6th July 2021
Spent the last few days trying to produce a front cover to the mock book I have made – with very limited success. Have provided details in the Work in progress section to this blog. The aim is to then film the book and post to the website. I would really like to get some final tutor feedback before submission but not sure if I’m allowed.
Decided to attack the comments from Assignment four of Contextual Studies. Not sure why I was putting them off but needed to get on with them, so I put aside the weekend and reformatted the structure into chapters, gave the images more space and tried to reduce the word count down to the limit – not an easy process at all. Finally manged to get within one hundred words of the limit. Picked up the courage to send to a fellow student who had already been through the process for a review and comment as I often become word blind and don’t see silly mistakes. She kindly turned the review around in twenty-four hours – joys of living a day ahead of most and so I was able to address these and finally submit Assignment Five for review by my tutor. This feels like a major weight off my shoulders. I have really struggled with this aspect of the course, not sure why, just so nervous about messing it up as I would really like to go on and do an MA and then maybe a PhD – must be mad!
8th July 2021
Submission date is fast approaching and still not even looked at these new Learning Outcomes and the requirements for that. The support group has been moved by a week due to some being interested in the football so I will add it for the agenda then.
I have been producing a new front cover for my mock-up of the book and realised that I have included an image that was highlighted in my feedback as not my strongest so I have corrected in the video, book pdf and sent the images to be re-printed so I can add to the mock book. Great lesson to learn – do a mock up so you can leave and return to before committing to the expense of having printed and then finding a mistake. With this mock up I can simply replace pages.
11th July 2021
Pages have been replaced and after several failed attempts finally managed to produce a video of the book and up-load to the new website. This will be available for the Assessors when I submit. The original feedback was hard to take but I think the re-edit and gaining the courage to gain feedback from fellow students, social media and professional photographers has paid off. The series still delivers the narrative I want but in a more succinct way.
I have drawn up a list of activities I need to complete before submission as I have now registered for the November assessment. These include:
- Finish writing up talks and presentations
- Rework write up for Assignment five Body of Work
- Finish the last part of the course work for Body of Work
- Address feedback for Contextual Studies, up-load to blog site and lock
- Review blog site for links, references, figure numbers etc
- Write up Learning Outcomes for both courses
- Video hard copies of log books
- Course Evaluation
17th July 2021
So I have been working on my ‘to-do’ list and have produced a page for my blog that offers the assessors a summary of my Body of Work following all the re-edits and feedback from Assignment Five. Summary page can be found here. This clearly links to the new website and summaries the reasons for it as they won’t have the time to read everything that’s on my blog especially all the Work in Progress posts. I have also added a page with my introduction to the project. I received feedback that the introduction section was difficult to read so changed that to its own page.
I also finished the last part of the Body of Work course work and added that to my site here.
It was a week of student forums. The first was the rest of the World group, smaller than usual do to the European football, didn’t realise so many were interested in it. The second was our usual Level 3 Support Group. Sue didn’t attend as she’s taking 3 months off study to get her back sorted, so we had an up-date from Sarah who has completed Assignment Five and received feedback so is working her way through that. She needs to include some case studies. She will be submitting for November like myself, which isn’t that far away. She has entered a number of competitions and received some positive feedback which is great news. She would also like to continue her studies but not sure if it will be with OCA as she is involved with the ‘work/show/grow’ group.
Lynda provided a link on her editing process, difficult to follow as it was a series of images on her table and I couldn’t really envisage the final result, still its at an early stage and loads of time to change. The series is a mixture of landscapes and constructed images from archives she has been given. I think the final result will be a book that also contains text from interviews and local newspaper articles.
Anna reported that she was in ‘catch-up’ mode, still having to submit Assignments Five for both courses. She is not comfortable with her Body of Work; having felt she had already submitted her final set of images. It seems that her tutor feels differently. She seems to have lost heart with it and that is difficult to hear and see as the work is so good. She had decided to remove the ‘Ground Zero’ aspect and work on that outside of OCA, she is feeling frustrated.
Helen is in a similar boat but with a final cut-off date of the 30th July. She has completed a portfolio review, with one reviewer not really understanding her work, which is a shame as she has some amazing images.
I provided my up-date on the completed draft book, the fun of videoing whilst the dishwasher was going and trying to remove sound post production, my new website and waiting for feedback on my essay, which I wasn’t looking forward to.
Friday was the Level 3/Documentary group. Should really claim attendance as I was late, not sure why I didn’t get the notice for it or I had placed it in my calendar at the wrong time. Lesson learnt – check time zones!
30th July 2021
I have set aside the whole of August to concentrate on cleaning up my blog site, checking all links and addressing the Learning Outcomes and Assessment criteria so although I will still attend the student forums (Level 3 Support Group, Rest of World Forum and Documentary/Level 3) I won’t be documenting here.
On the 27th I attended the Tutor Led session where we discussed the question ‘Does research hinder creativity?’. As usual three was some great debate and discussion but the general conclusion was that creativity can be heightened by research, but there is a fine line. Going too wide may cause issues and a loss of direction and focus with too many threads leading to confusion and conflicting information. Overall there can’t be one without the other, both are forms of communication.
Your creative work needs to communicate to have value in the world. Uniqueness has value, need to figure out what that is. It is important to understand how you work fits in/communicates with others to show its value. The need for your work to be unique seemed to contradict with the statement that nothing is unique, everything is borrowed from other people, cultures. Ideas are out there you need to contextualise them, understand them and communicate them and this is done through research.
The work undertaken during Contextual Studies should not just be a list of other peoples work, it is about discovery, combining your own thoughts and understanding of the topic. The essay is a creative way/product of demonstrating that. You collect and collate data and express it in your own words. Creativity is not just what you make with your hands, it’s a creation of the new from something else.
To end the month and this section of my blog before assessment I attended a ‘WorkShowGrow’ artist talk on ‘New beginnings – how do you start?’ (29th July). The session included three photographers; Anne Nwakalar; Matilda Viegas and Molly Foulkes. The work ranged in genres from documentary and photojournalism to fin art. They each discussed their projects and how they each made their break. There was an interesting discussion around the use of ‘go fund me’ and the whole area of self-funding to get your work produced which may be helpful in SYP.
Michele Usher 