Reflection
“Check your work against the assessment criteria for this course before you send it to your tutor. Make some notes in our learning log about how well you believe your work
meets each criterion.”
For this final assignment of Expressing your vision I have returned to my first love of documenting my family on a day out in Brighton.
I knew I was going to use this for this assignment, so I was more conscious of the images I was taking and am lucky that they are so used to seeing me with a camera in my hand that they largely ignore it! Unlike my last assignment where I was able to go back and start again because I wasn’t happy with the results, this time it was a ‘one day only’ opportunity – so No pressure!!
Technically, I have often struggled with taking picture of people moving in the past but since finding the auto ISO setting on my camera, I am now able to reduce blurring so am much more confident in that respect.
Having taken over 200 photos, my biggest challenge was whittling it down to just 10 photos. Unlike other assignments where I ‘made’ the images and could take what I need for the project this was more about selecting 10 images that work individually, together and tell the story. To do this I set myself some strict criteria, each image must contain either a member of my family or myself (in some way). It must add new information as per the brief and it must be compositionally pleasing. I also wanted them to work together as a set and tell the story of the day.
Needless to say there were a number of permutations considered until I came up with my final 10. So I tried to imagine what it would look like as a magazine article and picked images that I thought would go enhance the story. It meant having to leave out some images which I really liked, but I guess that’s what this assignment is about. The ability to express your viewpoint for a subject within a limited number of images giving more impact and greater context to them.
mock up of what a magazine article might look like
Ultimately I am pleased with the results and the images I have chosen. I do believe they are a coherent set which tell the story I wanted to tell and meet the criterion of the brief. This section more than any other has made me think about how I select and present my work.
and just to prove I was there on the i360 here’s a picture of me taken by my husband. A rare event indeed 😉
Ralph Flynn. The Day Trip, 2018