The last teaching session of my fifth year is in the can and my work almost complete. I’ve readied the written work and portfolio of images for uploading to the Canvas page and now I’m writing this post to reflect back upon the year.
Dissertation
Whilst I applied for the course back five years ago with a hope of improving my photography I soon found out that there was more writing to it than I had originally envisaged. It had been a while since I’d been in education but cracked on with it with, as Wade Wilson might say, Maximum Effort.
This year being the final year for the full time students and the first half of my final year (or two) meant that there is a dissertation to compose and I came up with some ideas that might fit the bill. A few topics were narrowed down to the final topic of Grief and the loss of local architecture. My mother had died not long before the start of the academic year and grief was in my mind, simultaneously I was getting involved in the local Council Headquarters that had recently been set for demolition.
We had a date for the draft of the dissertation to be handed in before the Christmas break so I worked so hard on getting as much into it’s final state as possible. I’d done a great deal of research from many different sources including book sin the University library, books from eBay and Amazon, electronic versions of books from the University Library website, journals, magazines in both paper and electronic form and even movies, radio and TV. I spent ages going through the relevant sources for information and quotes that fitted in with my dissertation, pulling out the quotes into a OneNote section. I also used the tools available on the Uni’s library website, such as CiteThemRightOnline, the guidelines about the Harvard Referencing, Refworks and also mybib. I use refworks and mybib to document the sources for the reference materials and it gathers them into a single (or two) place to prevent me losing them. The majority of the references that I stored were in mybib and it makes it super easy to spit it all out in a Harvard format for the Reference List and Bibliography.
The whole document ended up at version 9 for the draft at December and version 17 for the final export. Each version was a trimmed down and cleaned up version of the end result. I filled the document with three times as many words as the 5000 word count would allow and at the Draft hand in it was around 5400, we are allowed 10% each way so this was fine.
The feed-forward from Gavin was produced in January and although it suggested a few items that could be changed for the better, I got the impression that, because it was only 20% of the the final mark that I had done enough to achieve a good enough mark not to worry about it too much. Some of my coursemates handed in a page with a few headings and others had done more to meet the majority of it before December but I was glad that I had done as much as possible.
This year, during the Easter break from Uni, I spent five evenings and a day on rejigging the whole document, using Gavin’s feedback as a guide. I document this process in this post previously. It is now ready on version 17 with a word count of 5250 and saved in Word, exported to the PDF format that will be uploaded to the coursework portal.
Overall, I’m happy with the end result, it seems tighter, and talks less about other art being used in grief therapy as I don’t really need to look into this. It was about photography so I refocussed it on photography. There were some notes about it being descriptive so I reworded a few passages to remove the description of something and replace it with my interpretation of its meaning. There were also some parts that didn’t connect smoothly so I used samples provided and other documents and research to figure the right way to connect the papragraphs. The final version is a more readable document but it has no definitive answer, which is fine. It adds to the plethora of research that others have done in the past but still requires further study by more adequately trained professionals in the psychological sciences. I think it will be enough to get me a good mark for this section of the learning objectives.
Reviews
Throughout the year we’ve had four group reviews where we sat int he studio basement or classroom to listen to presentations by our peers and then the questions and feedback that was a result.
Many of my classmates started this year with a big issue doing the presentations to the whole group but over the course of the year most have now become more comfortable with only one or two choosing to present only to the lecturers. Some of the younger members of the group have also grown in their professionalism with some really lazy attempts early on and much improved slides at the latter stages. There are still some of my classmates who have struggled to do a lot of photography that fits in to their project idea and have presented similar work several times with small images on the slides even after being previously told to ensure that the photos on slides are as large as possible. Most of the group have matured and now listen to the instructions of the course leaders and tutors but there are still, even at the final month, who don’t pay much attention to the advice and have bumbled along.
Some of the work presented by my peers has blown me away due to it being in my wheelhouse, other works have left me empty and devoid of feeling for them but it is more to do with the effort expended to get the photos and if I can see that a result of poor planning or laziness then it does impact my judgment. My work might be considered quite boring when presenting to the group, after all I’ve been photographing a concrete building from all different angles, some of my colleagues appreciate it and others shy away from talking about it. The last couple of times we’ve presented work to the group though I’ve made a concerted effort to present the photographs sans words. I usually present slides that have the title of the module, the student number, the section that I’m discussing and then the last few slides ar ethe larger images. Recently though my slides have been all photographs, as large as they can be on the powerpoint/PDF page with only a name on the front slide. This is due to listening to the feedback and critique resulting from the reviews. I think the reviews have helped me throughout the year and aided me in understanding the levels that other people were working to. It’s also allowed me to engage with other members of the group about their work and discussing shared aesthetics and techniques etc.
Tutorials
There have been a few tutorials throughout this academic year with Gavin as my tutor and a couple of words here and there from Euripides. They have mostly been discussions about the dissertation contents, the practical work that I am doing and other influences that they think might be able to stir up some more creativity and provide some more context to my work. Whatever we discuss I usually document in the journal and these can be seen throughout the year. I’m generally a hard worker who is a self-starter and happy to get out shooting whenever I can so I always have some extra frames in the can ready to discuss and some of these were brought into the portfolio as well as park some new logical pathways to other artists.
The course leaders helped me out at the start of this academic year by allowing me to attend on the one day and pull the tutorials into the same day, where it would normally be the next day to align with the full time coursemates. I’ve had some good discussions with Gavin about the work and where it might lead after the end of this year, down to the chats about my “Portrait of Shirehall being a gateway into a project similar to that at Longbridge where an arts movement was formed around the loss of the facility. Part of my dissertation was a framework to handle the change management by getting the community involved in photography and art as the building was closer to demolition.
We have also mentioned Photo Walks in the tutorials and the fact that I could organise a photo walk around Shrewsbury to take photos of the Shirehall and other structures of interest, maybe even some street photography. I am going to look into this over the summer holiday as it might be a way to introduce my work to more photographers and artists.
Live Brief
As per the previous years I’ve not been able to attend for many of the live briefs that are presented by the course team including working with lawnmower company, football clubs, weddings, religious celebrations, coffee promo, business style headshots for different companies and the uni as well as live music briefs at nearby clubs, bars and venues. The majority of the live briefs are impossible for me to fit in with my full time employment and family life, but one popped up that was to act as an assistant for Pete Muller who was carrying out a photoshoot at a local (to me) prison. More about that can be found in this post, but it was a valuable experience and whilst I did not get paid anything for it I found the experience and the networking opportunity to be valuable. I learnt a lot about lighting and how fiddly it can be, also how to deal with models and assistants, the results speak for themselves and it was definitely worthwhile.
Artists Talks
We had a few talks from artists over the year with Kris Askey, Ian Gavan and David English as well as talks outside of the uni that I went to. Those included Peter Mitchell and Janine Wiedel. Again, these are invaluable to my practice as many of the topics discussed are relevant to my work. It’s useful to see the different styles of presentations and how the presenters deal with questions and engaging the room of people. The differences between them is difficult to quantify, some use slides of images only going through their projects showing us each stage of their improvements and some share fewer photos and images of inspirations that build into the finished image. Some of them have messages about how we should behave as humans and communities, about the state of the world and the environment whereas others just discuss their pleasure in capturing photographs and the whole process as a mindfulness exercise.
Printing
I’ve not done much printing in university this year, either digital or darkroom. My work has been mostly digital with an amount of film photography too. In terms of film, I’ve exposed a few rolls that have come good but I think I only processed two rolls in the uni all year. The rest have been sent out to remote labs, some because there was no chemistry in the uni or there was issues with the timings. I did a small amount of printing early days in the darkroom but using negatives not really related to the project or dissertation that was upcoming. With my redscale films that I shot around the country I had them processed at labs and then scanned them at uni with few prints coming from them. Ideally I would have liked to do some printing on the colour process at uni but there is a reluctance to fill the chemistry up for one student, and there was only one other student that was using colour film on the Level 6, from what I could tell.
The main print I got this year was of my Blind from Shirehall which will be used in the exhibition at Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery and it was an A0 monster. This joins the smaller print from the interim exhibition at Christmas in which I had a front on view of the Shirehall windows from my drone camera. That was printed a little smaller, mainly due to the aspect ratio of the drone being set incorrectly so it cropped the top and bottom off the frame. Now that’s reset I’m happier with the fuller frame of 4:3 instead of the 16:9 ratio. The A2 Print was on Titanium Lustre which looked smart but I was unhappy with the size of it. The A0 print for the SM&AG show is larger and the scale is mounted in an unglazed frame.
Exhibition
This academic year has seen me exhibit at the Interim exhibition in the foyer of the MK building which was a good exercise in printing, preparing for an exhibition, experiencing an opening and working with course leaders and my peers to put on the show, hang it and see it in place. My work for the SM&AG exhibition is ongoing, the print complete and the caption for the card next to it complete. It just remains to see it hung in early May and then pop and see it.
As for the degree show, I have been preparing photographs and reviews this year as if I was exhibiting in the Degree Show at the Uni, but my Degree Show will take place in June next year. It may be that I am still photographing the Shirehall or I might even be changing direction to photograph something else. I’m looking forward to showing in the MK Building, in what could be its final year, before the move to the new home of the Art School.
Other exhibitions I’ve visited this year have shown me some wonderful work, of people who inspire me and also introduced me to other photographers and artists that I may never have come across.
Tom Hicks – Cambridge and Manchester, Black Country Type aka Tom had an exhibition of his work at Churchill College in Cambridge University that I was looking to visit but the Christmas break and lack of staff nearby led to me missing that one. But with the upcoming release of his second BCT book there was an exhibition in The Modernist shop and gallery at Manchester. There were several pieces of his work on the walls here and I found them to be amazing. I also had the opportunity to purchase a couple of zines and a book on Brutalist Japan by Paul Tulett.
Sam Wood, one of our lecturers on the course also had a show at the Juke in Kings Heath, Birmingham. Showing off some of his street photography work and raising money for a local charity he had around 20 pictures hanging on the walls, and while it was a small venue there was a good turnout. A few of us from the Uni made a journey that way for the opening, even though Sam was about an hour late getting there. He also had an issue with the frames falling from the walls and breaking on the floor as the command strips they were held up with were failing. A couple of frames broke and were fixed soon after but he raised a good amount of money for the charity.
Lee Miller’s works were showing at the Tate Britain and there were some great photographs on display, the work that she has from the war correspondent times speaks to me more than the fashion photography but I can see that she really was a superb photographer.
There was also an exhibition called Banksy: Limitless in Kensington which I was really disappointed with and it felt soulless and missing the point of much of Banksy’s work. It was in no way endorsed by Banksy himself or Pest Control, his management company, and many of the works there were not originals but reproductions by artists unknown all brought together to milk tourists out of their money. I did not realise that it was an unofficial exhibition but I’ve learnt a lesson to seek out the truth about who is running the exhibitions before attending.
Darkroom Deficiency
This year I’ve probably spent less time in the darkroom than any of the other previous four years. I’ve mainly been shooting digital for the Shirehall project, using a mix of drone and digital cameras of different types. The only films I’ve exposed in cameras this year were processed by a lab and then the negatives scanned. They were mostly redscale too, which I would have loved to print in the colour darkroom but there was no chemistry in the machine, and there was a general reluctance to chemmy it up for just one student. The last time I had a film to process there were no chemicals to do this and it went to AG Photolab. I also had a tricky time buying some Fujifilm paper to work in the colour darkroom, as I tried early on in the year and AG, Analogue Wonderland and Nik and Trick all had none available.
I’ll see what happens in the summer as I plan to take some film to the US with me, as well as a digital camera or two. Then Ill see what I can pull together for next year’s project and if there is more of a requirement for photography after a decision is made about the Shirehall.
The Future
What does the future hold for me then? One more academic year of studying to achieve my Undergraduate Degree in Photography, then perhaps another two years to continue with the masters?
Hopefully I’ll be able to use more film and get back in the darkroom as intimated already, maybe the US road trip might feature in next year’s work. Maybe it will trigger/inspire me into doing something different too, we can only wait.
My employer has been very understanding in the last five years and has allowed me to study in the week at University and I’ve managed to keep on top of all of my duties so I don’t perceive any issues with the last year. This might change though and I may need to have more vacation days to meet some of the strange sessions that the level 6 students go through.
Next year will mainly consist of a professional practice module which I did not do this year. This will contain sections and assignments on reviews, website production, CV creation, and preparing to be a brand/company once we finish the degree. I will not need to repeat the dissertation unless I have made a complete dogs dinner of it.
With my catalogue building up and consisting of many thousands of photos it will be worth considering the production of another zine or maybe even a book. I have some strands in my practice that line up with Brutalism, Architecture, Street Photography, Shrewsbury Town centre, London and many other subjects. It could be an opportune moment to sift through and find some common themes.
I will continue down the path of creating a 3D Model of the Shirehall and see if I can do something with that, after experimenting further with the CAD software and the 3D printer I have.
Video is another avenue I have to play with, I have a youtube presence and I am planning and scripting a video of photography in Japan on my 2025 trip. It will be more unique than many other videos about Japan as I don’t spend much time on talking about the food and drink of the country as that isn’t rteally in my interests.
I will also continue to experiment with Gel Plate printing to see if I can make some unique pieces of art from the small piece of gel and acrylic paints.
I think it’s fair to say that I will not slow down on the photography over the summer and next year, but I’ll have more time to spend on getting out with the camera especially as I have a trip to Scotland planned for end of May and then a three week road trip across the US in July/August.
The reflective journal will continue over the summer break with posts documenting the results and also other photography based adventures I may have. Til’ we meet again.
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