Category: Rework & Reflection 3

Reflection on Tutor feedback

Whilst the feedback from my tutor on Assignments 3 and 4 has been very positive, indeed throughout this course, I have nevertheless been thinking about whether there is still anything that I need to reflect upon and address.

So far as Assignment 3 is concerned I think there are two points, both of which I have already addressed to an extent elsewhere. The first relates to presentation of the work. At the time I produced the work I did not give this much thought. Since then I have of course gone on to use the final set for the print on demand exercise and have had actually had the book made up. For the purposes of presentation for assessment I do not now think there is anything more that I need to do with this work and I could simply put the book forward in the vent of physical submission. Whether OCA reverts to this of course remains to be seen.

The other point relates to the development of a personal voice, which was something my tutor and I discussed at some length. This is something that I wrote about specifically at the time (https://markrobinsonocalandscape.photo.blog/2020/04/29/further-musings-on-development-of-a-voice-body-of-work/). I have since continued to think about this issue but I am not sure I have got very much further forward with it. The issue is, I feel, that whilst I do seem to be finding a particular voice of my own, it is at the moment, inevitably, very much tied to the nature of the work required by this module. I have found an aspect of landscape photography that especially interests me and that has produced a recurring theme throughout that I have done so far. Whether I will want to continue in a similar vein once this module has been completed, whether it will feed through into what I do for the next module, or whether I will explore this further in my personal projects (not that I have much time for them at the moment!), I cannot yet tell. For now I have to recognise that I am still developing and there are plenty of other avenues yet to explore.

This actually strikes me as a good thing and that development and change are to be welcomed and embraced. And this leads me to my second general point from the feedback. In previous modules it has been a case of completing an assignment and moving on to the next. To an extent that is perhaps a result of the nature of the earlier modules and the way they have been constructed. The present LPE module comes across to me as more integrated, at least thematically linked and consistent. As a result, each step calls for a reassessment of what has gone before. This, as my tutor has observed, is what I have been doing by going back to look again at the work done for earlier assignments and reconsidering it in the light of more recent work and developments in my thinking and experience. It has felt important to me to consider how earlier work might be developed or readdressed, so that the assignments have become for me, to an extent, not fixed but dynamic pieces of work. This is why I have gone back to each of the first three assignments and done more work on them, in particular with a view to means and modes of presentation. This is probably also what is behind my decision for Assignment 5 to produce two distinct sets of images exploring different ideas about landscape photography.

So far as Assignment 4 is concerned, I do not think there is much more that I can add for now. I still very regard this as an introductory piece, a first look into my chosen subject that in some ways raises more questions than it answers. It would really benefit from expansion and development but I do not see that as a realistic prospect within the confines of the current course. I suspect though that in the future I am going to think more about those further questions as I can see that they might well be relevant to work that I do in the future. Whilst the essay in its current form does not necessarily, at least at face value, fit within the continuum of the work for the previous three assignments, and what I am doing for the next two, I do nevertheless see what the work on the essay has done is affect might broader thinking about landscape and the role of photography as a means of expressing my ideas of landscape.

On a few other points that have arisen out of the tutorial: I did look at Chris Steele Perkins Japanese work in connection with Assignment 2, but I will look at it again with a view to working out how best to present the work for Assignment 6. Shibata’s influence on what I am doing for Assignment 5 is something I have already addressed in writing about research for that project. Otherwise, I will follow up the Mass Observation and Jimmy Forsyth suggestions soon.

Exercise 5.3: Print-on-demand mock-up

Working in a rather roundabout fashion I have now got back to this exercise. I have been rather more concerned with producing a physical book (not something I can do through the likes of Blurb given my chosen format) which has been taking up an inordinate amount of time. Turning to this exercise has been something of a light relief!

As I am now using Lightroom I thought I would start with the Book Module contained within it. Although it would appear to be a fairly simple matter if the book is to contain only photos it seems to be of another order of difficulty to incorporate and combine with text. There is no doubt a way of doing it but I have not found it yet. I have therefore fallen back on Blurb’s own Bookwright program and this has proved to be remarkably easy to use and I have come up with something, albeit not yet very refined, after just a few hours work.

As I have barely got off the ground with Assignment 5, for which I do intend to make a book, I have, for sake of ease, gone back to an earlier project and used the images produced for Assignment 3. For these I have adopted Blurb’s standard landscape format, one image per double page spread, on the righthand page alone, with the map reference captions. Simply for the purposes of experimenting I have also added a single page of text at the end which is a lightly edited version of the text that accompanied the final set in my blog post for the assignment. The only other addition is a title page: somewhat mockingly I have decided to call this book version “Sedes Memorabiles”, Latin for memorable seats, which of course ironically, not all of them are and even some of those with a memorial function are not easily readable by a general public.

I have no training in or prior experience of book design but I am well aware it is not a simple matter of putting some images and text on a page. What I see though from looking at photobooks in my own library is that for most keeping things simple is what works best. There are of course exceptions: William Klein’s New York book works precisely because it is busy and slightly disorienting: some of my favoured Japanese photographers’ works are also more successful because of their sometimes unorthodox presentation. I also just like the idea of one image per spread, or no more than one per page, with minimal text. I do not think my effort is anything that someone else would want to go out and buy but as an exercise, an experiment, and first dipping of the toes into the waters of making books, I think it is not bad. No doubt it could be refined further but I am otherwise reasonably pleased with it as a first attempt. Not to mention surprised at how relatively easy it was to put together.

Proof copies of the cover and main body are accessible below:

sedes-memorabiles-1.pdfstandard_landscape-softcover-premium_lustre_paper-1 Download

sedes-memorabiles-1 Download

Assignment 3: Reflection on Assessment Criteria

One might be forgiven for thinking that by this stage in the degree course I would have properly got my head around exactly what is required when reflecting on the assessment criteria when submitting an assignment. Notwithstanding, it is still something that I struggle with. The difficulty that I continue to have is that although I understand the criteria I find it hard, if not impossible, to form a proper objective view, not on whether the criteria have been met, but how well. My blind-spot, no doubt, but I also cannot help thinking that it would be useful if the course actually included some practical guidance in this regard.

Subject to that, I am reasonably content that I tick most, if not all, of the relevant boxes (pace, how well) and I do not think, on reflection, that I would approach this assignment differently if starting afresh.

One area that does still trouble me somewhat is the development of a personal voice. Clearly a work in progress but I do think there are certain elements that are coming together, particularly so far as conceptualisation is concerned. I do not feel I have yet developed anything that might be described as a distinctive “look”. I try though not to let this worry me too much. At the moment I feel that there is, over the course to date as a whole, such a diversity of subject matter, exercises and projects that they invite a variety of approaches and experiments and it is from this process of exploration, trial and error, that a more personal vision will develop in time.