Digital Photography Competition 2011

In the madness that always descends at the end of each school year, the Digital Photography Competition got lost amongst the masses of other things going on.

To put that right, here are the winners and commended entries. Well done to all those that entered, please keep taking pictures and enjoy your photography. It's a hobby that will stay with you for life!

Digital Photography Competition

Photographer Beulah van Rensburg recently visited Kellett to cast her expert eye over our entries to the Digital Photography Competition. Beulah has worked with Kellett students before and is well known for her stunning images created from everyday household objects. There is a great opportunity to view Beulah's work at the Fringe Club in Lower Albert Road, where she has an exhibition from the 19th-29th June. More details can be found here.

Beulah was given the very difficult task of judging this year's competition, choosing a winner for each year group as well as an overall winner. She was very impressed by the standard and was amazed by some of the images taken by our Reception pupils. Given her expertise as a photographer, Beulah was able to explain what it was that made each photograph special and what techniques she spotted that our students had incorporated into their work. Having spent a lot of time looking at the photographs myself it was fascinating to hear her opinion and seeing her point out aspects of the photos that I had missed.

Beulah gave up a large amount of her time to judge the competition and we are very grateful to her for doing so. I'm looking forward to returning the compliment and going to view her exhibition later this week.

Below is a slideshow of each year group winner and runner up as well as the winner of the Best Portfolio, which appear at the end. I'm sure you will all agree that the standard is very high. Many thanks to all those that entered, we had over 500 individual images entered!

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

P3 Animoto Slideshow

P3 have just finished their Art in ICT module and it was a great success. We studied the art of Bridget Riley and used ICT to mimic some of her methods. Firstly we looked at the artist's early drawing in black and white and used a template to master the fill tool in Colour Magic.

During the second lesson we looked carefully at some of her coloured paintings and used templates to mimic them. We made effective use of ICT by saving our work continually after making changes, thereby enabling us to create a much bigger portfolio of work.

The later lessons involved students creating their own templates to fill. They used the Snap-to-Grid tool to help them create grids before filling them with colour and again saving lots of versions of their work. Some of their designs were amazingly intricate, as can be seen from the Animoto slideshow above.

There was some really creative work in the latter part of this module and the P3s worked really hard. Well done!

All the KS2 students at Kellett now have their own Animoto accounts so they can make their own slideshows on aspects of their studies.

Sneak Preview!

Here's a sneak preview of one of the ICT pages from this year's School Magazine which is busily being put together at the moment. The background of the pages are from a photo of the manipulated image of the building inauguration which appeared on the noticeboard outside the Music Room earlier in the year.

The idea of the pages is to convey how new technologies and applications are impacting upon the ICT curriculum. Hence, students using digital video equipment feature prominently, as do many of the applications we use on the internet; eg blogging, our Ning site and essentials such as Google Earth, Sketchup and Voicethread.

The finished publication will be ready early next term, but you can check out one of the ICT pages now!

Digital Photography Competition Results

If you haven't looked, the results of the Digital Photography Competition are now on the wall outside the Music Room. The standard was very high and it was extremely difficult for the judges to make their decisions. In each year group a number of entries were awarded a highly commended note alongside the year group winner.

So difficult was it to separate entries, that joint winners were declared in the P4 section. To be perfectly honest, any of the photos that received highly commended could have won their relevant section.

Congratulations to Florence who won the Overall Prize... an amazing picture (see below).

Well done to everybody that entered, I have been so impressed with your work and I know others have been too.

Digital Photography Competition

Here are some examples of the high standard of photography from this year's competition.

Visiting Artist

Yesterday saw the first visit of Beulah van Rensburg to Kellett to begin our Art/ICT project. She spoke to Year 7 students showing examples of her work, referring to her inspirations as well as the Surrealist movement in general.

We also had chance to ask some of the technical 'how to' questions that will help us to produce our finished artwork.

Beulah is pictured below with one of her images, entitled "Bellybuttons".




Beulah also works with the Chameleon Workshop. They have an exhibition entitled Day Dreams from April 11th. Full details can be found here.

Accessing Homework Pages During School Closure

Well done to all those students who have accessed the work left by teachers during the school closure. It's good to see you all using ICT to carry on your studies.

A big reminder to all those students who haven't entered the Digital Photography Competition yet. The closing date is next Tuesday so there's still time for you to get your entry to me! Of course, you will have to send your photographs in as attachements now by e-mail. For those of you in P1 or P2 it's ok to get somebody at home to help you with this part.. just make sure it's you that takes the photograph.

Here's one of the entries to get you inspired!

Art and Animation Project

We had an exciting meeting yesterday with Hong Kong based Australian artist Beulah van Rensburg, planning a project that we're likely to run in Years 5 & 7 next term. Beulah bases some of her fascinating artwork on found objects, such as old toys and household items.

The project will be a joint effort between the Art and ICT departments and will include construction and animation of models as well as a study of photographic techniques for students at Year 7. It sounds like a really exciting initiative and I'm already looking forward to it!

Start looking out for suitable items as soon as possible. We need old or broken toys, household objects such as teapots, crockery, and maybe even an iron or two!!

Digital Photography Competition 2008

One of the highlights of last year was Kellett School's first Digital Photography Competition. Pupils throughout the school entered, from Reception through to Year Six. A winner was declared for all the year groups and an overall winner also selected, pictured here.

The quality of entries was very impressive, making the judging extremely difficult. Hopefully, we will see an even larger entry for this year's competition.

The theme of the competition for this year is travel. Students are encouraged to take photographs having travelled 'somewhere'. This could be whilst on holiday during Chinese New Year, or simply whilst visiting somewhere in Hong Kong, e.g. Ocean Park. A few pupils have been a bit confused, thinking that the idea is to take a photo of a means of travel, such as an aeroplane! THIS IS NOT THE CASE! The theme of travel is as loose as possible so as to encourage as many entries as possible.

Pupils can use their own camera, or borrow somebody elses, but they can only enter photographs that they have taken themselves. If pupils wish to enter a portfolio of work rather than individual photos they may do so... quite a few did that last year.

The competition is a digital one, so paper copies of photos will not be accepted. Entries must be via a digital method, such as e-mail, or cd-rom or USB memory stick. If pupils would like to bring in the memory cards from their cameras, any one of the ICT team will help to download the photos. If you're a bit stuck about how to enter your photos we can help you sort them out...just ask.

The winning entries will be displayed around the school and on our web site and blog.

Well done to those pupils who have already entered. The closing date is the final day of this term; Tues 18th March

As usual in this type of competition, all judges decisions are final!

Good luck!!

Mr D