Photography Studies College - Blog

PSC Alumni Ivan Kemp is about to launch his first solo exhibition. Ivan transitioned his career from IT Software to photography. It was his love of portrait photography and music that led him to this exciting project.
We caught up with Ivan to ask about his exhibition, his journey and to share some of his valuable music photography tips!

'Cutting the Chord - The Exhibition is an intimate exploration of Melbourne’s vibrant, dynamic, live music scene and is part of the Midsumma Festival. The images were taken over the last 18 months and capture moments in performance that cross genre, gender and venues.

Normally in an exhibition, photographs have the same colour palette to create uniformity. The images in this exhibition are anything but uniform. They are created to reflect the character of the performer, gig and the venue. Hence, black and white images and different colour palettes are used to highlight the diversity. Some of the musicians are well known but others are just starting their musical careers. All of them play to please their audience and to create their own style of music.' 

How did the opportunity to exhibit at the Midsumma Festival come about?

Last year, through a contact I was asked if I wanted the opportunity to photograph publicity shots for the production of Antigone X which was part of the Midsumma Festival 2018. I photographed the cast using the studios at PSC. This was followed up by photographs of the dress rehearsal. This was a great experience and introduced me to other opportunities since that event.

This year I took publicity photographs for Aidan Rolfe (singer / songwriter and guitarist) who has a show Kado Warehouse in Cremorne. After discussions with Aidan and Matthew Grant (owner of Kado Warehouse) we decided to combine a photography exhibition built around live musical performance around Melbourne with Aidan’s performance.

"Photography nourishes your soul. That’s essentially what it has done for me. You can’t place a monetary value on your creative soul. I am so glad to see Melbourne grow as a creative hub and really happy to be on my creative journey at PSC."

It was a wonderful moment to have PSC Alumni Takeshi Miyamoto visit our shores from Paris, to attend the Photobook Making Workshop, here at the college.  
We seized the moment to catch up with Takeshi to ask him about the international photography career he has forged since graduating.

Takeshi has travelled from Paris especially to attend the Photobook Making Workshop with book designers- Teun van der Heijden & Sandra van der Doelen from Heijdens Karwei in Amsterdam. 
This workshop attracted many prominent international, national and local photographers to PSC over a five day intensive program in December 2018..

Welcome back to Melbourne and PSC Takeshi! 

Tell us how you ended up living in Paris from growing up in Japan?

Thank you. It is very special to be back here and to see many familiar faces.

After graduating from PSC, I worked in Tokyo for about 4 years working for travel magazine, and I thought it was a time to discover new things in my life. I never lived in Europe before, and I was interested in the diversity of art & culture in Paris , so I lived there for one year and ended up staying.

PSC student Stavros Messinis was recently awarded the Ilford CCP Salon Best Photobook Design Award for his title "Dream State".
We recently caught up with Stavros to ask him about his recent success and his love of creating photobooks.

Congratulations Stavros. You must be very pleased with the outcome.

How did “Dream State “come about?

Thank you. Yes, the award was a wonderful surprise which I did not expect. I was just happy to present my work at such a great photography exhibition.
The "Dream State" started as a personal style development project at PSC. Working on this project, doing research, shooting, editing and presenting photos in the class and with the feedback I was getting, I believe I finally found a new way to express myself poetically through photography. This project is inspired by Surrealism, like my poetry. So, working on this project was an exciting experience.

"The main purpose of my work is to bring human rights issues to the forefront of public awareness with the long-term intent of changing governmental policy. I find that as a photojournalist I am perfectly placed to do this by telling the stories of those that otherwise wouldn’t have been seen or heard." 
- Chris Hopkins

Photograph by Chris Hopkins © 2018 for SBS Online 

Firstly, congratulations from all of us at PSC on your recent award and your amazing career to date!
Thank-you!


Can you tell us about the 'Nikon/Walkley Photographic Essay Award' and how it came about? Do you enter every year?
I enter most years and won a Walkley slideshow in 2012 but this is the first time I have won one of the major awards. I was commissioned by SBS in June to work with the small Rohingyan community living in Melbourne. In particularly we were following Yunus' story as he resolved to find a place in Australia whilst helping his family who were still in the camps in Bangladesh. Yunus left the violence in Burma a few years back, so not only was he living an uncertain future as an asylum seeker, he had to deal with the unknown of what was happening to his family last year (during the genocide) from afar.

We sat down with current first-year student Jacob Pattison to have a chat about why he decided to transfer universities to study something he loves. 

Did you study photography or media at school?

I didn’t actually study art or media subjects at Secondary school. I always enjoyed photography especially photojournalism. I took up photography on my own initiative, learning bit by bit and experimenting.

What were you hoping to study when you left school?

After leaving school I actually went and studied a Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics at a public university. I wasn’t completely satisfied with the course and always loved photography. So after 6 months I decided to follow my passion. I withdrew from my course and started researching different photography courses.

So you were looking at a few different options for photography?

Yes, I was looking into PSC and a public university that offers photography. I was originally wanting to do a Bachelor of Arts and minoring in photography, but then decided that I wanted to purely focus on photography. I knew if I really wanted to emerge myself in the industry then doing a Bachelor of Arts, with photography as a minor probably wouldn't be enough.

We caught up with  final year BA student, Sally Kaack in between preparing for her final folio and getting the wheels in motion for the end of year graduate year exhibition, "INLIGHT" scheduled for November! We asked Sally a few questions about her journey to date.

This week our Higher Education Course Director Daniel Boetker-Smith heads off to Europe and Asia, during his trip he will be attending events in Germany, the Netherlands and Singapore.

 "I liked that it  was a small community and photography focused, that was a huge plus. Most of all knowing it was not ATAR score based really took the pressure off me. It suited my way of learning and achieving."

Monica Wilmott is full of passion and enthusiam for photography. We checked in to see how she is doing and reflect on the past few years as a student at PSC.

Had you always wanted to study photography?
I’ve always had a keen interest in photography.  When I was 5 years old I got my very first camera and loved experimenting. At 16 I had an awesome opportunity with my Scouts Club to document a 3-week long trip to Adelaide.  It was a fun paparazzi project, we had to meet an assignment brief that was given to us by the club and the results were eventually published in the Scouts Newsletter. The big buzz was seeing my images featured in the newsletter with my name on it! I really enjoyed the entire experience and most of all having my work out there for all to see. From then on, I knew what I wanted to study photography.

So was photography all you were considering in year 12?
Well my school wasn't as supportive as I hoped. I knew I wanted to do photography regardless of the lack of encouragement from my careers teacher who was guiding me into more academic areas of study and that just wasn't me.

There were times I just looked at what was happening on the PSC website and I just wanted to go there. I applied through VTAC and the relief was knowing it wasn't  ATAR score based and that took the pressure off me.

We would like to focus on a phrase that we at PSC have all heard before. You may have been told this from an influencer in your life or you may have even said it yourself, “there are no jobs in photography”. Or, “there is no stability in a career as a creative.” So, we thought it was about time that we bust this myth wide open...

The cold hard facts…

Australia’s creative and digital industries – of which photography is an integral part – are two of the fastest growing sectors of our economy. Creative and digital industries represent $90 billion to the economy and employ over 6.2% of the Australian workforce, which is more than mining and agriculture (source: joboutlook.gov.au). 

In 2017, 15 700 people were employed in the photography industry alone. Of those, 57.8% of those jobs were in a full-time capacity. This does not include freelance photographers that may have also received the equivalent of a full-time workload. The job outlook website states that the photography industry as a growing sector and predicts there to be significant job growth in the next 5 years.