First week back after Christmas!
Tutorial
Practice tutorial in the morning with Sylvia when I discussed some of the work that is documented in the first two shoot posts here and here
We discussed the work that I’ve created already and we talked about the blog that I’ve produced with the shoots information. Sylvia seemed happy that the information I had presented was in a good format and she could see that I was being methodical and documenting the reasons for decisions etc.
One of the posts has a concept of taking photos after the workers have left, but Sylvia thinks that the concept is more about how I’m discovering the factory and environment in different ways to those of the last 35 years that I’ve spent inside the premises.
Sylvia suggests that I should consider how I want people to view the images and what they should be getting out of it. It will help with selecting images for the final exhibition. She said that rather than just photos of a factory for no reason that is obvious, that there should be a story, possibly relating to the fact that I’ve spent over two-thirds of my life in the factory environment and the same set of buildings.
Maybe discuss a selection of images with the people I work with, maybe security, the MD and some with my colleagues. Sylvia suggested that I could share the images with other people who work at the site, some of whom have been there 6 months, and others who have been there 48 years. I could canvas them for their ideas of what the photos might mean to them and see which images “hit them in the feels” as it were.
From a discussion about my images and the factory I might be able to whittle down the selection of images to be more pertinent to my colleagues and other non-photographers who find the images interesting or pleasing. Whilst I think this is a good idea to get valuable feedback, I mainly make images of scenes that I find interesting or mean something to me, so I feel that if I pick images based on other people’s thoughts this might not be the real me being presented through the selection.
Contextual Seminar
In the afternoon we met in the Lecture theatre to discuss all things contextual, such as artist library, essay/visual analysis etc.
We took a look at the brief for the assignment again to remind ourselves of what is required from us.
We are going to investigate critical writing as this should aid our efforts in the assignment about a word. My chosen word is still atmosphere, at the moment.
Almost writing in the style of a dissertation, even if it is a visual analysis. Harvard referencing and citations are required as well as all of the usual trimmings of an essay for the Uni Of Wolverhampton.
A reminder that everything needs to be handed in on the Thursday 16th May, this includes not only the 2500 essay about “Atmosphere” but resubmission of the Artist Library Task and all of the surrounding work, including research journals, reflective journals etc.
Around the Contextual assignment we thought about the fact it needs to be a 2500 word essay, plus or minus 10%.
For the word we select we must discover how artists and photographers have used it in the past.
Visual analysis use the notes on Canvas from McNair Evans work in semester 1.
If we use these same questions when discussing our own works in the year long project we should be able to make more sense of them and have a good structure of description around them.
Use two photos at most for visual analysis, any more will need more than 2500 words
Optional reading and key texts that might be helpful in the PowerPoint slide
Critical Writing
What does it mean to write critically?
More critical writing is less descriptive
Use others writings to help take part in a conversation around the subject, use previous authors to springboard from and use their points in arguments.
Build on others points to make a point of your own.
We looked at Blooms taxonomy, with more critical higher order thinking skills on the top
In terms of marking schemes, essays that result in 40-50% use descriptive writing, 60-80% use more descriptive writing skills
A discussion was had about writing in the first person and whether we can use “I” in the essay. We can write in our own voice, using I and me and my. Then these can be edited out to make them refer to other artists etc. Perhaps starting off writing it totally in your own voice and then changing relevant parts will make it more readable and sound more like yourself.
Authors who practise more critical writing often use paraphrases more than quotes, a 2500 word essay should have around three or four quotes total, the rest might be paraphrased.
We discussed methods of writing an argument and using the “Point,example,expansion” to discuss an opening paragraph. We should always relate the discussion back to the argument or research question?
I mentioned that I’d not thought of using a research question and that doing so might make it easier for me to write about photographs using atmosphere, rather than just the word atmosphere. Whilst we discussed this and it’s benefits I wrote the following, which might make a good starting point for my visual analysis.
Can a photograph evoke an atmosphere consistently with multiple viewers?
We discussed how that when we are writing we should keep asking yourself, why am I saying this? Or how does this relate to the word or question?
When reading a book or journal article etc, we should consider some evaluative questions
- What are the implications of this text?
- What can be learnt from this?
- So what?
We should use Comprehension questions, Analytical questions and Evaluative questions when reading to gather as much useful information from the text as possible.
To begin, start reading critically.
Finding your voice – what is your writing voice?
Sylvia explained that there are three voices in academic writing
- Yours
- Others
- Supporting
My voice should be strongest in intro, analysis and conclusion whilst I can use others’ voices in the arguments and reasoning behind my points.
It might be a useful exercise to record myself describing my assignment as if to a stranger and then listen back to it and document from there.
Does the recording sound like you? Or are you altering your voice to sound different?
Which writers are my favourite, do they influence my writing style? We discussed our favourite writers and two of my favourite fiction book writers are Tom Clancy and Terry Pratchett. Clancy has a technological and machine driven narrative using highly detailed descriptions of places, equipment and processes. Pratchett, on the other hand, is a master of humour and allowing a text to tell a story whilst being full of wit, satire, imagination and pure silliness.
Finding my voice myself?
This is a journey to find my own style of writing and during the discussion, Sylvia asked us to consider where we had learnt, thus far, to find our voices. Mine, I explained, was this very here blog. It’s a place where I write my thoughts and notes down surrounding the photography work and experiences, using research notes, personal experiences, stories, foul ups, experiments, achievements that I’m proud of and all sorts of wild meandering thoughts sometimes.
I started a journal during the Covid lockdown in March 2020 as I started having to work from home and in this writing I can read a similar voice to that of my blog. It’s definitely me, with noticing silly details and stupid little jokes but before that I don’t think I’d kept a diary of any sort since 1990. This blog is a formalised and cleansed view of my life and experiences, tidied up a little to remove all of the weird irrelevancies of my thought patterns that would only serve to confuse any reader.
Wait, Haven’t you been to Japan?
Well yes I have, thanks for asking. More to come in some posts in the near future. In the meantime here is a picture I made in Tokyo.
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