Monday 11 August 2008

Note to Self


I feel that this course is making me more focused in my practice. I feel more comfortable with my style of photography and have a more positive outlook of what I potentially can do with it and where it might fit. My approach to photography has pretty much always been related to exploring places, searching for locations that seem to tell a story. I took this same approach to my work this term but I also did portraits of people that I meet along the way. This was a first for me and to my surprise it felt very natural and I think the portraits worked quite well with the landscapes. I’m a bit worried though, that there is not enough stories to my work or that it lacks clarity. I research and read a lot but perhaps the images I take are to general? My ambition is not to create classic photo essays but more trying to give a sense or understanding of a place. At times I feel torn between aesthetics and content….
I want to continue to photograph in the same way for the borders project. I would also like to include text in future work, perhaps quotes or statistics to go with the images. I did experiment with that this term but feel that I have some way to go.

For me, being on this course has been very stimulating and really good for developing my thinking and understanding of the direction I want to take with my photography.
My experiences in Wimba World has been mainly positive. I find it hard though to be communicative and miss the form of the traditional classroom interaction. I think talking in small groups will help me a lot. But at the same time I really enjoy studying with everyone on the course and the fact that we live in so many different places adds a great sense of diversity and experience. The blogs are brilliant, it is great to read what everyone is doing, quite addictive, and I must start to write more on mine….

It was really good to do the ‘person at work’ etc. assignments, this has really made me a lot more aware of composition and the way I frame things. Saying that, I still keep ending up with some unforgivably crap images of things sticking out of peoples heads etc. I have also enjoyed the photographer lectures. It was new to me to look at some of these photographers’s practice in relation to other photographers work produced in the same era. And I can never have enough of photographer’s such as Evans, Frank, Eggleston and Sternfeld.
The photographer talks have been really interesting and I hope that we will get a lot more of them. Zijo Gafic’s work inspired me the most.

I need to learn more technical skills, my photoshop skills could be a lot better, trying to read things but learning curve is slow. It is also all the multimedia stuff, I feel a bit behind, some kind of workshop would be good…


Though I do enjoy shooting with an SLR I really feel the happiest with medium format, I’m drawn to the more ‘formal look’ and it feels the most suited for the type of images I like to take. And…I never thought I say this but I’m thinking of picking up the 5x4. I’m so in love with the formal and technical quality of the images it produces, but at the same time, this way of photographing will be completely new to me and the whole slowness and heaviness of the camera puts me off. I might just be too impatient to handle it, but I really want to have a go.