Alexia Sinclair

We were highly privileged to have renowned photographer and digital artist Alexia Sinclair join us for a day of discussion. This was an amazing experience, and one I will not soon forget. I have been a fan of Alexia ever since I discovered her work in 2008 when I stumbled upon her "Regal Twelve" series


Alexia Sinclair

To start with, Alexia presented to all 3 years regarding her background, education, inspirations and discussed some of her work - including her famous "Regal Twelve" and "Royal Dozen" series.

Alexia listed some of the people she finds most inspirational when it comes to her work, these included;

1. Patricia Piccinini - Australian (Born in Sierra Leone) artist and hyperreasist sculptor.
2. David LaChappelle - American photographer and director.
3. Erwin Olaf - Dutch photographer.
4. Oleg Dou - Russian artist/photographer
5. Annie Leibovitz - American portrait photographer
6. Eugenio Recuenco - Spanish photographer
7. Tim Walker -British fashion photographer
8. Jill Greenberg - American photographer

We were shown a quick video which showed some of the process behind creating this image below, which i found to be fascinating.



After her all years presentation, we broke for lunch and then 3rd years gathered for another session with Alexia. During this talk Alexia furthered discussed the industry. She talked about how it is very difficult to break into the industry, and even once you are in you still have to fight to get work.

Alexia mentioned how fashion shoots don't tend to pay well but you receive wide recognition from them, but relatively boring coffee or car ad work will pay big money but come with little to no recognition, so in order to be successful you would ideally try to balance some recognition shoots with some money shoots to keep your career on track.

Alexia then talked a bit more about her work, including how she does not necessarily know how to do everything she does in Photoshop off the top of her head, and will often simply Google a tutorial to see how best to achieve the effect she is after.

Looking through her beautifully printed and bound portfolio was simply amazing, and having her describe how some of the shots were achieved was astounding, an exceptional presentation by an exceptional artist.

When Alexia finally gets her personal workshops up and running, i will most definitely be attending one.

I have written more on Alexia on my research development page here, which includes examples of her work
http://burkestage5reseach.blogspot.com/2011/02/alexia-sinclair.html (i tried to make this a proper link and it kept disappearing when i posted it)