I'm currently working flat out at the moment with college work. It's very good, in many respects, although thoroughly stressful.
I've got about eleven projects in total. I did have twelve, but I decided I was being a bit over-ambitious about that.
So here's the run down (if I haven't written this already):
Location - editorial piece (I'm doing this on sport) - complete
Location - editorial piece (this is on charity) - complete
Location - advertising (mental health issues) - complete
Location - advertising (my friend's bakery) - still to shoot
Studio - catalogue products shots - still to shoot
Studio - set building advertising shots - getting there.... 50% complete
Studio - set building fine art shots - not quite got what I want.... 45% complete
Major project - hotel documentary series - complete (although I want a few external shots)
Major project - fairytale location series - 50% complete
So far, I've completed my sport, charity, mental health shoots. I'm almost done on the hotel series, and I'm currently working on the fairytale and studio projects. The bakery shoot has been temporarily postponed but will take place in a fortnight. My final deadline is 21st May, but I need time before that to edit, print, and fix anything that needs fixing before then, so I've set a personal deadline of 9th May for all my photography shooting to be complete. If I'm honest, I could probably sign-off the two studio shoots that are partially done, as I really need three images for each of those and I think I have three images I could use for that.
It was timely today to listen to the radio that thousands of pupils and students are currently starting their standard grade, higher, and other SQA examinations now. Part of this photography work reminds me of being back in an exam hall - although I have an answer for almost every question, I don't quite want to finish up early and leave, but instead make the most of every last minute in case I find an alternative and better answer in the remaining time. Although I potentially have a photograph for almost every shoot (save those I'm still to shoot), I don't want to sign them off just yet in case a better photograph comes along.
This week, I have been focusing on the fairytale and studio project. I also had my fourth hotel shoot at the end of last week.
It's fair to say though, I am feeling the stress. Trying to keep on top of so many aspects of so many projects is hard work, although there's something fulfilling about going to bed knowing you've worked hard all day. My days usually start around 6am, and end at around 12am, with driving, shooting, driving some more, downloading, editing, and sorting out all my kit for the next day. I've given up on budgeting through numerous trips to B&Q to buy props and things to help me build my sets, petrol costs (the train is completely impractical given the weight and bulk of what I need to transport back and forth to college), and parking costs.
As with the actual photography... my shoots are mostly going well. There are many things I would like to improve, sometimes with hindsight.
However, I think of the whole scenario as a learning curve. Part of the curve is learning to know exactly what you want, and learning what and when to compromise, and when you need to stick to the plan. Sometimes I don't always stick to the plan, and I think there have been occasions when I've found myself shooting something completely different to the way I want it to be. This past fortnight I've made a conscious decision to pull it all back to the original idea, stick to the script.
On top of all that, we've got all of our end-of-year things going on, and this is the time when we really do the administrative work. So selecting photographs for our college year book; advertising our exhibition; deciding what we're using in exhibition, deciding on an advert for the exhibition, submitting work for the class website... the list goes on.
My diary is full of shoots for the coming weeks ahead. As well as my college work, I've also got a wedding to photograph. On the plus side, I don't feel so nervous about it because I've been distracted by my college work lately.
One of the difficult obstacles however is not actually anything within my college education. My local printing company is relocating, and will be closed right around the time of the deadline of my work. This obviously changes things significantly as to when I can send work to print and whether my work will be finished by that deadline. I am tempted to use one of the highly recommended alternative printers, although it's not quite as convenient, and it sounds like most of my classmates are thinking the same thing so the printers might find themselves inundated with student work.
The next fortnight will be crucial and hard going, although I know it's going to pass so very quickly.
Showing posts with label study. Show all posts
Showing posts with label study. Show all posts
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Sees, shoots, and leaves
I've had a bit of a busy seven days, and this is the first day I've really had to get on with catching up on things.
I went to Windsor last weekend to visit my boyfriend. However, while he was working, I decided to have a trip to London for a day. It's been five years since I last wandered round London on my own and in the interim time I've simply followed friends from place to place, letting them be my tour guide. So it was good to have a day getting to know the city by myself.
In the morning, I met with a photographer and chatted to him over coffee and lunch. Sometimes it's good to just meet with people and talk to them - certainly faster to get ideas and responses and exchange thoughts than via email, and you can't always get the same dialogues when you're assisting or on work experience partly because you're concentrating on the job in hand, and also because most clients aren't going to be interested in listening to photographers talking shop when they're paying you.
Afterward, I headed to the Photographer's Gallery to take in the Deutsche Börse prize nominees. I was torn between Anna Fox, and Donovan Wylie.
I loved the way Fox presented her work, but more importantly the text to accompany the images worked because she told stories rather than being a bit oblique and the photographs reflected that. I loved her work for its complete lack of pretention. Her work was very saturated views of British life, although compared to Martin Parr. However, I think her work is more intimate than that of Martin Parr, her photographs were of things around her home or her parents home, of life in her local area and her world. Martin Parr's work tends to be on a larger scale, about life in particular countries. Her images were also presented in different ways - a blue notebook; a set of fold-out postcards; as well as the prints on the wall.
Donovan Wylie had photographed the decontruction of Maze prison in Northern Ireland. I loved Wylie's work because it lacked any sentimentality, leaving the viewer to consider their own feelings about the photographs. It felt to me that the photographs weren't about "the troubles", but about the next steps in Northern Ireland and the good things that lay ahead, about a new future in the same way that the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall had on the lives of millions of people in East and West Germany. What perhaps makes the decontruction of Maze Prison more interesting to me is how it featured so little coverage in the press, these photographs therefore don't come across as being a symbol or statement in the same way that the Berlin Wall, but an observation. I think it also comes across as being an observation of life in Northern Ireland, of getting on with things and not making a big fuss, maybe recognising that peace is, and always should be, normal life; its a right rather than a privilege.
The exhibition runs until the 17th April and is free. Also, it's just off Regent Street and Oxford Road, so perfect for anyone looking for something easy to access, and the Photographer's Gallery has a fantastic little shop and a nice cafe, both worth visiting.
My second visit, was to the National Portrait Gallery, where I saw the Irving Penn exhibition. Penn died recently, and was one of the most prolific fashion and portrait photographers of the twentieth century. I based some of my photographs last summer on 1940s - 1960s Vogue fashion shoots, which was the work of Penn and his contemporaries. The exhibition catalogues Penn's work across the decades. What it reminds me of, is the Vanity Fair exhibition that toured to Edinburgh in 2007, mainly for the fact that perhaps what we see is a different value of celebrity in different decades. In the most recent decade, celebrity has been about actors and actresses; singers; reality television stars; and TV show hosts. What these photos remind us, is that it used to encompass so much more: authors, poets, dancers, politicians who didn't lead countries who had nuclear ability, musicians, civil rights activists, scientists. Now we have a small group of representatives of people from those catagories in celebrity, but not in the same numbers as they had in the twenties or thirties. What is noticeable about Penn's work, is his ability to create a strong silhouette against the background. One of the things I also notice is how sometimes there is this centre divide, where one part of the background is dark and the other part is light and how Penn seems to light his subject in a way that you still get this clear silhouette.
The Irving Penn exhibition is on until 6th June, and costs £10.
The rest of my weekend involved meeting friends, which was great to catch up. I arrived back in Scotland on Monday and Tuesday I spent photographing a friend for one of my college projects. I've yet to look at the photographs on my computer screen as I didn't get home until late last night, but at the time I had an idea of something I wanted to try and do again. While trying to light the background, I had a small spill of light which highlighted one side of her face very faintly. While I managed to flag the background light I decided that actually I might try and create these highlights again but on both sides of her face instead.
My diary is fast filling up with dates of shoots and plans at the moment, and getting a lot more use than it has for quite a while. It's extremely satisfying but also slightly frightening at how quickly a week can pass, how fast a month can go, and how long I have left to complete all my projects.
In the Autumn, our tutor suggested we should get more photographers to give talks. I suggested Martin Parr, and my tutor responded with "why don't you ask him?". So I did. I didn't actually expect that it would come to fruition, but Martin Parr is coming to our college to give a talk in a few weeks time. I was sorry to have missed Vision 2009 in November when he gave a talk then, while I was on a college trip in Kinlochleven instead, so this more than makes up for that.
This weekend, I'm heading back down south for my rescheduled photoshoot which was cancelled last month due to the weather. Hopefully I should have a bit more success and an update for you by early next week on how the shoot went.
I went to Windsor last weekend to visit my boyfriend. However, while he was working, I decided to have a trip to London for a day. It's been five years since I last wandered round London on my own and in the interim time I've simply followed friends from place to place, letting them be my tour guide. So it was good to have a day getting to know the city by myself.
In the morning, I met with a photographer and chatted to him over coffee and lunch. Sometimes it's good to just meet with people and talk to them - certainly faster to get ideas and responses and exchange thoughts than via email, and you can't always get the same dialogues when you're assisting or on work experience partly because you're concentrating on the job in hand, and also because most clients aren't going to be interested in listening to photographers talking shop when they're paying you.
Afterward, I headed to the Photographer's Gallery to take in the Deutsche Börse prize nominees. I was torn between Anna Fox, and Donovan Wylie.
I loved the way Fox presented her work, but more importantly the text to accompany the images worked because she told stories rather than being a bit oblique and the photographs reflected that. I loved her work for its complete lack of pretention. Her work was very saturated views of British life, although compared to Martin Parr. However, I think her work is more intimate than that of Martin Parr, her photographs were of things around her home or her parents home, of life in her local area and her world. Martin Parr's work tends to be on a larger scale, about life in particular countries. Her images were also presented in different ways - a blue notebook; a set of fold-out postcards; as well as the prints on the wall.
Donovan Wylie had photographed the decontruction of Maze prison in Northern Ireland. I loved Wylie's work because it lacked any sentimentality, leaving the viewer to consider their own feelings about the photographs. It felt to me that the photographs weren't about "the troubles", but about the next steps in Northern Ireland and the good things that lay ahead, about a new future in the same way that the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall had on the lives of millions of people in East and West Germany. What perhaps makes the decontruction of Maze Prison more interesting to me is how it featured so little coverage in the press, these photographs therefore don't come across as being a symbol or statement in the same way that the Berlin Wall, but an observation. I think it also comes across as being an observation of life in Northern Ireland, of getting on with things and not making a big fuss, maybe recognising that peace is, and always should be, normal life; its a right rather than a privilege.
The exhibition runs until the 17th April and is free. Also, it's just off Regent Street and Oxford Road, so perfect for anyone looking for something easy to access, and the Photographer's Gallery has a fantastic little shop and a nice cafe, both worth visiting.
My second visit, was to the National Portrait Gallery, where I saw the Irving Penn exhibition. Penn died recently, and was one of the most prolific fashion and portrait photographers of the twentieth century. I based some of my photographs last summer on 1940s - 1960s Vogue fashion shoots, which was the work of Penn and his contemporaries. The exhibition catalogues Penn's work across the decades. What it reminds me of, is the Vanity Fair exhibition that toured to Edinburgh in 2007, mainly for the fact that perhaps what we see is a different value of celebrity in different decades. In the most recent decade, celebrity has been about actors and actresses; singers; reality television stars; and TV show hosts. What these photos remind us, is that it used to encompass so much more: authors, poets, dancers, politicians who didn't lead countries who had nuclear ability, musicians, civil rights activists, scientists. Now we have a small group of representatives of people from those catagories in celebrity, but not in the same numbers as they had in the twenties or thirties. What is noticeable about Penn's work, is his ability to create a strong silhouette against the background. One of the things I also notice is how sometimes there is this centre divide, where one part of the background is dark and the other part is light and how Penn seems to light his subject in a way that you still get this clear silhouette.
The Irving Penn exhibition is on until 6th June, and costs £10.
The rest of my weekend involved meeting friends, which was great to catch up. I arrived back in Scotland on Monday and Tuesday I spent photographing a friend for one of my college projects. I've yet to look at the photographs on my computer screen as I didn't get home until late last night, but at the time I had an idea of something I wanted to try and do again. While trying to light the background, I had a small spill of light which highlighted one side of her face very faintly. While I managed to flag the background light I decided that actually I might try and create these highlights again but on both sides of her face instead.
My diary is fast filling up with dates of shoots and plans at the moment, and getting a lot more use than it has for quite a while. It's extremely satisfying but also slightly frightening at how quickly a week can pass, how fast a month can go, and how long I have left to complete all my projects.
In the Autumn, our tutor suggested we should get more photographers to give talks. I suggested Martin Parr, and my tutor responded with "why don't you ask him?". So I did. I didn't actually expect that it would come to fruition, but Martin Parr is coming to our college to give a talk in a few weeks time. I was sorry to have missed Vision 2009 in November when he gave a talk then, while I was on a college trip in Kinlochleven instead, so this more than makes up for that.
This weekend, I'm heading back down south for my rescheduled photoshoot which was cancelled last month due to the weather. Hopefully I should have a bit more success and an update for you by early next week on how the shoot went.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
the last lap
So it's the start of my third and final term at college.... it's all gone so quickly!
Last term, we had documentary and fashion, as well as creative industries which was more practical advice about job hunting, and support for photographers in the real world.
As usual, it's all been a bit interesting in terms of what I like/ what I'm good at.
For my documentary projects, I decided to shoot two of them on medium format film cameras. After wasting two rolls of film, I quickly learned how to load the Bronica camera (and read instructions after finding them on the internet).
Fashion was a bit of a challenge. What I learned most, was about the amount of organisation in a single shoot. It's not just a case of turning up with a camera and asking everyone to say cheese. It was actually very frustrating at times, but I managed to get my shots done. What I needed though, and could have done with, was a friendly pair of hands to assist me while I worked. Running around back and forth between models, agencies, and make up artists (as well as trying to free photographic kit from the clutches of the over-possessive storeman at college) is a lot of hard work. Add into it, the research, and trying to explain what you're after to so many people.... and that's before I've even shot a single frame. It certainly gave me a new appreciation of the work of fashion photographers.
That said, I was happy with one or two shots from the shoot, and I felt that my final shoot, at Chatelherault Country Park in Hamilton was perhaps my most successful.
I've been busy experimenting a lot with different ideas of photography, and for this shoot, I wanted to return a bit to what I like most - dramatic skies and cool skin tones.
I did however relish the opportunities I had to just go out with my camera, on my own, and do my documentary projects. Those were the wonderful moments in between, where I was able to work on a small scale project, instead of something that felt like a mammoth operation.
In addition, I've been working on some other projects, for other people, as a means of testing my skills before I am released into the wild as a new photographer.
At the end of January, I took photographs for a charity ball north of Perth. I met the charity organisers in October, during a work experience shoot with a newspaper, and offered my services to them as and when required. They invited me to photograph people as they arrived at a very lovely hotel, and I ended up being fed a four course meal, as well as ending up in the presidential suite when on
e of their guests didn't show up.
In February, I was invited to take photos during a music video - a mix of fashion and documentary. It was an absolutely exhausting day, but a very valuable experience, and one which I enjoyed a lot!
I've got a couple of additional projects lined up, including a fashion show next week, and hopefully a chance to do some architectural photography. I'm also meant to be working on an album cover for someone, as a return favour for a photo shoot they did with me in November.
All that, plus finishing my college work in 12 weeks time....
Oh, and I really need to get a proper website sorted out - something I've been doing quite a bit of research into. Hopefully I'll have some more news for you on that front by end of April.
Last term, we had documentary and fashion, as well as creative industries which was more practical advice about job hunting, and support for photographers in the real world.
As usual, it's all been a bit interesting in terms of what I like/ what I'm good at.
For my documentary projects, I decided to shoot two of them on medium format film cameras. After wasting two rolls of film, I quickly learned how to load the Bronica camera (and read instructions after finding them on the internet).Fashion was a bit of a challenge. What I learned most, was about the amount of organisation in a single shoot. It's not just a case of turning up with a camera and asking everyone to say cheese. It was actually very frustrating at times, but I managed to get my shots done. What I needed though, and could have done with, was a friendly pair of hands to assist me while I worked. Running around back and forth between models, agencies, and make up artists (as well as trying to free photographic kit from the clutches of the over-possessive storeman at college) is a lot of hard work. Add into it, the research, and trying to explain what you're after to so many people.... and that's before I've even shot a single frame. It certainly gave me a new appreciation of the work of fashion photographers.
That said, I was happy with one or two shots from the shoot, and I felt that my final shoot, at Chatelherault Country Park in Hamilton was perhaps my most successful.
I've been busy experimenting a lot with different ideas of photography, and for this shoot, I wanted to return a bit to what I like most - dramatic skies and cool skin tones.
I did however relish the opportunities I had to just go out with my camera, on my own, and do my documentary projects. Those were the wonderful moments in between, where I was able to work on a small scale project, instead of something that felt like a mammoth operation.
In addition, I've been working on some other projects, for other people, as a means of testing my skills before I am released into the wild as a new photographer.
At the end of January, I took photographs for a charity ball north of Perth. I met the charity organisers in October, during a work experience shoot with a newspaper, and offered my services to them as and when required. They invited me to photograph people as they arrived at a very lovely hotel, and I ended up being fed a four course meal, as well as ending up in the presidential suite when on
e of their guests didn't show up.In February, I was invited to take photos during a music video - a mix of fashion and documentary. It was an absolutely exhausting day, but a very valuable experience, and one which I enjoyed a lot!
I've got a couple of additional projects lined up, including a fashion show next week, and hopefully a chance to do some architectural photography. I'm also meant to be working on an album cover for someone, as a return favour for a photo shoot they did with me in November.
All that, plus finishing my college work in 12 weeks time....
Oh, and I really need to get a proper website sorted out - something I've been doing quite a bit of research into. Hopefully I'll have some more news for you on that front by end of April.
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Back to school
So its back to college time for me!
The summer has been a wonderful time to allow me the opportunity to reflect on where I've come from, and where I want to go.
It was surprising how quickly last year passed, so I've made some resolutions about what I want to try and achieve at college in the year to come.
I know what I've got lined up, work wise for college, namely the following classes:
Last year, I think I did pretty well. I met all the deadlines for my work and produced decent workbooks. But I didn't really experiment as much as I probably should have done, particularly playing around with medium and large format cameras. Now, in this digital age, you might wonder why that would be important. Surely everyone works in a paperless world now of digital workflow, where instead of knowing whether to process something as E6 or c41, you're thinking about working in dng or psd file formats. I suppose my concern is that when I go out there into the big wide world, my job option isn't necessarily going to be a case of walking into a bnk, getting a loan, buying all the kit I need and then waiting for everyone to come running to me with photos they want. Chances are, I'm going to start out on the assistant level and I'm thinking, that the more things I can tuck under my belt of having had experience in, the better. Put simply, I'm looking at this for ideas of skills I can still learn. If I were to fill that in now, my knowledge stands at "I can use Bowens lights, and 35mm film". Oh, and I can drive and have a car. Although I do probably fair better than most in the languages section (I knew a degree in languages would be beneficial!).
So I'm planning to play with as much kit as I possibly can. Including.... the extremely lovely Hassleblad H3D which I had a little play with earlier in the week. But that will be studio only. Out of studio, I want to try and experiment with medium and large format cameras and see what happens. I want to try more darkroom work, even though I didn't seem to gel very well with the darkroom last year. Basically, I don't want to leave college with the same ticks in the same boxes as every other graduate.
Being back at college is a bit nerve-wracking, to tell you the truth. Less about the workload - I know I can handle that, and I feel quite relaxed. More about the prospect of the future.
It's going to be a pretty long journey, to get to where I want to be, and these two years at college are only the tip of the iceberg. I know one day, when I'm finally a professional photographer, I'm going to be saying things like "oh god, I remember this one job I did that was disasterous....!". Because that always happens, in every career, there are always disasterous days, although in the more successful careers, those tend to be a little more hazy as you'll have hopefully learned from the experience and not let it happen again.
I'm going to be skint. I need to get very used to that. Even more so than I am now. I'm going to have more outgoings and I'm going to watch my income go out on the necessities before I get anything (if anything) left to play with/spend on pretty shoes. On the plus side, having quit smoking ages ago, and now no longer having to work out how much goes on the cigarettes, makes things a lot easier financially.
I'll probably have to move south. I don't want to live in London, I think I'd rather commute. I commute already - an hour into college, an hour back. I don't mind it, it's good time I get to myself, when I can think about work, or more probably read a book, fall asleep, or play my DS Lite to relax. So ideally, I'd rather live outside London and get up at some godforsaken hour, than actually live inside London. What can I say? I like hearing the sound of birds waking up when I've just had a shower, and you don't get that in cities.
Admittedly, I'm a bit impatient, and would rather skip to the end to get the long, illustrious career, but that's just me. My worst fear is losing everything; having no place to live, not being able to afford to pay bills. However, I hope I'll recognise what's going on before I get to that stage and make necessary arrangements to prevent that from happening. There's a difference between being a struggling artist, and a stupid one.
In a way, I sort of feel like I'm wandering around the edge of a swimming pool. I feel a bit self-concious; I'm waddling around; I'm nervous of the temperature and the depth, and right now I'm aware the pool is already pretty full and I'm going to have to work hard to find a spot to swim in (or drown). I'm thinking about how I'm going to get in - do I sit by the side and slide in slowly, do I use the steps, do I dive in, do I use the high dive board and do a triple sommersault....
Anyway. Hopefully, over the next 7 months (!) I'm going to try and do as much as possible to make sure that I at least get into the pool and don't make too much of an idiot of myself in public.
The summer has been a wonderful time to allow me the opportunity to reflect on where I've come from, and where I want to go.
It was surprising how quickly last year passed, so I've made some resolutions about what I want to try and achieve at college in the year to come.
I know what I've got lined up, work wise for college, namely the following classes:
- Advertising
- photo-journalism
- image editing 2 (read: more photoshop stuff)
- creative industries
- documentary photography
- exhibition
- fashion
- location stock
- social photography
Last year, I think I did pretty well. I met all the deadlines for my work and produced decent workbooks. But I didn't really experiment as much as I probably should have done, particularly playing around with medium and large format cameras. Now, in this digital age, you might wonder why that would be important. Surely everyone works in a paperless world now of digital workflow, where instead of knowing whether to process something as E6 or c41, you're thinking about working in dng or psd file formats. I suppose my concern is that when I go out there into the big wide world, my job option isn't necessarily going to be a case of walking into a bnk, getting a loan, buying all the kit I need and then waiting for everyone to come running to me with photos they want. Chances are, I'm going to start out on the assistant level and I'm thinking, that the more things I can tuck under my belt of having had experience in, the better. Put simply, I'm looking at this for ideas of skills I can still learn. If I were to fill that in now, my knowledge stands at "I can use Bowens lights, and 35mm film". Oh, and I can drive and have a car. Although I do probably fair better than most in the languages section (I knew a degree in languages would be beneficial!).
So I'm planning to play with as much kit as I possibly can. Including.... the extremely lovely Hassleblad H3D which I had a little play with earlier in the week. But that will be studio only. Out of studio, I want to try and experiment with medium and large format cameras and see what happens. I want to try more darkroom work, even though I didn't seem to gel very well with the darkroom last year. Basically, I don't want to leave college with the same ticks in the same boxes as every other graduate.
Being back at college is a bit nerve-wracking, to tell you the truth. Less about the workload - I know I can handle that, and I feel quite relaxed. More about the prospect of the future.
It's going to be a pretty long journey, to get to where I want to be, and these two years at college are only the tip of the iceberg. I know one day, when I'm finally a professional photographer, I'm going to be saying things like "oh god, I remember this one job I did that was disasterous....!". Because that always happens, in every career, there are always disasterous days, although in the more successful careers, those tend to be a little more hazy as you'll have hopefully learned from the experience and not let it happen again.
I'm going to be skint. I need to get very used to that. Even more so than I am now. I'm going to have more outgoings and I'm going to watch my income go out on the necessities before I get anything (if anything) left to play with/spend on pretty shoes. On the plus side, having quit smoking ages ago, and now no longer having to work out how much goes on the cigarettes, makes things a lot easier financially.
I'll probably have to move south. I don't want to live in London, I think I'd rather commute. I commute already - an hour into college, an hour back. I don't mind it, it's good time I get to myself, when I can think about work, or more probably read a book, fall asleep, or play my DS Lite to relax. So ideally, I'd rather live outside London and get up at some godforsaken hour, than actually live inside London. What can I say? I like hearing the sound of birds waking up when I've just had a shower, and you don't get that in cities.
Admittedly, I'm a bit impatient, and would rather skip to the end to get the long, illustrious career, but that's just me. My worst fear is losing everything; having no place to live, not being able to afford to pay bills. However, I hope I'll recognise what's going on before I get to that stage and make necessary arrangements to prevent that from happening. There's a difference between being a struggling artist, and a stupid one.
In a way, I sort of feel like I'm wandering around the edge of a swimming pool. I feel a bit self-concious; I'm waddling around; I'm nervous of the temperature and the depth, and right now I'm aware the pool is already pretty full and I'm going to have to work hard to find a spot to swim in (or drown). I'm thinking about how I'm going to get in - do I sit by the side and slide in slowly, do I use the steps, do I dive in, do I use the high dive board and do a triple sommersault....
Anyway. Hopefully, over the next 7 months (!) I'm going to try and do as much as possible to make sure that I at least get into the pool and don't make too much of an idiot of myself in public.
Monday, 10 September 2007
A new path
I'm now starting my third week in college, of my photography course.
In those short few weeks, I think I've learned a lot already, and not just in terms of the curriculum.
My year group is fairly large - certainly more than I'm used to being around. So we've been broken into four classes. Already, one person has left my course after two days, a couple have swapped for another group (to get more days off in a row - which is only really guaranteed for the first term). And I'm starting to learn pretty quickly who turns up and who doesn't, and who turns in course work and who doesn't.
It annoys me a little, since I have to pay for my fees, that people who are having their fees paid for them by the state, have already missed most classes in the past couple of weeks, and the same with deadlines. Apparently, there was a lot of competition for places on this course, and I'm sure there were people who narrowly missed getting a place who would have put in a bit more effort. It's also quite surprising to see such attitudes surfacing so early on - particularly when the workload is reasonable, and when most people would still have a fair amount of enthusiasm and drive. I think the tutors and quite a few of my other (attending) classmates feel pretty much the same.
My course certainly keeps me busy. I'd not really known what to expect before I began. My timetable accounts for twenty hours of classroom based time. This is already twice as much as the hours I spent in class during my degree.
During my spare time, I still find myself working hard towards my coursework behind the scenes. Effectively, I put in the same amount of hours, if not more, than when I was working. After classes, I usually head off to the library. I also read on the train to and from college - which at an hour long commute is quite a good opportunity to do some background reading. I also still enjoy reading photography books and magazines in my spare time, as a means of relaxing.
I'm thoroughly enjoying my course so far. There are no exams, the assessment is based on coursework. So a missed deadline is not a good thing. We have to successfully pass all the units throughout the two years to obtain our HND. So there's no last-minute-swotting here, but a need to keep the studying momentum rolling. This is why missing a deadline is a bad thing. You miss a deadline, you then get marked as not having completed the unit, and you need to be reassessed. I'm sure if it were operated in a similar way to exams in degrees, if you charged for the resits, then that might help to focus the purse, if not the mind into meeting particular deadlines.
There's also a lot of group assessment going on, rather than specific tutor assessment. This is beneficial on many levels. It enables me to hear lots of different perspectives. It also means that I don't end up "catering" my coursework to please one specific person's tastes. So far the course is rather good at hitting all the major points of photography: the practical exercises coupled with the planning and psychological thought processes; the side where you need to learn how to be a business person; the IT development side for post-processing; and the theoretical side of understanding f-stops from ISO numbers.
Interestingly enough, it's the photography section of the library which is the most used, and most messy. I suppose this says quite a lot about the students who are there (the ones that show up) and suggests they spend time in the library working hard.
I've also been learning more about how to take photographs. I still subscribe to the idea of when you see it, shoot it (in the non-animal violent manner). However, I've also learned about how to respond to being set an assignment, and work through various stages and processes before I even pick up a camera and produce a final shot. Although at times it does feel a bit forced, it also makes me look at my work in a different way, and have a different appreciation for what I am doing - a greater sense of self-respect for my photography, I suppose.
So far, so good, and so far, no complaints. As usual, as with all first impressions, I find my views changing from what they were of a particular course, or what I was doing or am doing and where I'm going. Financially it will be a long two years, but in terms of enjoyment, there's something special about waking up and being happy about getting up - even if I have had a restless night's sleep, or have woken up late (I'm a night owl). Going to class is not a hardship in the slightest - all I want to do is to go, and absorb information in a new format, as opposed to reading a book or a magazine or browsing the internet.
It's a lovely feeling this, of having found something I enjoy and studying it. Photography is an extremely competitive market, but that's a challenge I'm willing to take on. This feeling though, it reminds me of being a teenager again. The first time I heard a music track which worked for me - my first indie track, as opposed to listening to the latest chart hits and boybands with my classmates at school when I was 14. Back then, I'd gone along with the idea that chart hits were ok - but they never meant anything to me, they never made sense. I just didn't know any better. In fact, I rather assumed that I wasn't going to be a person who'd be all that much into music. But then, I heard my first track from an indie band, and it triggered off something in my head where finally I'd found music I liked, that I related to, and which made sense.
Doing this course feels rather the same. I'm no longer doing a nine-to-five job - leaving it all behind as soon as I walk out the door. I want to learn more about it, to read around the subject as well as within the areas I'm studying. Which ultimately should only really benefit me.
Any money I get at the moment is also going right back into photography. I've bought quite a few books - some recommended text books (although strictly speaking we don't have course specific texts) as well as some more broader photography based books.
In those short few weeks, I think I've learned a lot already, and not just in terms of the curriculum.
My year group is fairly large - certainly more than I'm used to being around. So we've been broken into four classes. Already, one person has left my course after two days, a couple have swapped for another group (to get more days off in a row - which is only really guaranteed for the first term). And I'm starting to learn pretty quickly who turns up and who doesn't, and who turns in course work and who doesn't.
It annoys me a little, since I have to pay for my fees, that people who are having their fees paid for them by the state, have already missed most classes in the past couple of weeks, and the same with deadlines. Apparently, there was a lot of competition for places on this course, and I'm sure there were people who narrowly missed getting a place who would have put in a bit more effort. It's also quite surprising to see such attitudes surfacing so early on - particularly when the workload is reasonable, and when most people would still have a fair amount of enthusiasm and drive. I think the tutors and quite a few of my other (attending) classmates feel pretty much the same.
My course certainly keeps me busy. I'd not really known what to expect before I began. My timetable accounts for twenty hours of classroom based time. This is already twice as much as the hours I spent in class during my degree.
During my spare time, I still find myself working hard towards my coursework behind the scenes. Effectively, I put in the same amount of hours, if not more, than when I was working. After classes, I usually head off to the library. I also read on the train to and from college - which at an hour long commute is quite a good opportunity to do some background reading. I also still enjoy reading photography books and magazines in my spare time, as a means of relaxing.
I'm thoroughly enjoying my course so far. There are no exams, the assessment is based on coursework. So a missed deadline is not a good thing. We have to successfully pass all the units throughout the two years to obtain our HND. So there's no last-minute-swotting here, but a need to keep the studying momentum rolling. This is why missing a deadline is a bad thing. You miss a deadline, you then get marked as not having completed the unit, and you need to be reassessed. I'm sure if it were operated in a similar way to exams in degrees, if you charged for the resits, then that might help to focus the purse, if not the mind into meeting particular deadlines.
There's also a lot of group assessment going on, rather than specific tutor assessment. This is beneficial on many levels. It enables me to hear lots of different perspectives. It also means that I don't end up "catering" my coursework to please one specific person's tastes. So far the course is rather good at hitting all the major points of photography: the practical exercises coupled with the planning and psychological thought processes; the side where you need to learn how to be a business person; the IT development side for post-processing; and the theoretical side of understanding f-stops from ISO numbers.
Interestingly enough, it's the photography section of the library which is the most used, and most messy. I suppose this says quite a lot about the students who are there (the ones that show up) and suggests they spend time in the library working hard.
I've also been learning more about how to take photographs. I still subscribe to the idea of when you see it, shoot it (in the non-animal violent manner). However, I've also learned about how to respond to being set an assignment, and work through various stages and processes before I even pick up a camera and produce a final shot. Although at times it does feel a bit forced, it also makes me look at my work in a different way, and have a different appreciation for what I am doing - a greater sense of self-respect for my photography, I suppose.
So far, so good, and so far, no complaints. As usual, as with all first impressions, I find my views changing from what they were of a particular course, or what I was doing or am doing and where I'm going. Financially it will be a long two years, but in terms of enjoyment, there's something special about waking up and being happy about getting up - even if I have had a restless night's sleep, or have woken up late (I'm a night owl). Going to class is not a hardship in the slightest - all I want to do is to go, and absorb information in a new format, as opposed to reading a book or a magazine or browsing the internet.
It's a lovely feeling this, of having found something I enjoy and studying it. Photography is an extremely competitive market, but that's a challenge I'm willing to take on. This feeling though, it reminds me of being a teenager again. The first time I heard a music track which worked for me - my first indie track, as opposed to listening to the latest chart hits and boybands with my classmates at school when I was 14. Back then, I'd gone along with the idea that chart hits were ok - but they never meant anything to me, they never made sense. I just didn't know any better. In fact, I rather assumed that I wasn't going to be a person who'd be all that much into music. But then, I heard my first track from an indie band, and it triggered off something in my head where finally I'd found music I liked, that I related to, and which made sense.
Doing this course feels rather the same. I'm no longer doing a nine-to-five job - leaving it all behind as soon as I walk out the door. I want to learn more about it, to read around the subject as well as within the areas I'm studying. Which ultimately should only really benefit me.
Any money I get at the moment is also going right back into photography. I've bought quite a few books - some recommended text books (although strictly speaking we don't have course specific texts) as well as some more broader photography based books.
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