Keeping up your Momentum

I attended a 2 day workshop organised by Helen Rosemier and led by Hayley Lock.

We were asked to bring a range of props to the session. Things from the flora and fauna from the garden, images either our own or from magazines as well as art materials, pens and pencils and card.

Using the painting Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Hayley explored the relationship between the real, photographic, digital and physical images.

We very quickly got down to picking out particular sections/images from the painting and were asked to cut these images out, folding them in half and making new shapes with them. The painting is very busy and there was lots to choose from. I have to admit at this stage I thought the session wasn’t going to be for me.

We then moved to break out rooms where we were expected to work together to produce a collage. I was really struggling now and about to leave the session. However, Hayley visited the group I was in and I expressed my concerns and how I was interpreting the brief. Hayley, was brilliant and it became clear that there was no real brief or instruction and what she had done was to give us permission to use our imagination and creativity to produce something of our own.

There had been a padlet set up for each breakout group and we were asked to put our efforts on there.

My attempts from the workshop.

In the second workshop we experimented with ink blots of which I was less successful at.

This was as a fun, informative and liberating experience which I thoroughly enjoyed and I look forward to the next one.

Thank you, to Helen for organising, Hayley for excellent teaching and OCASA for funding the event. I hope there will be more.

Padlets

I have found Padlets a fantastic resource during this course and include a few that I made in support of my research and planning for the assignments.

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

Assignment 3

Assignment 4

Assignment 5

Assignment 6

Padlet link to my padlet and those I have contributed to. https://oca.padlet.org/lynda514949

Landscape, Place and Environment – Reflection and self evaluation

Reflection on Landscape, Place and Environment.

I started my first level 2 course with great excitement. I love landscape photography and was looking forward to extending my knowledge, skills, and approach to the genre. I was not disappointed.

My journey through the course  has helped me to better  understand that landscape is influence in a number of ways depending on who owns the land, what the land is used for e.g. Military Training ground as demonstrated in my Assignment 3 submission as well as the personal preconceptions and expectations of the viewer. I began to understand that the rich were able to influence how we came to view and expect what a landscape should look like, away from the less savoury elements of the landscape and we still see evidence of this today in the historic homes now open to the public, of the people who commissioned paintings and altered the landscape into pleasing “gardens” made possible by designers like Capability Brown. . I know a fair bit about the history of the landscape in which I live (Northumberland) the Border Reivers and the Dukedom of Northumberland, the Freemen of Alnwick and burgers who built the town. The relationship between landowners, workers and those who made their living in the town was not always an easy one and during this course I have learned to think beyond what I see and to think about how it became.

In my learning throughout the course the idea of re purposing the landscape as a place to visit and enjoy as opposed to the industrial developments and this also made an impression on me and the responsibility I have as a photographer to think about how my images will be viewed and what the message is that I am sending to the viewer. The course has had the effect of liberating me in  a way I would never have been able to do if I had not chosen to do this course.

My original style of landscape photography was very ordinary, not imaginative  or inventive.  I did capture some pretty shots and I often shoot close up objects.  I had experimented a little with Intentional Camera Movement, inspired by a local artist Andrew S. Gray who converts ICM images to resemble J.W. M. Turner paintings.  I reference Andrew in Assignment 2. However, from the beginning of this course I began experimenting and using software editing.  In assignment 1 I decided that I would do a road trip following in Henry Fox Talbot’s footsteps when he was making Sun Pictures in Scotland based on places in Walter Scott novels.  The original intention was to take fairly straightforward shots but when I downloaded them onto the camera, I decided to present them in a style similar to calotypes using Photoshop to achieve this.  I continued to experiment throughout the course.  Assignment 2 was long exposure and ICM, Assignment 3 was a post-production editing presentation of archive images and in Assignment 5 I explored pschogeography in my telling the tale of my hometown of two halves – historical feudal town centre to the modern edge land developments.

The use of art to introduced me to a new way of thinking in Beauty and the Sublime that really started something going on in my head and my personal journey began.  I found new ways of looking at the landscape and re-imagining it.  This is new to me and still very experimental which I will continue to develop alongside my developing personal voice. 

I experimented much more for every assignment. I became very abstract at one point and I started to really move out of my comfort zone.

The only downside for me was Assignment 6 and I blame the pandemic for that. I forgot all the rules, I did not plan effectively, what I was trying to do did not work and the result was disappointing.  I learnt that I left my original visualisation and plan at home when I went out shooting.  This was in part because it was a difficult time both in terms of the pandemic and also the impossibility of getting onto the site to be a little more imaginative.  I ended up taking lots of photographs but not very many that told a story of transition effectively.  I have endlessly beaten myself up

I started to research how I could present a poor set of images that told a story and was presentable. I found the Hockney Joiners set and put my own twist on it to produce one image that was better in my view, than the book that I had put together for submission. Although not a silk purse this was no longer a pig’s ear.

My essay was a challenge and ended up being in two halves. I explored the view of abstract photography as art and because the subject was so vast it became more of a list of comparisons. However, I was relatively happy with the feedback from my tutor.

In Conclusion

The course has challenged me and I feel I have emerged a better photographer.  I have enjoyed this I course more than any other but not for the reasons or the expectations I had when joining.  This has moved me into a whole new way of taking photographs and what I do  with them when taken off the camera. I should just mention my tutor here.  I was guided but not directed and for the first time I was able to start thinking outside the box without trying, which had been a struggle for me up to this point.  Please do not get me wrong, I have appreciated all the other tutors that I have had the pleasure of working with and I found them all very helpful but something was different this time.

Self Evaluation

Strengths

• I like a challenge.
• I have strong leadership skills and I set up a Landscape, Place and Environment support hangout via video conferencing during lockdown.
• I am outgoing and sociable and have engaged well with the discussion fora.
• I am hard working and do not give up easily.
• I am educated to higher degree level and I utilise my research skills well in my photography.
• I am beginning to be much more adventurous in my photography.
• Generally, the work I have presented has shown a progression throughout the course and I have experimented with postproduction editing and genre e.g. abstract.

Areas for further development

• I need to recognise when enough research is enough.
• I need to stay focussed and not procrastinate.
• I need to plan more effectively and not keep changing my mind once I set a direction of travel for an assignment or project.
• I still need to develop my personal voice. My leaning is toward Landscape as a genre but the style is yet to be determined.
• I need to continue to be more lateral in my thinking and interpretation of assignments.
• I need to remember to put into practice the technical and theoretical knowledge that I have learned.  For example, I do not always take a tripod with me even though I know this will probably improve my shots.