After a good chat with my tutor, here is some reflection on my first assignment.
No matter how long you have been in the photography business, giving over your work for assessment is always daunting at first! I have done this on many occasions in the past, from my formal training as a photographer, submitting my work to the “table of truth” for critique by my tutors and classmates still stirs up feelings of dread.
I submit images on a daily basis for picture editors and PR teams, it does get easier, especially if you back your work and build trust with the people you are submitting it to. I think that over the years it has taught me not to be too precious about my work, if your picture doesn’t fit the brief or the story, it doesn’t necessary mean it’s a bad photograph! That said, I have definitely learnt more from constructive critique, than I ever have from similarly delivered praise.
As far as first, face to face meetings go, this one could not have gone much better. With the general chit chat aside, the comments were positive and critiques constructive and valid. Les advised me to delve a bit deeper into the “inside outside” aspect of my project, something I had overlooked and gave me some examples to check out. I will change the images so all the Boris images are from the inside and Steve on the outside, figuratively and literally. He also suggested to look at some of the more obvious similarities of the two men. like they are both white middle aged men or ‘Gammons’ as the press likes to call them.
By a strange quirk of the blog, it had written my file info on top of the images of Boris and not of Steve. This overlaid text changed the context of the images in a much more thoughtful way than which i was aware. This is something that is also worth delving further into, leaving the text off the images Steve had seemed to give more credibility to the images of Boris, even the repetitive nature of of the text on Boris’s images seemed to be repeating the rehearsed mantra. I will rework the project with no text on either and text on both to see the difference.
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