portfolio and Advanced, so hopefully soon I ll have a BA Hons) degree in Photography. Over those three years, I can see that my style and subject matter has changed. I used to change pretty much everything to black and white, now I prefer colour although I still dabble with monochrome from time to time. Sometimes I think that this is because I haven t found my true voice, other times I know it is because I m actually experimenting. I m developing (pun intended, sorry ). The most surprising twist in my photographic genesis has been with Photography 2: Landscape though. I started the course thinking that it might be the lesser of two evils for me, but looking back I ve really enjoyed it. Sure, there s been ups and downs along the way, but I figure that if it was all plain sailing then I wouldn t get as much out of it. As they say, no pain, no gain. 2

3 My own personal take on landscape photography may not be to everyone s taste; I don t generally photograph sunsets and grand vistas, preferring the more down to earth subjects that we all see on a day-to-day basis and perhaps overlook. One of my tutors even described a year long exploration of seasonal effects on roundabouts in North West England and North West France as eccentric. I m not really sure why He actually meant it in a good way though, and I m being encouraged to take it further, expanding the study. I probably will and it could feature in my final portfolio. Studying with the OCA has been quite straightforward. I ve done distance learning before so I knew I had the will power, but regardless of this I found it relatively easy to study photography alongside working and enjoying a home life. I know distance learning causes problems for some people, especially with the isolation but there really is a good community on the various forums, so you don t need to study alone. There s always someone who has done it before or is doing it at the same time and I can find that stimulating in itself. I m now at a point when I m looking at taking the next step, to start trying to forge a living with photography and contemporary landscapes in particular. Of course, should the opportunity arise I d love to do some travel, or even settle overseas for a while to allow me to fully explore a different culture but with English eyes. This is something I really couldn t have envisaged doing without taking the courses first, partially because of the confidence factor but mostly because, looking back at my earlier photographs, those that I was so proud of at the time, they seem so naïve. I needed to learn about imagery and this is something OCA has helped me with, guiding me through visual culture and my own investigation of photographers and photography. Will I be successful as a working photographer? Only time will tell, but if you see my name in lights at a gallery somewhere in the future you can be sure that it was OCA that kicked me off on the road to fame and (hopefully) fortune. 3

4 Tutor: Joe Fox Dances with Foxes Again photography wasnt even on the radar but I knew I didn t want a proper job any more and had various plans for self employment. To help fund my other plans I did some temping short term work and went to work for a local event photographer during the holiday season peak periods. I began to enjoy that side of the work and became more and more involved in the photography business. I decided to stop doing the temp work and just continue on temping as a photographer until I got my other plans finalised. I then decided to give the photography business six months and have been giving it six months ever since! How did you get interested in photography? It all started for me back in 1981 when I was 10 years old. We lived in West Belfast and the troubles were at one of their peaks during the 1981 hunger strikes. My parents had enrolled me in an exchange programme called euro children and I went to live with a family in Geneva for a month. The night before I left, my aunt turned up on the doorstep with a compact film camera and told me that I couldn t go all that way without taking some photos to bring home. After I graduated my first degree I spent every penny I had on a round europe rail ticket, spending money of 10 a day and a 35mm praktica BX20 twin lens and flash kit and the rest as they say is history. Did the business work out the way you planned? I would have loved to say it did but I would be lying. The key phrase there is business, I continued to work for the local photographer as part of an event business and learned a lot of the technicalities of running the business there and I probably got more referrals from him in my first year than business I generated myself. I went to work for a local newspaper group which was invaluable experience, at first taking all the boring mundane jobs on that no-one else wanted to do and then progressing on to the more interesting work. Whilst the troubles were officially over Belfast was still an interesting place to be a press photographer. You could be photographing cars for the local dealers advert in the paper in the morning and have people throw pipe bombs at you in the evening. How did you get interested in the professional side of photography? In all honesty, I never was. I look back now at the places I travelled and the things I have seen and realise the money I could have made back then. It was always a hobby and strange as it may seem I still always bought postcards just in case the film didn t come out. I had always wanted to be an engineer and after two electrical/electronic engineering degrees and 10 years in the software industry I thought that was always the way it was going to be. Family circumstances meant I took a one year career break and I started to look at other options. 4

5 The portfolio was getting interesting so I applied to a US agency, Wireimage, to cover events in Ireland at a national level. When they were bought out by Gettyimages I was covering entertainment all over Ireland for them. I had gone from hard news to photographing gigs, a-listers attending events and red carpets. As with most full-time working photographers these days, often it s just not one particular specialism that keeps food on the table so I ve also been involved in motorsports photography, both from an event point of view and from part owning a motorsport magazine as well as the wedding and portrait side of the business. When I was a kid my aunt was a drama teacher and she took my sister and I to the Rock Nativity in the Lyric Theatre in Belfast in We were up on stage and we danced as part of the show, and we both still remember it. The kids in our groups generally speaking have had a hard life and will continue to have hard lives but for a short time they get to dance on a large stage in a venue they may never set foot in again, in front of all their family and no-one will ever be able to take that away from them. I tend to re-evaluate the business every 18 months or so but that time period is becoming shorter in the current financial climate and recently I have been concentrating on editorial/stock photography as well as the training aspects with my own corporate photography training and the OCA. The editorial photography market is in decline and I saw the changes coming 2 years ago so stopped contributing to Gettyimages and started to work on my own photo agency project, which is located at The new website will go live Q and this will be a major push for the business in 2011/2012 with an aim to stop contributing to other agencies in this time period and develop my own brand. What would be the job you enjoy the most? I am heavily involved with local Dance photography. One of the groups I work with takes children and teaches them contemporary dance over a period and they then put on a show in one of the big venues such as the Waterfront and Ulster Halls in Belfast. The groups of children vary but include special needs schools, cross -community organisations and children with learning difficulties or disruptive educational backgrounds. For years to come they can walk past the venue and tell people they danced there and that there wasn t a dry eye in the house......and they have the photos to prove it.

6 Student: Victoria Rahm One step at a time I have never been able to draw, but I feel that I have found my niche, using photography to express myself artistically. People might think that taking photos is just about pressing a button, but there is actually so much to learn in order to create good images that illustrate your own particular way of seeing the world around us. I am not particularly interested in the technology or in owning the latest camera, or the fanciest lens. I am much more interested in finding unexpected or quirky ways of looking at our reality. It feels great when I m out on a photo shoot, and I see lots of interesting details, shadows and reflections; or when using long shutter speeds to portray something in an almost poetic way. I have studied with OCA for two and a half years and I am currently doing my third Level 1 course People and Place. Before starting my current course, I hadn t taken a lot of photographs of people. The beauty of OCA courses is that they push you outside your comfort zone, and you have to try genres you hadn t tried before. I have now learnt to really enjoy taking portraits, and I especially enjoy communicating with the subject to make them comfortable and relaxed which is essential to capturing their personality or getting a glimpse of their core. It was just after I had bought my first DSLR that I came across the Open College of the Arts mentioned in a photography web forum. I was a total beginner and I wanted to do a course in photography to learn the basics, but I didn t have the time to attend courses in the evening after work. I looked around at different possibilities, but there aren t that many places offering distance learning in photography. Reading up on the courses OCA offers, I thought they offered a solid background, with a well-known and respected photographer writing the courses. 6

7 Initially I just wanted to learn more about how to use the camera and how to translate the images I saw into photographs. I didn t plan to do a full degree, but I have now become addicted to learn more about photography. The most important lesson I have learned is to find your own artistic voice. Students are encouraged to do research outside the strict parameter of the course work, but it s really up to each student how much extra reading they want to put in. Tutors will always advise you to look at other artists work to inform your own. Obviously the extra work and research will be reflected in the assessment results at the end of the course....i am employed full time, as an administrative assistant. It has nothing to do with art at all, so I m glad to have an outlet for my creativity. Study with the OCA is very flexible and a good option for me because I can fit it in to my busy lifestyle. I enjoy the fact that I can study at my own pace. Sometimes life is busier, and then you can slow down the speed of study, and pick up when you have more time. The tutor will, though, keep an eye on you so that you don t stop completely. It suits me to be able to study at home, instead of going to regular classes in the evening time after work. Work and commuting take up a lot of my time during the week. I am employed full time as an administrative assistant. It has nothing to do with art at all, so I m glad to have an outlet for my creativity. My colleagues know I m studying photography. It could take me another 4 years to gain my degree. I don t know at the moment what I would do then, but it seems a shame to have a degree in photography and not use it for something useful. Sometimes I dream about being able to make a living of photography, but I feel I m not ready to make that step at the moment. 7

8 Showcase is published by the Open College of the Arts. Open College of the Arts The Michael Young Arts Centre, Redbrook Business Park Wilthorpe Road, Barnsley S75 1JN Telephone: Web: Registered charity no: Company limited by guarantee no: OCA welcomes contributions to Showcase but reserves the right to edit materials at its discretion. Views and opinions expressed in Showcase are not necessarily those of OCA, nor does the inclusion of an item, insert or advertisement constitute a recommendation. To amend your contact details or to give feedback please contact Dee Whitmore, Marketing and Events, on or deewhitmore@oca-uk.com New degrees available We are very pleased to announce that it is now also possible to study for a BA Hons Textiles or a BA Hons Creative Writing degree through the Open College of the Arts. We expect these new degrees to follow in the highly successful footsteps of the OCA s BA Hons Painting, Photography and BA Hons Creative Arts, in widening access to higher education art degrees. Further details of these new degrees will shortly become available on the OCA website at Who s who at OCA Woody Whittick will be joining the OCA team as the Head of Learner Support on March 1st Woody discovered the joy of design in her thirties whilst recovering from a paralysing injury, and ended up studying couture millinery, corsetry, interior design, jewellery-making and textile art (some of it by distance learning). She went on to launch her own fashion & accessories label She s All That, winning awards for her work and designing for several celebrities. Woody is something of a perpetual student who is always adding to her skills. Her career has included managerial posts within voluntary sector organisations, frontline business support to independent market traders and several learner support roles within a variety of creative Schools at the University of Leeds. Woody s hobbies include reading (mainly whodunnits and thrillers) and cooking. New Music course launched We are delighted to announce the launch of our exciting new music course, entitled Music 1: From the Present to the Past, developed for us by OCA tutor Carla Rees. This course starts with the present day, including contemporary classical composers, film and world music, and works backwards, focusing on how one generation has influenced another. Students are not required to have any formal qualifications, instrumental expertise or prior knowledge of music theory. It is targeted at all those with an interest in classical music and who want to develop a deeper understanding of composers, their context, repertoire, and instruments. For more information, read the course description on or contact the Operations Team and ask for a sample from the course. As a special bonus this year, we are offering free access to an online music theory course. This is entirely optional but provides an excellent opportunity to learn more about theory, especially from a popular music or jazz perspective. For more information about this optional extra, see: